Assessment of the Empower FLM program through its two components

Background

The Empower FLM program with its actual features started in January 2014. It has two complementing components, “This is Our Church” and “Use Your Talents”. Empower FLM program is managed/lead by a Project Leader or Coordinator.

The Coordination’s role is to coordinate the activities of Empower FLM's components in Madagascar in view of attaining its goal, ensure the administrative tasks and financial management of the program, conducting training sessions within Empower's components, ensure the communication and relations with FLM, NMS, the government and other partners.

"This is our church" (TOUCH), the first component of Empower program is aiming at empowering leaders, the pastors, catechists, Church and associations committees at all level to be competent for good management of all Church affairs, eager and able to promote unity and motivate Church members to use their talents to support and implement the holistic Church works (ecclesiastic ministry and development work) at all levels to ensure the self-reliance of the Church and build a better Madagascar.

"Use your talents" (UYT), Empowers’ second component is encouraging all FLM Church members to use their talents for their personal development and development of others (local development initiatives) with the help and support of development agent volunteers, such as Synod FANILO coordinators, animators in the FLM districts, MAFI (Mpanentana Antsitrapo amin'ny Fampandrosoana eny Ifotony, experienced/specialized in a particular field working for a small group in a community) and many others.

These volunteers are offering support in form of training and exchange of experience. Both TOUCH and UYT main activity is training and sensitization using a cascade model. Representatives from the synod (leaders, FANILO Coordinators, animators) are trained and they apply and replicate the training in the lower level.

Purpose/objective

The purpose of the mid-term evaluation is to evaluate the process and results of the first years of FLM Empowerment (2014-2017), with the intention of informing a possible continuation in line with the program’s work. Hence, the objective of the evaluation is:

• to weigh the function of Empower FLM in its relevance, effectiveness, efficiency and sustainability within the Malagasy Lutheran Church and Madagascar at large; 
• to analyse the expected results compared to the outcomes;
• to use the achievement indicators and the objectively verifiable indicators

The outcomes of the Empower FLM program were evaluated based on the efficiency, the relevance, effectiveness and sustainability of the activities, their respective results as well as their impacts.

Methodology

The assessment team was composed of three (3) consultants from different and complementary backgrounds (legal, management and socio-economic). The assessment was based on the indicators used for the two components “This is Our Church” and Use your Talents”.

The structure of those two components of the Empower FLM were defined in order to evaluate their outcomes and impacts to the Church development. Some questions were addressed directly to Church actors from different levels to obtain the data according to the way how they experience the program.

Some inquiries were addressed differently through open discussions in a group using participative approach to draw the lessons. All sessions were recorded in order to justify the content of this report.

The different documents shared by the Empower Team were useful to appreciate the details of the program (Use Your Talents Review Report 2012 FLM Constitution, The FLM Development Philosophy, ect…). Based on the terms of reference, the assessment of the Empower FLM program was conducted within three (3) Synods: SPAFI, SPANTA, and SPAM.

The field visit into the other two synods allowed the assessment team to discuss directly with various officials about the above mentioned program and also allowed local actors to provide suggestions in order to improve the work.

Key findings

Main conclusions and recommendations:

- The Empower FLM program seems efficient as its training methods, a type of ToT model, is continuing in the different levels of the Church structure in general. The synods found ways to ensure the training with the funds in hand. Nevertheless, FLM Empower has to encourage the leaders in all levels of the Church structure to allocate a certain amount of money for training and appoint full-time trainers to monitor and follow-up.

- Empower FLM program's existence and activities seem relevant as most of the people interviewed appreciated the work done in grassroots through the use of talents of the Christians, particularly the roads maintenance and building. However, the program has to provide training about identifying and managing risks with small projects and leaflets summarizing the leadership and management training.

- The program is effective as pastors, Christians and people in the community use their talents for the benefit of the Church itself, the Church associations and groups and individuals in the community. The program has to train its trainers to identify the needs of the trainees and local people prior to the training and adapt the schedule of the training to the rural activity calendar.

- The program will be sustainable if the topics / subjects taught in the seminars (zones) are given in the theological seminaries and schools. In addition, Empower FLM also was encouraged to write a new project application for funding from 2018 in order to continue the training at national level.

Comments from the organisation, if any

The findings in this mid-term evaluation confirm that the project has implemented most of its activities and to a large degree achieved its objectives so far. Recommendations have been considered and the program has listed several actions they will do to further improve the results of the program.

The evaluation report is however a bit unstructured, this might be due to the ToR which was quite general. NMS and FLM will have to consider this for the next evaluation.