Combating Human Trafficking Programme

Background:
In 2005 the Operation Dayswork (OD) chose the theme of Human Trafficking (HT) as the principal focus for an intervention Programme with young people in Brazil, the principal victims of this problem. Based on the accumulation of youth work, five partner organizations of Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) were then selected to receive support for a five year period (2006-2010): Ação Educativa, Diaconia, Instituto Socioambiental (ISA), Serviço de Prevenção ao Tráfico de Mulheres e Meninas (SMM) and Viva Rio. When the Programme was designed (2005), two evaluations were established; an intermediate one (2008) and a final one (this). The principal focus of this evaluation is the analysis of the effects of the Programme (its results and impacts) and the principal strengths and weaknesses present in its implementation. It is expected that this will help the parties involved in the design and development of future programs.

Purpose/ Objective:
The principal guidelines of this evaluation were contained in the Terms of Reference (ToR) and prepared jointly by NCA, the five organizations that were part of the Programme and the evaluators. Its principal aims were: 1. Document the effects obtained by the Programme and by the specific projects at the results level, indicating impacts when possible; 2. Using a critical perspective, examine the conditions of success and the factors that influenced the failure to obtain planned results, identifying the lessons learned and good practices.
At the same time, the ToR established four central questions to be covered in the evaluation, which due to their relevance deserve to be summarized here: 1. To what extent did the organizations achieve the objectives established in their 2006-2010 five year plans? 2. Did the local communities and owners of rights (young people) related to the Programme construct capacities to give project activities continuity? 3. To what extent did young people involved in the Programme actively participate in all project development, implementation and evaluation phases? 3. To what extent were the organizations capable of institutionalizing the question of Human Trafficking (HT) in their work? 4. Did they show that they were capable of assuring the future continuity of the projects?

Methodology:
The evaluation prioritized a qualitative approach and used the following procedures: 1. Meeting and dialogues with the NCA team to revise the Terms of Reference and for methodological definitions; 2. Critical analysis of a dossier composed of projects, plans, activity reports and reports of the intermediate evaluation; 3. Individual interviews with NCA and ODW professionals in Oslo; 4. Field research with the five organizations; 5. Application of the questionnaire to the five partner organizations); 6. Final evaluation seminar (São Paulo, November 2010) involving members of NCA and the partner organizations to discuss the Preliminary Report.

