Jindra Cekan, PhD's Posts - Gender and Evaluation2024-03-29T13:37:28ZJindra Cekan, PhDhttps://gendereval.ning.com/profile/JindraCekanPhDhttps://storage.ning.com/topology/rest/1.0/file/get/2219382272?profile=RESIZE_48X48&width=48&height=48&crop=1%3A1https://gendereval.ning.com/profiles/blog/feed?user=1dqw3nuq56f2r&xn_auth=noAssuming Sustainability + the SDG criteriatag:gendereval.ning.com,2018-10-20:6606644:BlogPost:790162018-10-20T11:00:00.000ZJindra Cekan, PhDhttps://gendereval.ning.com/profile/JindraCekanPhD
<p>Folks, following on from Rituu's blog about the EES conference, here's mine on sustainability and the SDGs, not gender per se but maybe interesting. Waving!</p>
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<p><strong>Assuming Sustainability and Impact is Dangerous to Development (+ OECD/ DAC evaluation criteria)</strong></p>
<p>We all do it; well, I used to do it too.<span> </span><strong>I used to assume</strong><span> </span>that if I helped my field staff and partners target and design funded projects well enough, and try to…</p>
<p>Folks, following on from Rituu's blog about the EES conference, here's mine on sustainability and the SDGs, not gender per se but maybe interesting. Waving!</p>
<p></p>
<p><strong>Assuming Sustainability and Impact is Dangerous to Development (+ OECD/ DAC evaluation criteria)</strong></p>
<p>We all do it; well, I used to do it too.<span> </span><strong>I used to assume</strong><span> </span>that if I helped my field staff and partners target and design funded projects well enough, and try to ensure a high quality of implementation and M&E, then it would result in<span> </span><em>sustainable</em><span> </span>programming. I assumed we would have moved our participants and partners toward projected long-term, top-of-logical-framework’s aspirational <em>impact</em>such as “vibrant agriculture leading to no hunger”, “locally sustained maternal child health and nutrition”, “self-sustained ecosystems”.</p>
<p><a href="https://www.intrac.org/wpcms/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/Monitoring-and-Evaluation-Series-Outcomes-Outputs-and-Impact-7.pdf">INTRAC</a> nicely differentiates between what is typically measured (“outputs can only ever be the deliverables of a project or programme…that are largely within the control of an agency”) and what is not: “impact as the lasting or significant changes in people’s lives brought about by an intervention or interventions”. They continue: “<strong>as few organisations are really judged on their impact</strong>, the OECD DAC<strong><em><span> </span>impact</em><span> </span>definition (“positive and negative, primary and secondary long-term effects produced by a development intervention, directly or indirectly, intended or unintended</strong>“) allows for long-term changes in institutional capacity or policy change to be classed as impact.” Do we do this? Virtually never. 99% of the time we only evaluate what happened while the project and its results is<span> under the control of the aid implementer. Yet the <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dac/evaluation/daccriteriaforevaluatingdevelopmentassistance.htm">five OECD/DAC evaluation criteria</a> asks us to evaluate relevance, effectiveness, efficiency (fair enough, this is important to know if a project was good) <i>and </i>also <em>impact and <strong>sustainability</strong></em>. So in addition to the prescription to evaluate ‘long-term effects’ (impact), evaluators are to measure “<strong>whether the benefits of an activity are likely to continue after donor funding has been withdrawn… [including being] environmentally as well as financially sustainable</strong>.” </span></p>
<p>How do we<span> </span><em>know</em><span> </span>we are getting to sustained outcomes and impacts? We ask people on the receiving end ideally after projects end. It is<span> </span><strong>dangerous to<span> </span><em>assume</em><span> </span>sustainability and impact, and<span> </span><em>assume</em><span> </span>positive development trajectories<span> </span></strong>(Sridharan) unless we consistently do<span> </span><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/building-the-evidence-base-for-post-project-evaluation-a-report-to-the-faster-forward-fund/">“ex-post” project evaluations such as these from our research</a> or <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/catalysts-2/">catalytic organizations that have done at least one ex-post</a>. At very minimum we should evaluate<span> </span><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/stepping-up-community-self-sustainability-one-ethiopian-step-at-a-time/"><em>projected sustainability</em><span> </span>at end of project</a> with those tasked to sustain it before the same project is repeated. Unfortunately we rarely do so and the <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/Cekan-EES-Sustainaibility-Panel-3-Oct-final.pptx">assumed sustainability is so often not borne out</a>, as I presented at the European Evaluation Society conference Sustainability panel two weeks ago along with AusAid’s DFAT, the World Bank, University College London and UNFEM.</p>
