planning

Project: Raising Awareness about Women's Social, Political and Economic Rights in Afghanistan
Evaluation Date: April 2014
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The Project Document indicated the intention to conduct activities in 15 of 34 of Afghanistan’s provinces, situated in all four geographic regions of the country. In mounting such an ambitious effort, the grantee reduced the prospects for achieving results through a scattering of activities in locations throughout the country. It is apparent that the grantee failed to appreciate the scale of the risk it was taking on. Beyond this, weak integration of activities by project management, and a failure by the grantee to collaborate closely with its implementing partners, limited both the effectiveness and the impact of the project.

Theme: Women's empowerment
Afghanistan   , ,
Project: Towards a better electoral process in Mongolia
Evaluation Date: November 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Election observer training was done far in advance of the elections; this helped ensure that the CSOs and parties kept a focus on the upcoming electoral process and the need to prepare for their observation effort, especially as 2012 was the first elections where CSO observers were to be allowed. However, this meant that the material was more generic than would have been had otherwise, and that the participating organizations would need to supplement this training later on with the specifics for the 2012 election, such as the new electronic way to count the ballots.

Theme: Community activism
Mongolia   , ,
Project: Towards a better electoral process in Mongolia
Evaluation Date: November 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The grantee prepaid for the activities that it wanted to undertake after the official end of the project. This included the entire public awareness campaign (printing and disseminating posters and handouts, and media spots). This ensured that they had time slots available, as the time for the electoral campaign is very short in Mongolia, and other NGOs and CSOs found out the hard way that all of the available advertising time had already been bought out by the two main political parties when they tried to buy time closer to the elections.

Theme: Community activism
Mongolia   , , ,
Project: Development Pacts: An accountability tool in the hands of local communities in Kyrgyzstan
Evaluation Date: November 2013
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Another reason for the smooth introduction of the new process was the clear and easy-to-use Development Pact (DP) template structure, which comprised of: introduction (topic and monitoring committee purpose agreed upon), definition of the DP priority, description of the issue and how to address it, identification of partners involved (including their inputs) in implementing the DP, clarification of financing (including in-kind contribution), purpose of monitoring, activity plan and deadline for DP completion (including target indicators and schedule for monitoring purposes).

Theme: Community activism
Kyrgyzstan   , ,
Project: Empowering people through citizens’ journalism in Albania
Evaluation Date: October 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Although risks were accurately identified, there was no alternative strategy developed as a fall back, specifically regarding the continued participation of the University of Tirana as an implementing partner and the ability to obtain a broadcast license for a campus station. As these were the basis for the project, the implementation plan needed to be reworked and new partners found well after the project had started. But the campus radio at Elbasan was not used as the hub for the project and project efforts were then split between Tirana and Elbasan and the YouRadio web portal equipment placed in the IRIOM office.

Theme: Media
Albania   , ,