Mid-term evaluation report of the United Methodist Church Sierra Leone - Norway partnership community empowerment for livelihood programme (CELAD)

Background:

The Community Empowerment for Livelihood and Development (CELAD) is a grassroots programme run by the United Methodist Church in Sierra Leone (UMCSL). The overall goal of the programme is to promote community development and empowerment. The key thematic areas are education, health, agriculture, strengthening civil society, infrastructural development, economic empowerment, and gender equality using the Partnership in Development (PID) approach. The PID model mobilizes communities to initiate and participate in own development through awareness raising in cross cutting areas, and training of local project committees and maintenance committees who play a leading role in decision making and community project implementation. To secure local ownership of the projects, there is a demand for local contribution including provision of land, local material, and volunteer labour. In 2021, CELAD operated in 27 communities. 

Purpose/objective:

The purpose of the mid-term evaluation was to assess, analyze and report on goal achievement and the impact of the CELAD programme after three years’ implementation (2018-2021). The evaluation would also be used as a learning opportunity for UMCN, UMCSL, the Dept. of Missions and Development Board, the CELAD staff and communities, to enhance their understanding and participation in the programme.

Methodology:

The evaluation used both qualitative and quantitative methodology, including questionnaires based on the OECD-DAC evaluation criteria and the Digni Empowerment Assessment Tool (EAT). The questionnaires were administered using Kobo collect software, a cloud-based data collection tool.

Key findings:

• Staff management. The staff is effective and efficient in the implementation of the community projects. The PID model was properly utilized to achieve most of the positive outcomes of the programme. The intervention procedures were democratic and transparent.
• The project has been managed in a participatory, dedicated, and flexible manner that enables activities to be conducted in a trusted and collaborative way.
• High efficiency in the allocation, use and procedures for accessing resources. No report of mismanagement of resources was received from beneficiaries. All resources were strategically allocated to achieve the programme outcomes. Sufficient human and financial resource considering the achievement of the intended objectives, results, and impact, according to the target groups.
• Strategies, procedures, and methods adopted to meet needs were standardized and easy to understand. Key informants from government interviewed reported that CELAD activities are relevant to achieving development priorities and approaches and activities are coherent with the micro development plans of the local government.
• The beneficiaries have the capacity to continue with the project and can work as a team as they know how to respect individuals’ rights and responsibilities. CELAD intervention has played a significant role in community empowerment, strengthening civil societies, and providing leadership. Factors that might affect the sustainability of the programme are inadequate funds, poor maintenance of project facilities, conflict and political interference, lack of unity in the community, lack of empowerment, lack of leadership and poor road network.
• The programme has had positive significant impact on the lives of beneficiaries. They are now aware of their rights and responsibilities and the need to keep their environment safe with good governance. Improved access to legal services, attributed to the good advocacy capability to demand for services from police and local government given to them by the COBIPs volunteers.
• The Community Based Volunteers (COBIP) in terms of Sustainability. Through sensitization, teaching on cross cutting thematic areas, community engagement and empowerment, bringing unity among community people, and changing the attitude of people, CoBIP volunteers have created significant impact on the lives of target beneficiaries.
• The Digni Empowerment Assessment Tool (EAT) revealed that strengthening civil society and gender equality scored at Level 4.

Recommendations: CELAD should

• Encourage National authorities to participate by giving them key roles and make them aware that their presence and participation in trainings will help improving the lives of people.
• Strengthen strategic alliances with relevant NGOs in the future to enable sharing of knowledge and expertise between partners, and to reduce risks and costs.
• Encourage youths to involve in groups. They are active contributors in community development projects and good organizers, risks takers and can dedicate time for interventions involving women, especially girls, and physical activities.
• Continue providing advisory guidance and linkages to other projects and organizations of similar intervention. There is a need to further improve, communicate and maintain close collaboration and networking with local government, NGOs, para-legal institutions and civil society organizations involved in gender empowerment.
• Expand and scale up the intervention to other communities. This will improve the livelihoods of women and men as well as youths in their respective communities which will result to nation’s building.

Comments from the UMC Norway (MM):

The final report is much longer than recommended in the ToR (35 p), however, it contains pictorial evidence, graphs and tables that confirm the results and make the report more reader friendly (63 p). We are pleased to see that transparency and accountability of the CELAD programme staff and cooperation of the local community were the key reasons given for the successful implementation of the programme. The reason for weak strategic alliances mentioned, had to do with financial expectation from public officials (risk of bribery), which is against CELAD’s rules of engagement.

The CoBIP initiative is assessed as relevant and successful in impacting behavioural change and strengthening community cohesiveness through sensitization, teaching on cross cutting themes, community engagement and empowerment. The report emphasizes that the programme has reduced Gender Based Violence in the project communities and given women equal opportunities in participation of project activities. CELAD will continue training local communities on advocacy to hold the Government and other funding organizations responsible.

Comments from Digni:

The evaluation has answered the evaluation questions and the report follows a logic set up although it could be more concise. The evaluation also gives a good overview of the PiD and CELAD’s achievements, and it has provided good and useful recommendations. However, Digni has two main concerns that are being followed up with the UMC Norway:

• There is a mismatch between the scope of the overall goal of the programme and the scope of the project implementation. This is not addressed by the evaluation. The Theory of Change (ToC) and the related results framework of the programme include all vulnerable communities in the country, while CELAD implements projects at the maximum in 10 local communities yearly and in 30 local communities during a 5-year programme period. The evaluation team has given the score of 4 on Strengthening civil society in Digni’s Empowerment Assessment Tool (EAT). This reflects the evaluation team’s consideration of the results level on this area. This would have been reasonable if the starting point was achievement at local community level. But taking in consideration that the ToC and the results framework target the whole Sierra Leone, the results should be very limited compared to the target. Accordingly, the EAT score should have been very low.
• Due to suspicion of financial irregularities in another programme run by the UMCSL, CELAD is currently under investigation. The outcome of the case may influence the way the PID approach will be designed in future, from a risk-based perspective.