<div><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3213" src="https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?resize=300%2C196" alt="" width="300" height="196"/>https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?resize=207%2C136 207w, <a href="https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?resize=260%2C170">https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?resize=260%2C170</a> 260w, <a href="https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?resize=430%2C283">https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?resize=430%2C283</a> 430w, <a href="https://i2.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?w=640">https://i2.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/IMG_8075.jpg?w=640</a> 640w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></div>
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<p>Will we ever know if we have gotten to sustained impacts? Not unless the OECD/DAC criteria are drastically updated and organizations evaluate most projects ex-post (not just good ones :)), learn from the results and fund and<strong><span> </span>implement for country-led sustainability <em>with the country nationals</em></strong>. We must, as Sanjeev Sridharan tells us in a forthcoming paper<span> </span><strong>embed sustainability into our Theories of Change from the onset</strong><span> </span>(“Till time (and poor planning) do us part: Programs as dynamic systems — Incorporating planning of sustainability into theories of change” (Canadian Journal of Program Evaluation, 2018).</p>
<p>There are remarkable assumptions, such as this<span> </span><a href="https://www.evernote.com/client/snv?noteGuid=70f50cd3-8334-4f97-a2fc-92d10a424f36&noteKey=437c7283b603a0cd&var=b&sn=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.evernote.com%2Fshard%2Fs38%2Fsh%2F70f50cd3-8334-4f97-a2fc-92d10a424f36%2F437c7283b603a0cd&exp=ENB3907&title=CDCS_FINAL_26092017.tags_.pdf">USAID Uganda CDCS Country Transition Plan</a>which looks over 20 years in the future by when it assumes to have accomplished sustained impact for exit.<span> </span><strong>Truly, we can plan to exit, but only when data bears out our sustained impact,<span> </span><em>not</em>when the money or political will runs out.</strong></p>
<p>As<span> </span><a href="https://views-voices.oxfam.org.uk/methodology/real-geek/2018/10/dac-criteria-the-hand-that-rocks-the-cradle">OXFAM’s blog today on the evaluation criteria</a><span> </span>says, “Sustainability is often treated as an assessment of whether an output is likely to be sustained after the end of the project.<span> </span><strong>No one, well, hardly anyone, ever measures sustainability in terms of understanding whether we are meeting the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own need</strong>” and “too often in development we evaluate a project or programme and claim impact in a very narrow sense rather than the broader ecology beyond project or programme parameters.” In fact,<span> </span><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/sustained-impact-post-project-ex-post-little-proof-at-3ie/">most ‘impact evaluations’ actually test effectiveness rather than long-term impact.</a> <strong>Too rarely do we test impact assumptions by returning 2-10 years later and gather proof of what impacted locals’ lives sustainably, much less – importantly – what emerged from their own efforts once we left (<a href="http://betterevaluation.org/en/themes/SEIE">SEIEs</a>)!<span> </span></strong>Oh, our hubris.</p>
<p>if you’re interested in the European Evaluation Society’s<span> </span><a href="http://www.ees2018.eu/1539782596-flagship-symposia.htm">DAC criteria update discussion, see flagship discussion</a> and<span> </span><a href="http://zendaofir.com/dac-criteria-part-11/">Zenda Offir’s blog which stresses the need for better design</a> that include<span> </span><strong>ownership, inclusivity, empowerment.</strong><span> </span>These new evaluation criteria need to be updated, including Florence Etta’s and <a href="http://www.agdenworld.org/">AGDEN</a>‘s<span> </span><strong>additional criteria participation, non-discrimination and accountability!</strong></p>
<p><img class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-3214" src="https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AGDEN-DAC-subCriteria.jpg?resize=300%2C225" alt="" width="300" height="225"/>https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AGDEN-DAC-subCriteria.jpg?resize=768%2C576 768w, <a href="https://i2.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AGDEN-DAC-subCriteria.jpg?resize=1024%2C768">https://i2.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AGDEN-DAC-subCriteria.jpg?resize=1024%2C768</a> 1024w, <a href="https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AGDEN-DAC-subCriteria.jpg?w=2000">https://i0.wp.com/valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/AGDEN-DAC-subCriteria.jpg?w=2000</a> 2000w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></p>
