Tuinuane: Internal Evaluation

Background:
Tuinuane is a Kiswahili word meaning “uplifting each other”. The Tuinuane Women project started in 2005 and had an evaluation in 2008.  Based on the evaluation Tuinuane was redesigned and a new project document was worked out. The project is now in its second project phase; 2010-2014, and the project goal is to improve poor women’s ability to be self-sustainable.

Tuinuane is implemented by the Free Pentecostal Fellowship in Kenya (FPFK) and financed by the Norwegian Pentecostal Mission (PYM). The primary target population for Tuinuane is female community members living in and around one of the 1200 communities across Kenya where there are FPFK congregations.

According to the project document, Tuinuane is to carry out an internal evaluation during the project period (2010 – 2014) in order to fine-tune the project’s design to assure best possible project results. Roy Mersland has been involved in Tuinuane since its beginning and he has facilitated this internal evaluation and written this report.

Purpose/objective:
The mid-term evaluation should focus on projects achievements and give recommendations and strategies for the way forward. Main focus should be on the new decentralized system with field agents (FA), new simplified accounting system and the new MIS.

Methodology:
• Document study (Project Document, Baseline study, Annual report 2010, Annual plan 2011, Half year report 2011.
• Visit TWP groups
• Interview beneficiaries (Tuinuane groups)
• Visit Tuinuane groups
• Meet and discuss with
• Project staff
• Project steering committee
• FPFK National board
• Field agents.
• PYM’s representative
 
During a 10 days study visit to Kenya around 30 groups were visited and three focus groups with field agents were organized. Mersland also had long interviews with the project’s steering committee and with the executive board of the FPFK. Most important were long hours with the project’s staff and especially with the project’s leaders Grace Auma and Rodah Mutave. Generally the evaluation consisted of Mersland asking questions and the staff (and the field agents and group members) providing answers. More or less all recommendations provided in this report are thus coming from the staff themselves. They are the ones knowing the project in depth, and Mersland has only served as a facilitator to get out their good ideas.

Key findings and recommendations:
The evaluation has given an optimistic view of Tuinuane’s impact. Tuinuane’s system works and members enjoy participating. They attend meetings, they don’t drop out from groups, they re-initiate the groups after share-out, they receive loans and they save. The most important indicator is that the members increase their savings over time indicating that they trust the system installed. 

The largest challenge the project is facing is the growth. The main focus should therefore be on assuring rapid and strong growth, by all stakeholders.

The new decentralized system works well, but still more field agents need to be mobilized; church-members and non-church members. The staff should finish reaching out to new regions in 2012 so that they thereafter can fully concentrate on mobilizing and following up field agents from 2013, who can start new groups. This is the only way the project can reach its potential.

The FA should be top experts in the Tuinuane system, and need to be trained in a manner that makes them fit for this position. They should also have follow-up training to celebrate results and motivate for further mobilization. The FAs need some more incentives for the work they do. A higher level of incentives should make it motivating to actively mobilize new groups and follow-up old groups.

The new accounting system seems to work well, and members claim that’s part of the reason why they trust Tuinuane. The evaluator and the staff found ways to further simplify the system.

The monitoring system Tuinuane has used since the Allan evaluation in 2008 have several limitations. It offers very little flexibility and its design makes it difficult to understand for persons not familiar to Excel systems. It has a challenge to monitor groups over time and it does not allow for tracking several project specific indicators. Therefore the evaluator and the staff developed a hopefully improved monitoring system.

Comments from the organisation:
The project leaders had a very positive experience with the evaluation, and found it to be highly participatory and fruitful. Many of the recommendations have been implemented and shaped the activities for 2012 and plans for 2013.