The Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) has been delivering a Community Mobilisation and Service Coordination Programme since 2011. Within this program, NRC's strategy was to engage internally displaced communities to better identify their needs, strengthen their capacity to engage with the government and promote improved delivery of basic services by local authorities, along with partner UN and NGO agencies. Furthermore, NRC has mobilised and built capacities of internally displaced people to play an active role in improving the living conditions of their communities; to become agents participating in the planning of positive development and protection of vulnerable individual and groups; to become respected counterparts in discussions with local, district and provincial authorities by improving their abilities to represent the needs and rights of their communities.
An evaluation was undertaken in 2015, focusing on the OECD DAC criteria of relevance, impact, efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability. It involved a thorough desk review of project documents, in addition to site visits to seven settlements representing the seven target districts, as well as interviews, survey data collection, and focus group discussions with different stakeholder groups.
Summary of findings
- The project, as designed, was highly relevant to the needs of the targeted beneficiaries.
- The project was designed with a sound theory of change, and a well developed project design to support the delivery of results.
- The project activities were implemented in a manner that supported their continued relevance throughout the duration of the project.
- The project appears to have targeted many of the highest priority issues in the IDP settlements.
- Stakeholders and beneficiaries feel that the project has gone a long ways towards achieving its goal of improving the living conditions of IDPs.
- While the project achieved a great deal in tangible terms, there is a lot of work remaining to improve the living conditions of IDPs in informal settlements.
- While the amount of training provided by the project was not substantial, there is nonetheless good evidence of new skills being implemented effectively by those who received the training
- The main anticipated results of the project can be considered fully achieved
- NRC has worked efficiently and effectively in the development and implementation of the project
- The project maintained a good effort in its monitoring and follow-up on activities.
- The project was generally very effective in mitigating the various challenges encountered during implementation.
- Many of the individual achievements of the project appear well positioned to be sustained after handover, although stakeholders have mixed feelings on this.
Summary of lessons learned
- Meaningful involvement of direct beneficiaries in the design and development of a project helps to ensure its relevance, as well as securing buy-in.
- The dual approach of building capacity among stakeholder groups, while supporting the institutional processes for dialogue between them, creates opportunities for meaningful and fruitful dialogue.
- The dialogical approach of the project helped to ensure relevance throughout implementation.
- There may be subtle, but nonetheless important, differences in perspective around the priority of different issues affecting the targeted communities, and there may be potential to increase relevance by openly acknowledging and discussing such differences.
- While DCCMs have proven to be a very effective coordination mechanism, delivering tangible results to the settlements, they do not appear to be essential in order to achieve progress in informal IDP settlements.
- Even in conservative communities, working with women to help them become more engaged as community members can not only help to deliver tangible results, but can also contribute to increasing the status of women in the community.
- While pre/post testing can be useful for demonstrating the value of training, care needs to be taken in constructing the tests in a manner that will allow participants to demonstrate what they have gained through the training.
- Lack of clarity around ownership for project-established mechanisms and other project achievements may jeopardize their sustainability.
Summary of Recommendations
- In future projects, consideration should be given to balancing quantitative indicators with qualitative ones, as well as benchmarking descriptive terms used in discussion of targets.
- While the field data indicates that DCCMs are not essential to achieve progress in informal IDP settlements, the available evidence suggests they are inherently valuable and contribute positively to the project goals, and as such, should be included in the design of future projects.
- Performance indicators and targets, like the results they pertain to, should be reported with complete consistency, in order to avoid any confusion related to accountability for results.
- When reporting pre/post test data, and evaluating the degree of success of a training activity, the extent of improvement in scores is a highly pertinent piece of information.
- Insofar as it is possible, continue follow-up with the project stakeholders, and particularly the women involved in the project, in order to help maintain motivation levels. Such follow-up can be prioritized for communities no yet achieving significant results.
- The project team should consider the potential value added of a final workshop or conference activity that would provide the opportunity to clarify misunderstandings about the project design, and the transfer of ownership for the DCCM mechanism.
- In future programming, it would be valuable to brief stakeholders more thoroughly on the bigger picture of the project design, so as to ensure that each party understands their role in project sustainability.