Sector evaluation of climate projects within the framework of the BMZ Special Initiative on Climate of the Hanns Seidel Foundation e.V. 2019
The Hanns Seidel Foundation (HSS) has been receiving funds from the BMZ Special Initiative on Climate since 2011 and has carried out project activities in the fields of climate, environment and energy in numerous countries since then. The measures in this area are intended to make a contribution to environmental protection and nature conservation as a whole, to combating and adapting to climate change, to sustainable energy supply and resource efficiency, and to sustainable and environmentally conscious agriculture and forestry. A basic strategy was developed from the context of Hanns Seidel Foundation’s current work abroad in the fields of climate, environment and energy and its attempts to find solutions to these topics at an international level. This strategy was evaluated by CEval GmbH using three projects in India, Bolivia and Namibia as examples.
From a methodological point of view, the evaluation included a theory-based part, which consisted of the reconstruction of the Theories of Change (ToC) of the three projects. In addition, the three selected projects were evaluated at project level, for which field phases in all three countries and interviews with partners and target groups have been conducted. In addition, the evaluation included a synthesis part which referred to the climate strategy of the Hanns Seidel Foundation in general and in which the results of the evaluations of the three projects were bundled and supplemented with information from the headquarters of the HSS in Munich.
Rapid Appraisal of two Moringa Investments
Moringa SCA SICAR is a private equity fund that has been established as a response to growing interest of the Financial and the Development sector on investments that provide for a financial, environmental and a social return at the same time. Moringa focuses on investments in agroforestry in African and Latin American Developing and Least Developed Countries. It applies agroforestry land use systems on a commercial basis with a nucleus commercial investment approach that integrates large numbers of neighboring smallholder farmers and processors into its business model through contractual arrangements. The Agroforestry Technical Assistance Facility (ATAF) was created by Moringa Partnership to provide technical assistance in relation to investments of the Fund with the goal to amplify and upscale positive environmental and social impacts triggered through Moringa investments.
CEval GmbH has conducted Baseline Rapid Appraisals for two Moringa Investments, focused specifically on the livelihood situation of the farmers and other relevant target groups, such as factory workers. Methodologically, the Rapid Appraisals followed a mixed-methods approach, which included a small survey with farmers for each Rapid Appraisal, as well as interviews with the relevant stakeholders. Rapid Appraisals were conducted for Moringa investments in Benin and Togo.
Evaluation of two school rehabilitationprojects in Nepal
During the two massive earthquakes in Nepal in 2015, several thousand schools got destroyed. Together with the consortium partners Helvetas and Swiss Red Cross, Caritas Switzerland built and rehabilitated 36 schools in the hard to reach district of Sindhupalchok. The Project encompassed trainings regarding disaster risk reduction, operation and maintainance, WASH (water, sanitation, hygiene) and social interaction with drop out students.
The final evaluation was based on three of the Core Humanitarian Standards (appropriateness and relevance, effectiveness and timeliness, preparedness and resilience) in order to draw lessons-learnt and give recommendations for further humanitarian outreaches.
The evaluation utilized different methods: next to interviews with the leadership of the project, representatives of national authorities, team members, head of schools and mayors; Focus Group Discussions gave voice to school management committees and teachers. A comprehensive survey among hundreds of students, parents and teachers enabled a in-depth quantitative analysis.
Central project evaluation of the project Competitive African Cashew Value Chains for Pro-Poor Growth
The cashew value chain offers African producing countries interesting opportunities to create jobs, increase business and economic income and improve food security. Up to the time of the evaluation, however, the potential had hardly been exploited. At 300 to 550 kilograms of raw nuts per hectare, the yields of African producers were far below the yields in India and Vietnam and the processing capacities and labor productivity of the farms were still too low, which meant that only a small proportion of the raw nuts were processed in the African producing countries. The “Competitive African Cashew Value Chains for Pro-Poor Growth” project of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für internationale Zusammenarbeit GmbH supported the expansion and intensification of the cashew value chain in the six countries Benin, Burkina Faso, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mozambique and Sierra Leone.
