External project evaluation of youth projects

Background:
The evaluation was commissioned by Norwegian Peoples Aid in November 2011 to explore the youth aspect of the Right to Organize component of the Norad-funded program in Palestine.

Purpose/objective:
To examine the strengths, weaknesses, relevance, impact, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability on four of NPA’s projects with NPA’s partner organizations GUCC, El-Wedad, IDS and Students Forum in the West Bank and Gaza.

Methodology:
The evaluation team drew feedback from four main sources: case-study questionnaires completed by individual participants in the projects; focus group workshops with individual participants; semi-structured interviews with project level staff (based in partner CSOs); and semi-structured interviews with program level staff (based at NPA). In addition, NPA provided documentation including proposals, budgets, contracts, quarterly and annual reports, field visit reports, and general program-level documents (including NPA policies and guidelines).

Key findings:
The evaluation team found a broadly successful program which has specifically invested in the capacity of the organizations involved with good results. This program is uncommon among externally-funded work in Palestine, particularly in Gaza, in that it has a strong partnership principle, giving ownership to the organizations and to an extent, their constituents. It is also a rare provider of multi-year funding for smaller organizations on the principle that by investing over a longer period, they will be built up and become more active in defending their members‟ and constituents‟ interests. For these reasons, the evaluators recommend that this type of program be more widely employed and that NPA renew this program for the future.

Recommendations:

Selected recommendations from the evaluation report:

• More linkages between organizations and cooperation between partners could yield a greater national-level impact, particularly in key issues like freedom of speech and right of association and assembly.
• Promote deeper cooperation between partners, particularly between the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
• Training should engage and integrate youth who are still active, potentially involving youth from previous years‟ trainings and activities.
• Initiatives which are by their nature short-term and relatively small-scale should try to balance ambition with realistic opportunities for change. The youth should be encouraged to seek ways to contribute to larger changes and possibly work cooperatively with other initiatives to bring about wider-scale change.
• Encourage development of policy and rights-focused advocacy objectives for „representations‟ activities, campaigns and initiatives.
• More strategic thinking and structured planning on sustainability is required both at program and partner level to help avoid donor-dependence, build more robust organizations and ensure continuity of the benefits and social changes accrued by the program.
• Project planning should look to the full four-year term of the project (or at least 2-3 years), to have a clear vision for the full project, and plan out the cumulative benefits and how these will be achieved.

Comments from the organisation, if any:
NPA is working with closely with partners to learn from the evaluation. The recommendations is being discussed and used actively in the planning and implementation of the 2012-15 strategy and program period.