Monitoring and Evaluation; East Africa Cup 2014

Background: East Africa Cup (EAC) was established in 2004. Since then over 20000 youth from the whole region have participated in the annual event and hopefully become inspired to believe in themselves, to believe that they can make a difference with regard to their own community development. EAC has a good overview and evaluation system of the event itself. However, as the EAC is a networking event it does not have the capacity/opportunity to monitor/evaluate the impact throughout the year in the respective home communities of the inspiration/competence youth and organizations receive at the EAC – this is encapsulated in the slogan “one week in Moshi, but the whole year in the community”!  This evaluation marks a first step in a pilot in which the EAC is trying to acquire more insight into the actual impact of the EAC in the various participating communities.

Purpose/objective:  The M/E marks the first step in developing a comprehensive M/E program embracing all participating organizations to the EAC. The objective is to acquire a fuller understanding of the impact of the EAC on the participating youth/organizations within the framework of the EAC objective of inspiring youth to believe that they can make a difference.

Methodology:  The method of Most Significant Change was chosen. The reason for choosing this methodology is based on a number of factors. First, because the EAC has a number of aims ranging from health promotion, challenging gender discrimination, leadership development and peace building. For this reason it is important to choose a non‐prescriptive method to analyse which participants' aims are being met, and in which areas the most significant change is occurring.

Key findings: 1.EAC has created a deep sense and understanding of commonality. EAC has assisted to build bridges between the many nations and groups within East Africa participating at the EAC. Additional  stories  mentioned  are  changes  in  the  perception  of  people  with  HIV,  disabilities, and  of  dialogues between Islamic and Christian communities. 2.The  practical  training (e.g. refereeing,  coaching, first  aid) has been found relevant for the participants. Some of the processes (e.g. the EACCES) have given coaches renewed tools to use sports as a development tool. 3. Child safeguarding (CSG),  Stories  suggested  the  CSG  training  created  wide scale  change  for  coaches,  who  now  put  the  welfare  of  the  child  first.  This  domain  was  the  most  difficult  for  those  questioned  to  understand,  with  a  sizeable  number  of  stories  unrelated  to  the  question  posed  by  interviewers,  and  therefore  not  included  within  the  report.    4. On negative change,  the  first  of  these  is  the  potential  of  the  cup  to  encourage urbanization  by  taking  participants  from  their  rural  communities  to  meet  others,  with  this  eye--‐opener  having  the  potential  negative  side  effect  of  producing  a  desire  to  move  to  urban  Africa  and  Europe.  The  second  is  the  continued   practice  of  age  cheating  within  the  sports  competitions,  and  its  potential  to  reinforce  negative  stereotypes  of  the  other.  

Recommendations:

1. Create more spaces and opportunities for perception changes of others.
2. Based on the success of the leadership training, an upscaling of the training of leadership should be encouraged – which is of course contingent upon funding being available.
3. Continue to focus strongly on the child safe guarding element.
4. Introduce a thematic sector on challenges for youth within the frame of urbanization.

Comments from the organisation, if any: 

1. EAC will continue to develop bridges between communities and groups. EAC will also continue to focus thematic sectors that reflect the many challenges youth meet in their daily lives and their daily efforts to contribute to their own community development.
2. The guiding framework (EACCES) for using sports as a development tool for coaches was launched regionally in October 2014. The framework was developed together with many national sport councils in the region, promoting the use of sports as a regional development tool.
3. Child Safe guarding policies and their implementation is now a precondition participation in the EAC.
4. The EAC is exploring thematic sectors which will serve to counter urbanization trends. One notable recent sector being explored is the sector of agriculture. Together with Yara and Shujazz/Well told Story the EAC will develop a thematic sector which amongst other will use cartoons/animation as a tool to promote a sense of agriculture being more attractive and “cool” for youth. In addition UN Habitat is now introducing a thematic sector focussing challenges for youth in urban areas.