Key Findings:
01. The Programme was implemented successfully. A considerable part of the activities stipulated were held within the established times and the agreed budgets. Merit for this should be attributed to the coordination, the partner teams, and NCA monitoring, since there was a high possibility that an initiative of this scale would face difficulties, considering the diversity of organizations involved the geographic amplitude of the actions and the choice of a theme which, despite its relevance, was new to the partners. Working with young people from low income families, the teams dealt in their different contexts with serious problems of violence, high levels of murder, the drug trade, etc. These circumstances affected the participation of young people and teams performance. Project successes and failures have to be examined in this context. The Programme management was also efficient after being forced to deal with growing budgetary restrictions due to the valuation of the Real against international currencies (about 40% during the period). Despite this no relevant administrative problems were reported.
02. Four of the five organizations accepted the recommendations of the mid-term evaluation (2008) and altered their projects. Their teams took the evaluation seriously, demonstrating openness and flexibility towards the necessary changes and sought to improve the quality of their work. Convincing explanations were given about the reasons which prevented compliance with some specific recommendations. SMM was the exception: for this organization the intermediary evaluation had little depth or scope, though the two principal recommendations (qualify and explain its approach to students and teachers; prepare and implement a resource mobilization policy) were considered to have been implemented, albeit partially. Two fragilities persisted in all the organizations: a unsatisfactory reporting system and difficulties in documenting and systematizing results.
03. The Program’s results were very relevant in a range of different fields, of which five deserve special mention: impact on public policy in distinct areas (education, regularization of landholding, culture, Human Trafficking, violence, etc.); youth participation and protagonism; generation of work and income; strengthening of civil society; Human Trafficking; institutional development.
Important effects were also obtained in relation to the protection of young people from violence, the empowerment of young women and in the environmental area. Many of these results could only have been obtained through the multiplicity of partnerships signed with other civil society organizations and with cooperation agencies. Some results – due to their scope, great relevance and their potential durability – take the appearance of impacts. This series of results and impacts is coherent with the objectives established in each organization’s five year plan.
04. Despite this diversity, the most expressive results found were related to youth participation. Education, cultural and income generation, and political participation activities allowed a visible expansion of the role of youths as active participants and agents engaged in their communities, in schools and in spaces concerned with public policies. These are fields in which the organizations had long experience before joining the ODW Program. In the particular case of ISA, actions in various areas allowed youths to become in a very significant (and apparently definitive) manner the target public of its initiatives.
05. Results directly related to the Program’s central theme - HT – were also obtained, but at a level much below what could have been achieved, taking into account the elevated capacity of the organizations, the expansion of the Programme and, above all, the political scenario that was very favourable to a greater opening of the Brazilian state to the HT problem. The lack of centrality of the question in the priorities of most of the organizations is a significant factor in explaining the timidity of these results. The five years of the Programme were not sufficient for HT become a priority of these organizations and as a result: Potentials in other lines of work, Programmes or regions of activity of the organizations were not exploited and the HT theme remained restricted to areas where direct support was provided by ODW/NCA; Neither the partners nor their networks of relations took advantage of the political scenario that was favourable to the question, not dialoguing in an effective form, for example, with the National Plan for Combating Human Trafficking (PNETP, 2008-2010), seen by specialists as a watershed in terms of the conception and implementation of public policies in this area. The exception is SMM, which, due to its institutional mission, had an expressive role in the preparation, implementation and monitoring of PNETP, and also obtained important results in this field.
06. Nevertheless, it should be noted that achievements were found in two important dimensions of ‘combating’ HT: Raising of awareness through the production of materials and the holding of events (seminars, talks, etc.) to help disseminate information. As a result the teams became specialized in the area which, added to their convincing loyalty and dedication to young people, allowed the search for alternatives to incorporate a new theme into their range of activities; Preventative structural investments, reducing the vulnerability of young people to traffic. These consisted of a multiplicity of successful initiatives in the areas of culture, income generation, communication, education, tourism, etc., which resulted in young people remaining in their communities.
07. The fact that a considerable part of the organizations were not specialized in HT paradoxically generated important gains for the Program. After the five years of the Program, it was found that the partner organizations are involved in an enormous volume of activities aimed at young people with various partners, communities, groups and individuals. Several of these activities were planned at the beginning of the Program, some of which emerged from successful actions and others were added based on the capacity of these organizations to mobilize new funds. Obviously, not all the actions are relevant to achieve the objectives of the projects. While this profusion of social actions can legitimate the organizations in the spaces where they are present and renew their activities, it also creates difficulties regarding prioritization and reduces the capacity to monitor results.
08. Weaknesses common to all the organizations include a low capacity for registering quantitative and qualitative data, absence of baselines and well defined indicators, a low level of experience systematization and a reporting system that insufficiently captures their priority forms of process orientated work. In the evaluation team’s view NCA and ODW failed to provide better guidance (NCA) and stimulation (ODW) to the organizations in this area: the progress achieved in five years is somewhat timid, especially the non-involvement of young people as important characters in these registers.

Recommendations:
Participation of young people – despite the involvement of young people in the implementation of actions, it was noted that they did not participate in an effective manner in project or Programme management. In fact, their involvement in annual planning, the monitoring of activities and results, and in systematization work, etc., was very low. Few registers were found of young people’s perception and evaluation of the program, or in relation to initiatives aimed at training and engaging young people in self-evaluation programs. ODW, NCA and their partners need to stimulate youth participation in future programs, among other reasons, in order to expand their capacities as social actors. It is fundamental that future programs give young people a leading role as actors responsible for change (and not as victims) and emphasise access to higher education qualifications.

Results and Impacts – the narrative reports were recognisably fragile in terms of the identification of results and impacts. Therefore, at least two common difficulties have to be overcome: The continuous registration (both quantitative and qualitative) of the young people involved in projects during the different phases and actions; The systematic registration of a selection of data that can allow the tracking of the achievement of results and changes in the environment in which the project is developed. To the extent that ODW support in general follows the Programme configuration, it is recommended that reports be minimally standardized so that changes at the Programme level can be measured.