<p>We can no longer afford to spend resources without listening to our true clients – those tasked with sustaining the impacts after we pack up – our partners and participants. We can no longer fund what cannot be proven to be sustained that is impactful. We talk about effectiveness and country ownership (which is paramount for sustainability and long-term impact), with an <a href="http://www.oecd.org/dac/financing-sustainable-development/development-finance-standards/DCD-DAC(2018)12-REV2.en.pdf">OECD report</a> (2018) found<span> </span><strong>“increases [in[ aid effectiveness by reducing transaction costs and improving recipient countries ownership.”</strong><span> </span>Yet donor governments who ‘tie’ aid to their own country national’s contracts benefit a staggering amount from ‘aid’ given. “Australia and the United Kingdom both reported … 93 percent and 90 percent of the value of their contracts respectively <a href="https://www.devex.com/news/donors-claim-they-are-untying-more-aid-but-critics-call-for-broader-definition-92964">went to their own firms</a>.” It is not so different in the USA where aid is becoming bureaucratically centralized in the hands of a few for-profit contractors and centralized hundreds of millions in a handful of contracts. We must Do Development Differently. We can’t be the prime beneficiaries of our own aid;<span> </span><strong>accountability must be to our participants; is it their countries, not our projects, and we cannot keep dangerously assuming sustained impact.<span> </span></strong>Please let us know what you think…</p>
<p><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/assuming-sustainability-and-impact-is-dangerous-to-development-evaluation-criteria/">http://valuingvoices.com/assuming-sustainability-and-impact-is-dangerous-to-development-evaluation-criteria/</a></p>Value added of post project evaluation, rather than just final evaluationtag:gendereval.ning.com,2017-10-04:6606644:BlogPost:692842017-10-04T19:14:50.000ZJindra Cekan, PhDhttps://gendereval.ning.com/profile/JindraCekanPhD
<p>Hello - please see our research report on post project #evaluation where we show the value added to 'program cycle' final evaluation. (Un)expected #sustainability or not, emerging sustainability and more: <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/building-the-evidence-base-for-post-project-evaluation-a-report-to-the-faster-forward-fund/">http://valuingvoices.com/building-the-evidence-base-for-post-project-evaluation-a-report-to-the-faster-forward-fund/</a></p>
<p>Hello - please see our research report on post project #evaluation where we show the value added to 'program cycle' final evaluation. (Un)expected #sustainability or not, emerging sustainability and more: <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/building-the-evidence-base-for-post-project-evaluation-a-report-to-the-faster-forward-fund/">http://valuingvoices.com/building-the-evidence-base-for-post-project-evaluation-a-report-to-the-faster-forward-fund/</a></p>Presenting Lessons on (post-project) Sustained and Emerging Impact Evaluations from the U.S. AEA Conference REBLOGtag:gendereval.ning.com,2016-11-03:6606644:BlogPost:592712016-11-03T21:37:09.000ZJindra Cekan, PhDhttps://gendereval.ning.com/profile/JindraCekanPhD
<p>Dear readers, attached please find the <strong><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Barking-up-a-Better-Tree-AEA-Oct-26-FINAL.pdf">barking-up-a-better-tree-aea-oct-26-final</a> presentation we did last week at the American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference</strong> in Atlanta GA. I had the pleasure of co-presenting with <strong>Beatrice Lorge Rogers</strong> PhD, Professor, Friedman Nutrition School, Tufts University (aka the famous …</p>
<p>Dear readers, attached please find the <strong><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Barking-up-a-Better-Tree-AEA-Oct-26-FINAL.pdf">barking-up-a-better-tree-aea-oct-26-final</a> presentation we did last week at the American Evaluation Association (AEA) conference</strong> in Atlanta GA. I had the pleasure of co-presenting with <strong>Beatrice Lorge Rogers</strong> PhD, Professor, Friedman Nutrition School, Tufts University (aka the famous <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/learning-about-sustainability-and-exit-strategies-from-usaids-food-assistance-projects/">Food for Peace/ Tufts Exit Strategy</a> study), <strong>Patricia Rogers </strong>PhD, Director, BetterEvaluation, Professor, Australia and New Zealand School of Government (where we published a <a href="http://betterevaluation.org/blog/SEIE">blog on SEIE</a>) and <strong>Laurie Zivetz</strong> PhD, International Development Consultant and Valuing Voices evaluator.</p>
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<p>We integrated our presentations from Africa, Asia and Latin America into this fascinating overview:</p>
<p><strong>1.Sustained and Emerging Impact Evaluation: global context</strong></p>
<p><strong>2.SEIE: definitions and methods</strong></p>
<p><strong>3.Case studies: findings from post-project evaluations</strong></p>
<p><strong>4.Designing an SEIE: Considerations</strong></p>
<p>5.Q&A — which fostered super comments, but since you couldn't come, please tell us what you think and what questions you have…</p>
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<p>There are amazing <strong>lessons to learn about design, implementation, M&E from doing post-project evaluation</strong>. We have also grown in appreciating that <strong>sustainability can be tracked throughout the project cycle, not just during post-project SEIE evaluation.</strong></p>
