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Project: Helping Teenagers to Transform their Communities in Ukraine
Evaluation Date: September 2020
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Plan early to develop and implement a strategic communication campaign to tell a multi-dimensional transmedia narrative story about their project through multiple channels that are most used by direct beneficiaries and target audiences. Consider hiring an experienced media communication specialist to help with regional and national media coverage efforts beyond simple announcements.

Theme: Youth engagement
Ukraine   audience, beneficiaries, campaign, communication, expertise, implement, media, national, plan, project design, regional, specialist, strategy, target
Project: Enabling Women to Participate in Sustainable Water Management in Armenia
Evaluation Date: November 2021
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Without the team’s emergency management skills that have been developed throughout the decades of work at the national and regional levels as epidemiologists, toxicologists, and water and hygiene experts, as well as the donor’s flexibility, in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the war in Nagorno Karabakh the project would not have reached its objective and improved the daily lives of the target population. While the staff’s professional and results-oriented performance and UNDEF’s flexible approach allowed to not only deliver the intended outputs but also extend the project’s geographical and demographical scopes, it is generally important to consider various internal and external risk factors as part of a risk mitigation and emergency response strategy to ensure the full achievement of the project’s objective.

Theme: Women's empowerment, Interaction with government
Armenia   COVID-19, donor, environment, expertise, national, objective, outputs, pandemic, project management, regional, results, risk, scope, skills, staff, target, war
Project: Promoting the representation of Malagasy Women in Political and Public Affairs
Evaluation Date: February 2015
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The fact that most of the activities were implemented in a centralized fashion in the capital of Madagascar rather than in the target regions meant that information did not cascade beyond the direct beneficiaries. While 78 per cent of voters live in rural areas, there were no real efforts to relay information to communities in order to bring about a change in attitude.

Theme: Women's empowerment
Madagascar   regional, sustainability, urban
Project: Promoting the African Charter on Democracy, Elections, and Governance
Evaluation Date: June 2012
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

A thorough inventory of the websites of six participating national NGOs was disappointing. Only one referred to the project, and then only in a brief summary identifying UNDEF as the funder. More worrisome, none of the websites made reference to the African Charter at all. This suggests that the empowerment that undoubtedly occurred was more an empowerment of individuals than an empowerment of institutions. It also underscores the point that most (not all) African democracy NGOs are focused on national issues.

Theme: Community activism
Burundi, Ghana, Kenya, Liberia, Namibia, Rwanda, Senegal, Sierra Leone, South Africa   democracy, regional
Project: Strengthening women’s empowerment in municipal government
Evaluation Date: October 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The partnership was efficient and complementary. Each partner worked to its strengths and there was considerable capacity building among the partners. The intelligent allocation of roles and responsibilities between partners resulted in greater project efficiency by playing to the strengths of each partner.

Theme: Women's empowerment
Fiji, Kirbati, Papua New Guinea, Samoa, Solomon Islands, Tonga, Tuvalu, Vanuatu   design, partnership, regional
Project: Engaging Civil Society in a Democratic Election Process in Sudan, Bahrain, Tunisia and Jordan
Evaluation Date: March 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The project created tightly networked, mobile elite of regional experts on elections monitoring, trainings, and provision of elections monitoring services. This made elections expertise more accessible in the region. At the individual level, the people who received training were more likely to continue to be engaged in community activism.

Theme: Community activism
Bahrain, Jordan, Tunisia   elections, regional
Project: Strengthening Civil Society Across Borders to Develop Democracy
Evaluation Date: August 2011
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

The strong partnership between a reliable, experienced international NGO and national NGOs from Ukraine and Moldova worked well to leverage results and to enhance the impact of activities. The value added of this civil society project was that these collaborations were focused on concrete solutions to jointly identified problems.

Theme: Tools for knowledge
Moldova, Republic of, Ukraine   collaboration, regional
Project: Engaging civil society and youth in public policy dialogue in North Africa
Evaluation Date: September 2015
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

There was an imbalance in funding between Morocco and Tunisia, and project management was not sufficiently collegial. More than 75% of the project funding was devoted to activities in Morocco, leaving only about 25% for Tunisia. A more balanced approach to funding between the two countries would have been desirable, particularly in view of the needs in Tunisia in the post “Arab Spring” context.

Theme: Youth engagement
Morocco, Tunisia   funding, regional
Project: Human rights training and capacity-building for indigenous people
Evaluation Date: August 2010
Report: [report link]
Lesson Learned:

Impact was also hampered due to the lack of any coordination and collaboration mechanisms between the project activities taking place in Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, and Peru. Useful modes of collaboration could have included peer-to-peer monitoring, and exchange of experience between the four countries. If such a mechanism had been available, lessons learnt could have been distilled and analysed, thus enhancing the project’s impact.

Theme: Rule of law
Guatemala, Mexico, Panama, Peru   design, monitoring, regional

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