Ivory Coast 10741 HFA midterm evaluation 2015

Background

Norwegian Lutheran Mission has been present in Côte d'Ivoire since 1984, with a particular focus on the Mahou people. A development project was implemented in the period of 2006-2011, concentrating on adult literacy and HIV/AIDS reduction.

These issues remained major challenges, and resulted in the Norad supported project Hope for All (2013-2017) in 10 precarious neighbourhoods in the communes of Yopougon, Attécoubé and Abobo.

The project aims to contribute towards heightened awareness of HIV/AIDS with a following halt and reverse of the disease; enabling children out of the school system to complete primary school; and to increase literacy levels, particularly for women.

Purpose/objective

After two years of intervention, a mid-term evaluation was initiated in order to assess the project’s progress, identify barriers and corrective measures to achieve expected results.

Methodology

Data was collected from various stakeholders involved, such as beneficiaries, instructors and community leaders, members of community development committees, and the project team.

External stakeholders were also involved, including education authorities, health authorities, leaders of partnering NGOs, and community voluntary testing agents.

The selection of survey participants was based on the sampling technique in which the principle is to start from the familiar ground of the project team to construct a reasoned qualitative sampling covering, by component, the diversity of situations generated by the project.

The project team was asked to classify areas of intervention by component between two categories: the sites where they believe the project can be considered (i) as a success; (ii) as having mixed results or failed.

Key findings

The project aims at empowering communities to improve their living conditions. The evaluation found that the project is on track for all its components. If the project continues on this momentum, it will inevitably contribute to significantly reduce the spread of HIV/AIDS.

This will, however, require an increased number of awareness and educational talks during the remaining period. A total of 50% of the literacy students already passed the second level. The skills acquired and additional knowledge within law and other areas will empower the beneficiaries in their daily lives.

The speed school component originally expected to reintegrate 42% (29 out of 68) of the children into the formal system after completing speed school, which has not yet been reached. Despite preliminary success and progress already achieved, efforts are still required to achieve the goals of the remaining period.

Recommendations

To state structures:

• Ensure a secure environment throughout the territory, particularly in disadvantaged neighbourhoods.

To the project team:

• Re-energize the Community Development Committees that do not work properly through awareness and capacity building
• Strengthen monitoring and evaluation system by defining clear indicators for each components, sources of verification and frequency of information indicators should also be clarified.
• Establish a manual and data quality assurance tools to ensure that the project has consistent, accurate, and reliable and complete information.
• The evaluation found that the project is important but the gains are threatened by widespread volunteering crisis recognized in many other projects in Côte d'Ivoire and elsewhere in Africa. A systematic reflection is recommended and to delay as much as possible a process of bargaining of services. A remedy could be symbolic recognition mechanisms. Example: mediatized graduation, certification of skills, competition between development committees, etc.
• Increase supervision of missions to ensure the quality of results of the various activities
• Rapidly expanding the activities of bridging speed-school to all project sites.
• Adapt the identification and recruitment strategy of learners in Literacy to increase the enrolment rate that is very low (36%)
• Endorse partnerships with governmental structures involved in the project through a signed agreement.

To Community Development Committees:

• Advocate towards local officials to facilitate the establishment of declaratory judgments of speed-school children in need.
• Advocate towards the educational authorities for the acquisition of facilities in public schools.

Comments from the organisation, if any:

The evaluation allowed the project to confirm that it is moving in the right direction, and it uncovered areas to be improved to achieve the final objectives. The project team was not entirely satisfied with all aspects of the evaluation.

The terms of reference was not answered as requested. The evaluators also lacked competence within gender equality issues. Finally, the project team believes that some conclusions have been made based on poor statistical evidence, and that individual people's statements have been used in the report in a generalizing manner.