<p><img alt="cycle-evaluation-redesigned-b3" class="alignleft size-medium wp-image-2374" height="293" src="http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Cycle-Evaluation-Redesigned-B3-300x293.jpg" width="300"/>http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Cycle-Evaluation-Redesigned-B3-768x750.jpg 768w, <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Cycle-Evaluation-Redesigned-B3-1024x1000.jpg">http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Cycle-Evaluation-Redesigned-B3-1024x1000.jpg</a> 1024w" sizes="(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px" /></p>
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<p>We'll be building this into a white paper or a … (toolkit? webinar series? training? something else?). What's your vote ___? (I know in this US election season, so… :)). </p>
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<p><strong>What would you like to get to support your learning about Sustained and Emerging Impact Evaluations? Look forward to hearing from you- </strong>Jindra@ValuingVoices.com</p>
<p>Enjoy!</p>Sustaining projects during and after Implementation: Does gender count?tag:gendereval.ning.com,2016-09-07:6606644:BlogPost:571642016-09-07T14:32:16.000ZJindra Cekan, PhDhttps://gendereval.ning.com/profile/JindraCekanPhD
<div>One of our Valuing Voices team, Rutere Kagendo, wrote a blog about gender and project sustainability Originally posted here:</div>
<div><font color="#1155CC"><u><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/sustaining-projects-during-and-after-implementation-does-gender-count/" target="_blank">http://valuingvoices.com/sustaining-projects-during-and-after-implementation-does-gender-count/</a></u></font></div>
<div><p><strong><u>Sustaining projects during and after Implementation: Does gender…</u></strong></p>
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<div>One of our Valuing Voices team, Rutere Kagendo, wrote a blog about gender and project sustainability Originally posted here:</div>
<div><font color="#1155CC"><u><a href="http://valuingvoices.com/sustaining-projects-during-and-after-implementation-does-gender-count/" target="_blank">http://valuingvoices.com/sustaining-projects-during-and-after-implementation-does-gender-count/</a></u></font></div>
<div><p><strong><u>Sustaining projects during and after Implementation: Does gender count?</u></strong></p>
<p>Rutere Kagendo from Ronto Research and Valuing Voices</p>
<p>Gender as a concept is one of the many kinds of indicators of change measured in development projects. However, like many others, its reporting in many cases is limited to the n<a name="_GoBack"></a>umber of women and men participating in the project. Whereas participation by gender <em>is</em> an important variable in measuring community engagement and inclusiveness in a project, this measure is more focused at the registration level and the mere fact that women’s or men’s names appear in the registers. However, numbers only are not a clear indicator of participation and the extent to which it happens. </p>
<p>Gender reporting, as shown above, can be too simplified. There is also ongoing misunderstanding surrounding gender, which only separates genders and omits a gendered analysis that would help understand the <em>relationships</em> between men and women, boys and girls within the dynamics of a project. This can include differentiated decisions about how resources are allocated within household expenditures (e.g. women overseeing food consumption, health and children's expenses versus men overseeing large investments into livelihoods) and division of labor (e.g. men ploughing and planting fields and women weeding and conserving crops leading to a family harvest). Gender negotiations are richer than numbers of men and women participating in projects.</p>
<p>As we consider the various stages of a project, starting from design, implementation to evaluation and sustainability, it is critical to assess the role of gender in each of these stages. It is obvious that women and men play important roles in projects but what is not clear is how these roles build, complement and sustain the project. The questions that come into mind after interacting with communities during project evaluations (mid, endline, impact and sustainability) are:</p>
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<li>How do the various roles played by both men and women, and their interaction with each other shape the outcome of a project?</li>
<li>Does gender contribute to project sustainability?</li>
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<p>These are important questions that need to be answered through more research and writing but there are early insights I have learned:</p>
<p><strong><em>1. Resilience in roles during the project life cycle</em></strong></p>
<p>Studies highlighting the roles played by both women and men in projects shed light on how gender shapes project outcomes. I once attended a dairy project launch exercise in Kenya, my home country, in a and was surprised by what I saw. All the men sat at the front and the women took a back seat with their young children. The women remained silent the entire time the meeting was held, and efforts to involve them were unsuccessful. I later learned that in that community, women do not share their views in the presence of men. However, I left with one question in my mind, how will this project succeed if only one party is going to be talking and making decisions? Was there no mechanism for women to share their views as well? Is it not going to become a project that benefits men only? Years later, I got an opportunity to evaluate the project. I held both men and women focused group discussions separately. I found that firstly, men may be the gatekeepers but may not necessarily have the resilience needed to push through the whole project cycle. For example in this particular project, men did not continuously stay with the project, as noted by one female group participant:</p>
