Mid-term review evaluation report of the women rights project on enhancing participation of women in local government and conflict resolution

Background

This report relates to a mid-term evaluation of the Norwegian People’s Aid (NPA) women’s right project on “enhancing the implementation participation of women in local government and conflict resolution” for two years (2014 and 2015).

The main goal for this project is to ensure women are participating in local governance and peace building as well as conflict mitigation processes which can enhance their peace dividends.

The project focuses on women’s participation in local government, and peace building initiatives, increased SGBV awareness and access to justice for women. The first year of the project implementation was completed.

Purpose/objective

The key purpose of the mid-term evaluation was to identify and analyse the results of the actions within the project intended or unintended and positive or negative.

If results were not reached, answers were to be used to draw lessons on what worked, potential difficulties and things in the project that needs to be improved in future interventions.

Specifically, the following were specific objectives:

• To assess the project performance and achievements against the project objective and targets in terms of relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.
• To identify the challenges, mitigating factors and lessons learnt during the implementation of the project.
• To make recommendations for the way forward including possible strategy direction change.

Methodology

The evaluation was participatory to ensure ownership of the process and outputs. The evaluation achieved a reasonable coverage by sampling the selected partners in the project target areas to get an insight into the project implementation process. The Evaluator spent 8 days visiting the project partners and activities in two target States, Central Equatoria and Eastern Equatoria, reviewing project documents, holding meetings and focus group discussions with leaders, members, beneficiaries and government officials to gather information.

Key findings

• The project was relevant and highly commended by various stakeholders who all agreed that the project was relevant to the situation in areas where it was being implemented, and it was commended for addressing issues that touched the criticality of women’s rights and empowerment in the country.
• The NPA women project was generally effective and on track although there were some strategic, tactical and operational issues that needed to be addressed as they affected the efficiency of the various interventions.
• There were some impact being created by the project especially regarding change of attitudes and perceptions towards SGBV and improved capacity of implementing partners.
• The project has chances to succeed but this will depend on NPA ability to attend positively to all factors that appeared to favour sustainability and also addressing the mitigating factors against sustainability.
• The use of music, dance and drama, youth group leaders and local administrators is the best key practice and effective approach to project implementation
• The collaboration of partners with local leaders, government institutions, the community, and other CSOs working in similar areas at different levels is likely to produce sustainable results.
• NPA strategy of implementing activities through partners is also a best practice that leads to the project ownership by the local people hence being sustainable.
• Baseline data and key performance indicators on the core activities of the project and the quality of partners are still weak.
• Funding for the various activities and partners was reported to be insufficient as compared to the workload that had to be carried out.

Recommendations

• Development of Monitoring and evaluation plan and continued monitoring and mentoring support to the partners to ensure their stability and compatibility with the project implementation timelines, reporting and rules.
• Funding modality modifications
• Improve their communication skills and feedback mechanisms to the partners and vice versa.

Comments from the organisation, if any

• The country office has started on development of M & E plan, tools for baseline data information collection, indicator tracking tools. This year we shall at least make sure we have two on project site visits and monitoring per partner.
• In December 2014, partners were trained in reporting mechanisms and  the project team will continue to support partners in this area
• Funding modality modifications. In the next frame we shall work with few strategic partners depending on size of project resources.