Zhaotong Capacity Building Project Final Evaluation Report 2010 - 2014

Background

The Zhaotong Capacity Building Project (ZTCBP) was funded by the Norwegian Lutheran Mission (NLM) with Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) as the main funder and carried out by the Norwegian Shincon Kunming office. The goal of the project was “Increased awareness of and respect for women and children’s rights, and improved situation for abused women and children at risk in the target area”. Towards this goal, the project’s intention was to conduct activities based on awareness raising and advocacy, competence and capacity building in three focus areas: Domestic Violence Prevention, Children at Risk, and Community Development Training. The executive parties included the Shincon Kunming Office (Shincon), the Yunnan Zhaotong Municipal Women’s Federation (ZTM-WF) and on-site project staff. This project’s implementation period was from 2010 to 2014, a total of five years.

Purpose/objective

The purpose of the final evaluation was to assess and inspect the overall effect of the project. The evaluation specifically assessed the following:

• Project Organization and Management: including organizational status of project operation and management, roles and responsibilities at all levels, project services policies and regulations, promotion of project organization and management, project supervision system and project archival records situation.
• Implementation: Input (HR, material, capital etc.), Output and Training (plan, content, implementation, records) etc.
• Effect: the understanding of the objectives of the project, promotion and realization of goals, long-term impact of the project, project sustainability and advice.
• Improvement since issues and advice raised during the mid-term evaluation.

Methodology

Qualitative research methods, including literature review, interviews, and observation.

Key findings

As a whole, this project has improved the community’s public service, raised women’s awareness of rights and interests and enhanced knowledge about rights and interests in the communities. However, due to the reality of cultural and political systems, various obstacles such as shortages in the administration of women's organizations, incidences of inadequate project supervision and management experience and other reasons, the overall objective of the project deviated somewhat with the project results demonstrating hysteresis.

Recommendations

• Fortify project’s achievements & pay continuous attention to the project’s service
• Amplify training and extend the coverage of beneficiaries
• Pay attention to the cultivation of ability
• Be practice-oriented in training
• Strengthen the construction of project team
• Strengthen consciousness on project management
• Enhance the science and logic of the project design

Comments from the organisation, if any

It is clear that the project has achieved good results and managed to multiply results related to domestic violence prevention to other areas. This has also been pointed put by the evaluators. The evaluators’ overall conclusion is still somewhat critical, and we believe a part of the reason to be the evaluators’ interpretation of the development goal. NLM always had a realistic interpretation of the goal, linking it to the actual target areas and seeing it as a long-term goal not necessarily achieved after only five years. Our main focus has been on the achievement of the specific project objectives. Nonetheless, we recognize some of the challenges observed and have considered these in the planning of a new project.