<p><em>“When this project started, we were both men and women. However, men decided to pull out because they thought milk was a women’s commodity and there was no money [to be made] in it. The women got organized in groups and started selling the milk in bulk. We made money and within no time, the men came back and took over the milk business. If we women had not stayed in the project, the milk business would not have been realized although we lost it to the men”. </em>In another dairy-related project elsewhere, the men were the cattle and milk owners so they sold all the milk. But during a season when the market was flooded with milk (milk glut), the men abandoned the milk business. The women took it up and tried to sell the milk whenever possible until the milk glut’ season passed, only for the men to get back to the milk business again.</p>
<p>Whether it is a good idea or not for men to have taken the milk business away from women in both of these cases is subject for discussion, but the main issue here is the role played by the women to<em>sustain the project long enough</em> to grow it from an idea and push it into a viable business that attracted the men back into the project. Indeed one wonders if the project would have grown if the women had not remained in the project. Cekan Consulting found the same in an all-women and highly successful sesame seed production Catholic Relief Services project in the Gambia. Women had grown the communal agribusiness from microenterprise size to being so successful that they became of interest to local banks. At that point, men in the communities began to take the project, and savings, over. Valuing Voices has documented <a href="http://valuingvoices.com/what-happens-after-the-project-ends-country-national-ownership-lessons-from-post-project-sustained-impact-evaluations-part-2/">savings and loans sustained post-project, and even scaled up by women in several countries.</a></p>
<p>Also thinking about the initial community entry meetings and seeing how unengaged and distant the women appeared, one would have dismissed their role in the project. As it turned out, they became the engine of this project. Surface impressions may not hold true.</p>
<p><img alt="GenderAfricaKagendo" height="169" src="http://valuingvoices.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/GenderAfricaKagendo-300x169.jpg" width="300"/></p>
<p><strong><em>2. Saving the project for whose benefit?</em></strong></p>
<p>In another project, community members were encouraged and supported to start savings and lending groups to run their small businesses. The qualitative discussions in the final evaluation revealed that at the end of the project, it was perceived as more of a women’s project in spite of being targeted to men. This is because almost all the men had left the project after taking loans and failing to repay. The women, especially those whose spouses had taken the loans took over the burden of repaying the loans which saved the project.</p>
<p>Borrowing from these examples one is tempted to ask, what happens in those projects that target men only or where women get demoralized and leave? Do they fail at a higher rate altogether than those that include women? Arguing along these lines one would ask, what are the driving forces for men and women to remain or quit from project activities and how has this been addressed so far in project designs?</p>
<p>In most of the evaluation projects Ronto Research has conducted around Africa, men may take a lead in project implementation depending on their expected quick/ shorter-term gains/ expectations which determine whether they remain active or not. On the other hand, women seem to get into projects with a determined resolve to see their problems solved, no matter how long it takes. As a result, they hold onto the project activities despite the challenges that come along. It is observable though, that as they progress and begin to take hold and show signs of success, the men get attracted back.</p>
<p>In most of the project evaluations I have participated in, there are always few men who are loyal and remain part and parcel of the project. Pivotally, we also need to understand the role of these few men who have remained in these projects with the women the whole time. This can be either because they hold positions or just because they believed in the projects and they support the women with ideas or just their mere presence in the project activities. These men seem to play a critical role in encouraging the women to push on. Their role cannot be ignored and there is need to understand them better in terms of their opinions. Why do they remain with the women even when there seems to be few benefits forthcoming to them, whereas their fellow men pull out? In an interview with women in Tanzania on an agricultural project, some women felt that the few men who had been left in their group were very instrumental in their achievements by giving the project an identity in as far as it being a community and not a ‘women-only’ project was concerned.</p>