Narrative Reports – It is suggested that both ODW and NCA improve report formats so that they can concentrate on reflections on achievements, identify results and describe a limited number of activities relevant to meeting the objectives. The evaluation produced a series of detailed suggestions to make narrative reports more similar to ‘activity reports.’

Programmatic approach – the Combating Human Trafficking initiative was designed as a Programme and involves at least three characteristics central to this approach: Common theme relevant to the work; Brings together organizations with diverse knowledge, skills and experiences; Establishes general agreements about the perspectives, objectives, strategies and roles attributed to each partner. The implementation of the initiative, however, did not occur in a programmatic manner. Despite occasional contacts, the organizations did not act in an interconnected manner and mutual knowledge remained limited. We recommend that ODW and NCA pay greater attention to this point so that future Programmes can have greater internal synergy (in carrying out actions, the socialization of learning, dilemmas, etc.) and above strengthen the potential of impacts.

Systematization – the methodological innovation contained in various actions implemented during the five years of the Programme with young people (and with young people and adults) in various areas (arts, culture, secondary education, income generation, popular education, political participation, campaigns, etc.) leads to this evaluation recommending that future Programmes implemented by the NCA/ODW partnership allow for the systematization, publication and dissemination of experiences as a central activity, allotting resources for this.

Monitoring – considering the complexity of the projects, their need to present results in various fields and the fragilities in the programmatic approach, it is recommended that NCA strengthen its Programme monitoring capacity through the recruitment of local consultants to complement the monitoring made by its own team. It is also suggested that ODW think of ways of more effectively involving in a voluntary manner members of its project council in the monitoring of actions.

Comments from Norwegian Church Aid (if any):

Follow-up:
The recommendations are most relevant as NCA is entering a new 5-year period with OD funding. The learning from the previous five years and this final evaluation has made a basis for a thorough planning process for NCA and the six partner organisations involved in the new OD programme 2011-2015, responding to nearly all the issues raised in this report. Some comments on the recommendations:

Youth participation
NCA share the perception that there is an unused potential for involving youth in the management of the projects. Promotion of youth participation in these processes might be an important contribution to the strengthening of youth as social actors for change and not the least for the sustainability of the work initiated by our partner organizations towards youth. The issue has been raised by NCA as a challenge to the partners, and it has been agreed upon that youth in the projects should be represented in the management of these – in the processes of planning, monitoring and evaluation. Specific indicators on this have also been formulated in the above mentioned revised plan. Some of our partner organizations are more experienced in this field than others, and it may be fruitful to promote the exchange of best practices between the partners.

Results and impacts
This has been the main concern when working on the revision of the long-term plan, namely to establish a basis for measuring the performance of the program as a whole during the five-year period. In this lies to clearly define the scope of the target group and who they are at different levels, as well as developing mechanisms for systematic monitoring and documentation of achievement based on the indicators prepared in the upcoming long-term plan.

Narrative Reports
NCA has elaborated a new format for narrative reporting to OD, which has been discussed with the relevant partners. This will be sent to OD for consideration and comments. The format aims to better reflect what has been achieved within the program and in the key areas of the projects, as well as reflections on important processes – rather than listing of the activities carried out.

Programmatic Approach
One lesson drawn from the OD 2005 is that if one should fully exploit the potential that exists for synergy and collaboration between partners at a programme level, a stronger coordination from the initiator, in this case NCA, is required. Our ambition is that this will be strengthened in the period 2011-2015. The joint efforts in the ongoing work with the revised LTP will contribute to a greater exchange of knowledge between the six organizations and will hopefully contribute to greater ownership by organizations to the program and its general objectives. Discussions on how to promote synergy and mutually reinforcing actions in the five-year period are currently taking place between NCA and partners, and specific resources have been reserved to facilitate exchanges, meetings and common actions.

Systematization
Plans have been made for a systematization of the experience from the upcoming 5-year programme, with each partner having defined their main area for monitoring in terms of contributing to a written presentation on the programme’s experience.

Monitoring
One of NCA’s program coordinators at the Head office in Oslo will still have the main responsibility for implementation of the OD programme. By the end of 2011, however, NCA will recruit a new local consultant in Brazil, and part of this position will be dedicated to local coordination and monitoring of the OD programme, to a greater extent than was the case during the previous OD period 2006-2010.