The project was based on four levels of action: (i) improving the supply of high-performance seeds/seedlings through research and educating producers through training and consulting, (ii) advising processors of cashew nuts and by-products to improve process efficiency, (iii) intensifying business relations and exchange between all participants in the value chain, and (iv) promoting national and regional framework conditions by advising the relevant ministries and intensifying regional exchange between all actors.
CEval GmbH was commissioned by GIZ with the central project evaluation. The evaluation was aligned with the OECD DAC criteria and thus examined the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability and coherence of project implementation. Methodologically, the evaluation was based on the available quantitative secondary data of the project and expanded on this by conducting guided interviews and focus group discussions with project managers, stakeholders and target group representatives. Due to the corona pandemic prevailing at the time of the evaluation, the project was implemented as a remote evaluation. The evaluators from CEval GmbH worked together with local consultants in the African countries, who carried out the data collection in the field.
Scientific advice to the GIZ Evaluation Unit on the development of aggregated impact indicators.
The Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) GmbH contributes in many ways to solving regional and global problems. These include mitigating the effects of climate change, fighting poverty and hunger, or creating equal access to education and employment for men and women. To record the contributions made by its projects, GIZ has a number of instruments and procedures for impact measurement and evaluation. However, these tools and procedures are mainly geared toward reporting to the BMZ and generating evidence to improve individual interventions (PEVs) or to further develop the strategic direction of GIZ in the respective sector (USEs). At the level of the overall organization, however, there had been a lack of comparable approaches for presenting the contributions of GIZ as a whole, e.g. to the public or parliament (esp. EEZs).
In order to make GIZ capable of providing information at this level as well in the future, the Monitoring and Evaluation Unit initiated a process in 2014 to develop aggregated indicators that allow statements to be made about the joint contribution of as many projects as possible in the various sectors in which GIZ is active.
Ex-post assessment of the Strategic Fairtrade Funding Programme (SFFP), Phase II (2010-2013)
One of the key objectives of the Swiss Department on Trade Promotion is to support fair trading conditions with developing countries to which private labels and standards substantially contribute. Accordingly, as part of a donor consortium, the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO) contributed to the Strategic Fairtrade Funding Programme (SFFP) in Phase I from 2008 to 2009 and Phase II from 2010 to 2013. Main purpose of the harmonized funding was to enable disadvantaged producers to establish stronger linkages to consumers, to gain improved market access and to be empowered for combating poverty.
In 2014/2015 an evaluation was already carried out which examined Phase II of the funding programme. Further research on Fairtrade conducted include, among others, a follow-up impact study at the producer-level, covering six product and context settings, implemented by the Center for Evaluation (CEval GmbH) in 2017/2018. Four years after the SFFP ended, it was now of interest for SECO to assess the level of achievement of the strategic indicators set in the Logical Framework of the SFFP as well as SECOs contribution to the same.
The objective of the ex-post assessment was hence threefold: (i) to valorize existing information on the effectiveness and impact of SECOs support to the Fairtrade system, (ii) to complement findings from previous studies with new data on relevance and sustainability of the program and (iii) to distill key findings, recommendations and lessons learnt in view of the SECOs future engagement in Fairtrade. To this end, CEval examined relevant secondary data and collected additional primary data from stakeholders at FT headquarters, three FT regional networks and FT USA.
Results oriented monitoring of the technical cooperation measure COPLAN II and evaluation of the measure’s contribution towards a better alignment of development cooperation and foreign trade facilitation on a systemic level
Climate Change and the uninterrupted decline of fossil fuels affect different regions of the world in different ways. Many nations have thus formulated ambitious goals: Mexico for instance is determined to cover one third of its energy production by means of renewable energies by 2024. Despite such ambitions however environmental conservation has not been marked by major success to this date. This is partly due to a lack of dispersion of modern environmental technology. Against this background the GIZ Project Cooperation Platform Latin America North II (COPLAN II) scrutinizes central deficits that hinder international investment and cooperation such as a lack of professional expertise regarding modern environmental technology in small and medium enterprises (SMEs).