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<p><strong><em>3.</em></strong><em> <strong>Gender- Informing evaluation</strong></em></p>
<p>Thirdly, while conducting evaluation interviews, gender counts. Typically, women and men are asked about results in gender-specific groups. At the household level, the preferred interviewee is the household head. In most cases, they would be the direct ‘beneficiaries’ (participants) of the project information on behalf of their households. Due to the cultural set-ups in much of Africa, in married families men are automatically the household head, which would mean they would be the target interviewees. However, our experience during interviews either through Focus Group Discussions or on a one-on-one situation is that consulting with women as well as considering differentiated gender roles and gender relations are key missing ingredients. For often during interviews, the men end up involving their spouses for details about projects, in part because men might not consistently follow up the project activities and therefore might not have all the details.</p>
<p>There is also a possibility that although it is the men who are registered as participants, in actual sense it is the women who participate and therefore have the detailed information about some issues being discussed, so it is important to check who is the actual ‘information bank’ (and day-to-day participant) of the household for the project. This issue needs to be explored in-depth both in regular project evaluation and more needs to be learned about how this can be used to inform sustainability studies. Asking only men or only women may limit evaluative learning.</p>
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<p><strong>4. Sustaining results – which gender is best?</strong></p>
<p>What can we learn from the projects that have been completed so far years after they close out? When projects come to an end, communities are left to experience and foster the project impacts on their own. They learn a lot on their own post-project and this could be an important source of information on sustainability, but what mechanisms can be put in place for these ‘information banks’ to share the information long after projects end? They may be the only key informants that remain (as partners may have long-gone onto other projects far away); before the knowledge they hold that can be eroded with time. It would be interesting to compare the information held by men and women about outcomes and impacts being sustained, stopped or new ones emerging. The question on information especially related to project sustainability is going to be very critical considering that most of this information has to be sought from community member post project period.</p>
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<tbody><tr><td><p>Does gender play a role in holding a project together/implementation? What role does gender play in project sustainability?</p>
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<p><u>A <em>few</em> resources:</u><br/>UN on Gender Mainstreaming:<a href="https://cursos.campusvirtualsp.org/pluginfile.php/31817/mod_resource/content/3/Guide%20%20Module%204%20%20REV%208.15.pdf">https://cursos.campusvirtualsp.org/pluginfile.php/31817/mod_resource/content/3/Guide%20%20Module%204%20%20REV%208.15.pdf</a></p>
<p>UN and Gender for Sustainable Development resources:<a href="http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_c/mod12.html">http://www.unesco.org/education/tlsf/mods/theme_c/mod12.html</a></p>
<p>Gender and Evaluation: <a href="http://gendereval.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network">http://gendereval.ning.com/?xg_source=msg_mes_network</a> by fellow Valuing Voices’ team member Rituu</p>
<p>ICRW: <a href="http://www.icrw.org/where-we-work/men-and-gender-equality-policy-project">http://www.icrw.org/where-we-work/men-and-gender-equality-policy-project</a></p>
<p>Finally, an ActionAid <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osscXjT17sI#action=share">advocacy pitch for women farmers and aid transparency</a></p>
<div id="cab-author" class="cab-author"><div class="cab-author-inner"><div class="cab-author-image"><img alt="" src="http://1.gravatar.com/avatar/a0b962e696e9c035bdc95a510e17252c?s=225&d=mm&r=g" class="avatar avatar-75 photo grav-hashed grav-hijack" height="75" width="75" id="grav-a0b962e696e9c035bdc95a510e17252c-0"/><p></p>
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<div class="cab-author-info"><div class="cab-author-name"><a href="http://rontoinvestment.com/" rel="author" class="cab-author-name">Rutere Kagendo</a></div>
<p>14 years experience as an evaluator and CEO Ronto Investment in Kenya</p>
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</div>What should projects accomplish… and for whom?tag:gendereval.ning.com,2014-12-21:6606644:BlogPost:266392014-12-21T20:00:00.000ZJindra Cekan, PhDhttps://gendereval.ning.com/profile/JindraCekanPhD
