‘Living for A better Story” (LFBS) three-year project implemented by Media Arts for Development (MADEV) 2018 – 2020. Final Evaluation report

Background:

The project was primarily designed to respond to the unmet psychological and emotional needs of women and men in 5 cities. The LFBS project is about promoting gender equality through building healthy communities and creating a safe haven for conducive relations. Individuals are empowered to positively change their beliefs and views towards themselves and their life towards a positive outlook.

Purpose/objective:

The goal of the evaluation was to respond to the following questions:
1. Review the project accomplishments in relation to the project outcomes.
2. Identify strong and weak points in the project implementation.
3. Evaluate the level of empowerment in the project with the use of the Digni Empowerment Assessment Tool (EAT)

This evaluation mission aimed to inform the project key players on the overall situation of the project implementation and the achieved outcomes and level of empowerment acquired by targeted groups.

Methodology:

A mix of research tools, quantitative and qualitative, were used to collect data from various stakeholders. The evaluator used document review, focus group discussions, interviews and online questionnaire. The selected sampling technique was the Stratified Random Sampling to include the different strata targeted by the project. Representative random sample from each identified stratum has been listed. Measures such, geographic, religious, age, sex, level of education and socioeconomic class representation have been considered in the assessment sample.

Key findings:

• Through the project, women in non-targeted cities and from other Arab countries followed the online activities.
• The project interventions were perceived relevant to the targeted audience.
• The activities were influential for raising awareness about emotional and psychological health and encourage the audience to seek support.
• The project also enabled to create a safe niche for participants to speak out and express feelings and opinions without fear.
• Representatives of men in the evaluation sample reported that they have gained “power within” and became oriented on their needs. Furthermore, are able to express their feelings, emotions and seek psychological support if needed.
• The project successfully developed training materials for ToT course.
• An outstanding success marker of the project was its highlight in addressing men, as well as including them in the project activities.
• The content of the methodology used were needs driven and derived directly from what the participants had requested.
• The project achieved remarkable progress with enhancing the needs of many of the women.
• The project has succeeded in men inclusion which is a great leap in promoting for gender justice. (It is worth mentioning that almost all trials to include men in gender focused projects have not been very successful hence the need for a successful evident based approach for men inclusion).
• Divorced women were empowered to make their own decisions.

Recommendations from the Evaluation team:

• The use of volunteers in the project implementation sites has proved to be effective, however the need to have local partners would have supported the offline activities and allowed more frequent interventions. The evaluation
  recommends having local NGO partner not only to support the implementation process, but also to cascade the acquired learning and experience to the local communities which might enhance more sustainable actions.
• The evaluation would highly recommend having qualitative indicators for intended results to measure the quality achieved periodically and foster timely corrective actions. The current result framework needs to be adapted.
• A robust feedback mechanism should be developed to collect participants inputs, suggestions, and remarks.
• The internal communication and coordination between the project main components should be a matter of focus in the following projects: regular staff meetings and knowledge exchange mechanisms.
• The evaluation would recommend having an elected consultation committee to help the project management team select the topics for the campaigns.
• When it comes to the involvement of men, the recommendation is to document the process and continue to work with the men.
• It is recommended for the future projects to think of developing a simple directory for psychotherapist to be available for the targeted audience.

Comments from Digni/NMS:

The evaluation report presents the main achievements and shortfalls of the implemented project and recommendations to be considered in future related programs. The evaluation has shortfalls in reporting on progress towards outcomes as well as an analysis of EAT, (Digni’s Empowerment Assessment Tool). However, the evaluator had a challenging result framework to work with. The interviews conducted (even if they were few), were all positive and the women and the men had all benefited from the interventions on different levels. In the context of Egypt, just the fact to get men involved in such a project is a good result in itself. The evaluator had another challenge in getting interview subjects, this was due to the restrictions from the Government due to the pandemic, in addition that the project itself deals with quite sensitive and still tabu subjects. Recommendations will be followed up according to plan.