Midterm Evaluation of Sustainable Development Planning Project, Nepal

Background

Namsaling Community Development Centre- a non-governmental organization with the funding support of the Development Fund of Norway (DF) has been implementing a five year project (2012-2016), “Sustainable Development Planning Project” in different parts of Nepal.

This project is a continuation of a multi-phase project since 1992. The project implements the Local Self-governance Act of 1999.

The main aim is to achieve a participatory and transparent process in Village Development Committees (VDC) periodic planning and to further ensure that the projects in the plan actually are funded and carried out.

The project is process oriented, system focused and promotion of good governance rather than service delivery project. This mid-term evaluation took place in the frame of the objectives of the NCDC project in partnership with DF, Norway.

Purpose/objective

The mid-term evaluation focused mainly on the performance from 2012-2014 of the Sustainable Development Planning (SDP) process, and its implementation aspects undertaken by VDCs in their constituencies with the following specific objectives:

1. Relevance of ‘Sustainable Development Plans’ in Nepal
2. Impact on development processes
3. Capacity building of organizations that have facilitated SDPs 
4. Impact on individuals within the stakeholder groups, the general population, civil society groups and the private sector.

Methodology

Participatory approaches including appreciative inquiry and basket of participatory methods were used for the mid-term evaluation of the SDP project.

A review of documents, semi-structured interviews, focus group discussion, key informant interviews, case studies, mood meter mapping (perception mapping of stakeholders towards the project based on their happiness) and score ranking tools were used to capture the qualitative and quantitative information from the respondents.

Key findings

1. The plans are comprehensive, integrated, environmentally friendly, gender equality and inclusion focused compared to Local Governance and Community Development Programme (LGCDP). This model can function in the new context of federal system. The future threats to the use of the Sustainable Development Plans include resource constraints of the VDCs, capacity of new elected political representatives in periodic planning and high development expectation of citizen on local and national government.
2. There is increased participation of women and marginalized groups in VDC planning process and implementation compared to previous plans. There is also increased budget to the social sector. The local government can easier budget and plan annually without conflict, resulting that local development projects so far have an implementation rate between 64.2-80%
3. NCDC’s capacity building of other organizations and governmental institutions in SDP planning has resulted in promotion of good governance and these are able to carry out SDPs, however, the plans are of lower quality than the plans of NCDC
4. SDP has increased the participation of various stakeholders in VDC planning, however, the results and the planning documents should be better documented and distributed.

Recommendations

• Strengthen NCDC’s capacity building of and backstopping for training other organisations/institutions.
• Distribution of the planning document in the VDCs should be improved
• Lobbying and advocacy work should be focused for wider impacts of SDP processes through scaling-up across the country to influence policies and practices 
• Better documentation of results and lessons learned to use for promoting the methodology nationally.

DF’s comment and use of the evaluation

DF has used the evaluation for discussing with NCDC about possible changes in the project activities before the end of 2016. The main change during the last two years of the project is the use of more social auditing in the communities that have participated in SDP processes, in order to get feedback on the plan from the community stakeholders.

DF is content with the results of the project and wanted to support the strategy since 2012 for facilitating SDP in VDCs/Municipalities all over Nepal. During the remaining project life, the recommendations from the evaluation will be incorporated, especially the focus on capacity building of government staff and NGOs in facilitating the process and follow-up.

Furthermore, capacity building of community members in the use of the SDP document, documentation of results of the plans and a continuous effort of promoting the methodology, with the aim to make it a standard in Nepal development planning mechanisms will be prioritized.