Afghanistan

The institutional impact of the project at district or provincial level in Afghanistan is difficult to judge, but unlikely to be significant. However, at community level, it may well be that the enhancement of organizational/managerial and advocacy skills will have made a difference to the energy and effectiveness of governance processes. The experience of participating together in the workshops may also have resulted in new possibilities for cooperation across stakeholder groups.

A minority of as many as 25-30 per cent of the beneficiaries in the project in Afghanistan, were thought by project managers to be friends or relatives of those who nominated them, and had little interest in proceedings, being motivated by the travel expenses and food provided.

The provincial/district forums in Afghanistan at the close of the project did not build effectively on the training, and, in any case, most trainees did not take part. The weakness of many training projects is the failure to reinforce through practice what is learned in courses and workshops, thus increasing the likelihood that what has been learned will be retained and applied.

Other risks identified related to the attitude of local leaders, who might object to the focus of training on gender issues, and limited cooperation on the part of Afghan government at provincial and district level. Strong and effective preparatory work by the project and thorough advance consultations enabled the grantee to overcome these potential problems. It might be noted that early consultations included a meeting with other international non-governmental organizations and donor agencies active in the region, to allow the grantee to brief its peers on the project and its contents, and to avoid duplication. This also reduced the risk to project effectiveness and impact.

Failure to translate learning materials form Dari to Pashto, and recruit a cadre of trainers capable of operating in the Pashto language in Afghanistan.

While the project may have helped to encourage informal linkages across the three sets of stakeholders listed, there is little evidence of “enhanced mechanisms” or the ability of the project to “enable synergies”. Further, the activities designed to bring the stakeholders together after training was completed, the forums, seemed to add no significant value to the project, although, as suggested in the Final Report, they may have helped to build connections, and to bring new initiatives proposed at community and district levels to the attention of government officials in Afghanistan.

The local background of the project’s trainers, and their understanding of traditional Afghan customs and perspectives, appears to have been a great asset in their approach to working with members of local communities.

The needs of female trainees would have been better-served had ACTED proved able to recruit at least a few female trainers in Afghanistan ; none was hired.

Limited evidence obtained from baseline research compromised the general objective of the project. This meant that the project design showed a poor understanding of the broad project context and political landscape which led to missed learning opportunities, and failure to map stakeholders and to allocate resources optimally. Duplication of efforts of other actors in Afghanistan wasted the grantee’s opportunity to complement other media democracy effects.

Staff departures once the project in Afghanistan ended drained away some of the capacity developed through the project cycle. Mistakes or gaps were not corrected in the review step and gave evidence of poor organizational arrangements. Research materials of low quality were approved and therefore shaped all shows and debates, leading to suboptimal performance by moderators and participants, which reduced the efficiency and impact of the democratic debates in Afghanistan. The grantee had no internal control or assessment mechanisms to measure progress or impact on desired social change. Although the project used emails and phone calls from the audience, including suggestions for show material, these were not analyzed or incorporated into review of the program's effectiveness with respect to organizational or project objectives.