Within the scope of the present assignment CEval together with iSPO Institute supported COPLAN II in its monitoring and evaluation efforts. Starting point for any results oriented monitoring was typically an impact model with respective indicators and assumptions. Changes within the mechanisms of cooperation are however rarely or marginally observed under the monitoring component. This development of cooperation systems or the suitability of the relevant funding instruments are also examined as part of the evaluation component.
All in all, next to monitoring tasks and the compilation of results of individual measures the assignment at hand intended to also generate insights into COPLAN IIs contribution towards a better alignment of development cooperation and foreign trade facilitation as well as public-private sector cooperation on a systemic level.
Meta-Evaluation of ADA Project and Programme Evaluations 2016-2018
Subject of the meta-evaluation were ADA evaluations of development cooperation projects and programmes implemented between 2016 and 2018. The objective was to assess the quality and usefulness of ADAs (internal and external) evaluations and to deliver recommendations on how to improve the ADA evaluation tool for the design and implementation of future evaluations.
A document analysis of the evaluation reports was at the heart of the meta-evaluation. Based on a detailed analysis protocol the quality of said reports was assessed. The use of such a protocol, which covered all relevant analysis dimensions, indicators and rating scales, guaranteed the transparency and reliability of the meta-evaluation results. In order to evaluate the usefulness for and use of the evaluations under study, their target audience (e.g. programme managers) were interviewed via guided individual and group interviews and in order to achieve the greatest possible representativeness of the results a semi-standardized online survey.
Meta-evaluation and synthesis of Christoffel Blindenmission evaluation reports
On behalf of the Christoffel Blindenmission (CBM), CEval conducted an evaluation and synthesis of 24 evaluation reports from 2016 and 2017. With its mandate to transform the lives of disabled people in the worlds poorest countries the project focus of CBM has been an exhaustive collaboration with as well as the promotion of local partners in developing countries and conflict areas.
The primary purpose of the evaluation and synthesis was to conduct a general assessment of the evaluation reports quality and summarize findings of those reports that pass the quality control. In a first step, to ensure homogeneity of data, the quality of reports was assessed systematically by creating a quality control analysis grid. Reports that fulfil minimum quality standards were then subjected to an in-depth analysis based on the evaluation questions of CBM. Main interest of the synthesis was to drew up general learnings along CBMs mandate areas and examine the actual contribution of joint projects to changes for CBM partners and clients. Lastly, by employing an online survey directed to end users of project evaluations, the evaluation inquired the usage and usefulness of the evaluation reports for CBM staff members in seven world regions.
Meta-Evaluation of Plan International evaluation reports
Plan International is working for many years now in Africa, Asia and the Americas to promote child rights and lift children out of poverty. The German National Office of Plan International was founded in 1989, and has been contributing to funding development projects and programs as well as funding and commissioning external evaluations. Plan International Germany decided to implement a meta-evaluation of evaluation reports conducted between 2013 and 2017 covering all geographical working areas.
The primary objectives of the meta-evaluation were to assess the strengths and weaknesses by analyzing the quality of the evaluation reports, to identify the success and risk factors that may affect their quality and to give recommendations. A particular focus was laid upon the influence of the type of evaluation (i.e. by whom it is coordinated and implemented) and the available resources and timeframe.
The meta-evaluation was based on the analysis of the evaluation reports. The document analysis was structured in two phases. While in the first phase (pre-rating) the completeness of the evaluation reports was assessed, in a second phase (in-depth analysis), a more comprehensive set of quality assessment criteria was applied on a sample of reports, to allow for a more detailed assessment of the validity of their findings and usefulness to their addressees. Comprehensive analysis tools were used to analyze the completeness of the reports as well as the validity of findings and the usefulness of evaluation reports.
