Mid-Term Review: Evaluation of Civil Society – Partnership for Democratic Development

Background

The NPA Palestine development and program goals are as follows:
The following are, in brief, the expected results of the program:

• People organizing around land and resource rights have been strengthened.
• The increase ratio of agricultural allocations in the state general budget by 2-3% has been adopted.
• Farmers’ capacity to access, reclaim, rehabilitate, and cultivate land in the ARA has been enhanced.
• Coalitions of youth and women built by NPA Partners and young women leaders in political parties know how to explain and claim their rights to others outside the coalitions/networks, using the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) as a basis.
• There are increased numbers of women active in political parties and in leadership positions in Palestinian political parties and on the boards of local CSOs.
• The capacities of youth members of coalitions/networks that share common political analysis across Gaza and the West Bank have been strengthened.

Purpose/objective

The backbone of the Development Program in Palestine is the four-year Cooperation Agreement with Norad (2016-2019). This mid-term review of aimed to exercise NPA Palestine approach to civil society development and its longer-term impact – which also includes shorter-term projects/initiatives. The findings and recommendations from the evaluation will be used by NPA Palestine and the NPA Head Office to inform strategic development of the program and to pinpoint future priorities for NPA in Palestine.

The mid-term review covers the program from January 2016 to the beginning of August 2018. It assesses program performance and progress against the review criteria: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact with focus on added value of NPA, partners’ capacity in organizing people, and women and youth participation in partners’ structures and in the projects’ design and implementation

Methodology

The mid-term review utilized a mixed-methods approach with a focus on qualitative methodologies. The review incorporated a gender-sensitive and evidence-based approach throughout the process. Qualitative data collection was conducted via key informant interviews (KIIs) and focus group discussions (FGDs), and direct observation. The evaluation team made use of existing quantitative data from the desk review, some of which was provided by partners at the qualitative data collection phase.

Key findings

The first set of findings are related to training. The majority of the participants found that the trainings were beneficial and offered them good knowledge and skills related to political participation. However, some of the participants indicated that the duration of some trainings was not sufficient to ensure meaningful behaviour change related to such entrenched political and socio-cultural norms. Another concern raised by those participants was the theoretical nature of some of the trainings, such as political dialogue and leadership, which did not always give them practical opportunities to put what they learned in training into action.

The second set of findings dealt with communication and collaboration across NPA partners, and according to NPA objectives. While NPA routinely communicated with each partner, many partners noted that the partners themselves did not have opportunities to work together and NPA staff felt that partners were not all working according to the same criteria, ranging from selection criteria to monitoring and evaluation.

Finally, NPA staff were concerned that NPA partnership might actually reduce partner sustainability and increase dependency, while most partners felt that NPA’s long-term funding allowed them to focus more time on implementation of their core activities and increased their effectiveness. This report finds that both views are simultaneously true.

Recommendations

• Allow more time for training intended to change political and socio-cultural norms;
• Implement activities – such as lobbying meetings and publication training - that support the institutionalization of NPA’s objectives directly with partner organization staff;
• Support structural changes that move women and youth into decision-making positions within NPA partner organizations;
• Increase communication among NPA partners and design a communications strategy to structure the process of improving communication among them;
• Develop, in collaboration with NPA partners, eligibility criteria for participants, participate in the selection process, and ensure that program participants are not selected by more than one partner;
• Conduct organizational assessments covering areas such as governance, human resource management, and financial management, for all partner NGOs;
• Revise NPA strategic priority for the selection of partners, focusing on sustainability; and
• Revise and upgrade the NPA monitoring and evaluation system to ensure data quality among partners and add a learning component (MEL) to the existing M&E system.