Organisational Review Save the Children Norway

Key Findings

A short summary of the findings is that SCN's strength lies in its strong and clear identity - as an organisation committed to fulfilling children's rights. It is also an organisation with well established managerial systems and procedures and ample human and financial resources. It can also document the ability to produce results for children - though to a lesser extent in the area of advocacy, capacity building of partner organisations and civil society. SCN has the weakest score in its ability to engage in external partnerships and achieve results through partners.

The report shows that SCN has the ability to reach its goals, but it knows more and has better evidence of results concerning basic service provision and numbers of children reached through its projects than it has concerning results of a qualitative nature.

The operations of the SCN International Programme Department are solidly anchored in the Convention on the Rights of the Child. We have not come across any activities, projects or programmes that do not follow from a rights based approach to the international Conventions.

SCN has a focus on some particular aspects of rights, namely those relating to education and protection. Within the Alliance, other members
work with other themes, but the specialisation of SCAN can be defended in terms of relevance to the final recipients. It also leads to more effective aid through the mechanism of economies of scale and specialisation. SCN operates with working principles that - fully implemented - increase the relevance of its work. Those working principles are the
notions of children's participation and partnerships. While each of these entails problems and dilemmas for the organisation, they are nevertheless good principles and the will, in the long run, increase the relevance of the work done. However, there is a risk that children's participation is considered so closely linked with SC identity, that there is less room for critical discussion. The approaches of SCN are firmly anchored in objectives and values that characterise Norwegian development cooperation, namely rights to education for children, partnerships and participation, etc.

SCN has long experience in managing their own country programmes and efficient systems and procedures. The unification will introduce changes and it is premature to discuss most of them since the new systems have either not been operational for a sufficiently long time or not yet been introduced.

SCN has a clearly defined target group - providing the basis for its strong identity. On the other hand, it is not equally clear how this should be achieved and who the most strategic partners are. It seems that SCN sees partnerships more as a means to an end and is more effective in fulfilling rights for children than strengthening civil society through local partners. It is significant that the SCN policy document on partnership is actually a policy for capacity building of partners with whom
SC works to accomplish its own organisational
objectives. Neither the policy nor strategy
documents articulate SC works together with
other organisations.

SCN has built systems and organisational structures for monitoring and evaluation. So far, there is an excessive focus on quantitative results in terms of children reached, directly and indirectly and not the quality of results.

Still, there are many examples of how SCN has had a major impact with a rather limited use of funds. Through innovative projects in basic education, it has been possible to generate models that are applied on a much wider scale and that affect large numbers of children outside the initial target area. There have been impressive achievements in institutional development with a limited use of funds. Advocacy activities have had an impact far beyond the rather low costs of such projects, but the review has also identified how SCN
could be more cost efficient.