Final Evaluation Report - Protective Sphere for Palestinian Children

Background   

As an integral part of its program Save the Children International formed a partnership with Save Youth Future Society and Tamer Institute in order to implement the project “Protective Sphere for Palestinian Children” funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.The project aimed at enhancing psychological and physical protection of children, and empower children to take a child-led advocacy action fulfilling their right to education and participation. It also aimed at improving means of capacity development of educational professionals and community actives to apply positive discipline techniques to promote children protection and participation at schools and within children communities.

By the end of the project, SCI, SYFS and Tamer sought the evaluation services in order to conduct a final evaluation of the project. The purpose of this evaluation is to provide stakeholders with a comprehensive overview on the outcomes achieved in the areas of child protection and participation in schools targeted by the project’s intervention.

Purpose/objective (including evaluation questions)    

General objective Measure outcome in the areas of child protection and participation in schools targeted by the project’s intervention.

Specific objectives

• Assess beneficiaries’ understanding of crucial concepts of protection and participation mitigated by the project’s activities.
• Identify the strengths and weaknesses of the project’s activities.
• Evaluate the partners’ participation at different stages of the project cycle.
• Based upon feedback from stakeholders draw recommendations for the future interventions and the implementing organizations.

Methodology   

A dynamic and flexible participatory approach was adopted with use of diverse methods allowing triangulation or cross-check of the results obtained through different methods. In this way, by use of different information sources, methods and types of data permit an examination from different perspectives which leads to more reliable findings. A mix of both quantitative and qualitative methods has been carefully designed to complement each other.

They were used in order to gain an in-depth insight into the project’s intervention implemented from the point of view of implementing staff, concerned stakeholders, as well as beneficiaries. Surveys, interviews and focus groups methods were used to obtain this result.

Key findings   

The following indicates the main conclusions of the evaluation:

• The project was implemented with high consistency with the missions, strategies and scope of work of all implementing organizations where implementing actors have a very good sense of local ownership of the project’s results.
• Reasonable consideration of gender equality issues and assurance of equal participation of both girls and boys, women and men in the project’s activities.
• Project was well-designed to address existing needs and challenges in education with very good identification of the target groups.
• High effectiveness of the implementation process in achieving project's objective and very reasonable performance in promoting understanding of the project’s central concepts among beneficiaries.
• The level of knowledge and skills, awareness and empowerment among targeted beneficiaries is very likely to continue after the project’s end.

Recommendations   

• It is urgently necessary for the partners to thoroughly investigate the cases of children who are prevented from attending school due to inability to afford the transportation costs between school and home placed in a distant area.
• Continue the innovative approach of using the project’s components such as physical intervention at school as means of practicing child participation. Further development of this approach could be achieved by applying the similar process to other project’s components
• Support initiatives outside the project that are initiated and implemented by beneficiaries themselves as the result of participation in the project’s activities such as training etc.
• The project’s sustainability could exceptionally benefit from providing a clear opportunity for an exchange of experiences between schools targeted by the project.
• It would be advantageous to include more activities aiming at community mobilization and outreach.

Follow up (with reference to Action Plan) 

Replication of activies with scale up including protection with all education activities and targeting additional communities. Specially after latest offensive on Gaza Strip summer 2014. working on comprehensive approach to intergrate health, WASH as well as emergency response interventions.