<p>What should projects accomplish… and for whom?<br></br> An unnamed international non-profit client contacted me to evaluate their resilience project mid-stream, to gauge prospects for sustainable handover. EUREKA, I thought! After email discussions with them I drafted an evaluation process that included learning from a variety of stakeholders, ranging from Ministries, local government and the national University who were to take over the programming work about what they thought would be most…</p>
<p>What should projects accomplish… and for whom?<br/> An unnamed international non-profit client contacted me to evaluate their resilience project mid-stream, to gauge prospects for sustainable handover. EUREKA, I thought! After email discussions with them I drafted an evaluation process that included learning from a variety of stakeholders, ranging from Ministries, local government and the national University who were to take over the programming work about what they thought would be most sustainable once the project ended and how in the next two years the project could best foster self-sustainability by country-nationals. I projected several weeks for in-depth participatory discussions with local youth groups and sentinel communities directly affected by the food security/ climate change onslaught and who benefited from resilience activities to learn what had worked, what didn't and who would take what self-responsibility locally going forward.</p>
<p>Pleased with myself, I sent off a detailed proposal. The non-profit soon answered that I hadn't fully understood my task. In their view the main task at hand was to determine what the country needed the non-profit to keep doing, so the donor could be convinced to extend their (U.S.-based) funding. The question at hand became how could I change my evaluation to feed them back this key information for the next proposal design?</p>
<p>Maybe it was me, maybe it was the autumn winds, maybe it was my inability to sufficiently subsume long-term sustainability questions under shorter-term non-profit financing interests that led me to drop this. Maybe the elephant in the living room that is often unspoken is the need for some non-profits to prioritize their own organizational sustainability to 'do good' via donor funding rather than working for community self-sustainability.</p>
<p>Maybe donor/funders should share this blame, needing to push funding out, proving success at any cost to get more funding and so the cycle goes on. As a Feedback Lab feature on a Effective Philanthropy report recently stated: "Only rarely do funders ask, 'What do the people you are trying to help actually think about what you are doing?' Participants in the CEP study say that funders rarely provide the resources to find the answer. Nor do funders seem to care whether or not grantees are changing behavior and programs in response to how the ultimate beneficiaries respond."</p>
<p>And how much responsibility do communities themselves hold for not balking? Why are they so often 'price-takers' (in economic terms) rather than 'price-makers'? As wise Judi Aubel asked in a recent evaluation list-serve discussion "When will communities rise up to demand that the “development” resources designed to support/strengthen them be spent on programs/strategies which correspond to their concerns/priorities??"</p>
<p>We can help them do just that by creating good conditions for them to be heard. We can push advocates to work to ensure the incoming Sustainable Development Goals (post-MDGs) listen to what recipient nations feel are sustainable, more than funders. We can help their voices be heard via systems that enable donor/ implementers to learn from citizen feedback, such as Keystone has via their Constituent Voice practice (in January 2015 it is launching an online feedback data sharing platform called the Feedback Commons) or GlobalGiving's new Effectiveness Dashboard (see Feedback Labs).</p>
<p>We can do it locally in our work in the field, shifting the focus from our expertise to theirs, from our powerfulness to theirs. In field evaluations can use Empowerment Evaluation. We can fund feedback loops pre-RFP (requests for proposals), during project design, implementation and beyond, with the right incentives tools for learning from community and local and national-level input so that country-led development begins to be actual not just a nice platitude. We can fund ValuingVoices' self-sustainability research on what lasts after projects end. We can conserve project content and data in Open Data formats for long-term learning from country-nationals.</p>
<p>Most of all, we can honour our participants as experts, which is what I strive to do in my work. I'll leave you with a story from Mali. in 1991 I was doing famine-prevention research in Koulikoro Mali where average rainfall is 100mm a year (4 inches). I accompanied women I was interviewing to a deep well which was 100m deep (300 feet). They used plastic pliable buckets and the first five drew up 90% of the bucket full. When I asked to try, the seriously gave me a bucket. I laughed, as did they when we saw that only 20% of my bucket was full. I had splashed the other 80% out on the way up. Who's the expert? How are we helping them get more of what they need than what we're willing to give?</p>
<p>see <a rel="nofollow" href="http://www.valuingvoices.com/">www.ValuingVoices.com</a> for more...</p>