International and Cross Cultural Evaluation
Fiona Watta, n/a
Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Specialist
USAID/Uganda, United States
Alphonse Bigirimana, n/a
Sr. Monitoring and Evaluation Advisor
USAID/Africa Bureau, United States
Location: Room 102
Abstract Information: The impact of development assistance depends on the ability of donors, project implementers, and stakeholders to create conditions for sustaining program outcomes over a long period of time. Sustainability is best assessed after a project has ended through ex-post evaluations. Unfortunately, while donors, including USAID, have for a long time recognized the importance of sustainability, they have not sufficiently invested in ex-post evaluations or other approaches for assessing the sustainability of program outcomes. This is in part because evaluations are most of the time tied to project funding and once a project ends, there are no funds to conduct ex-post evaluations unless other funds have been set aside to conduct such evaluations. There are ongoing efforts at USAID to invest in more ex-post evaluations to understand whether its programs have been sustained and the conditions under which they have been sustained in order to improve the sustainability of future programs. The proposed abstract features a panel presentation that will discuss powerful stories of sustainability and resilience distilled through findings from two USAID-funded ex-post evaluations. The presentation will describe the contrasting stories of success before project closure and mixed stories of success and struggles of program beneficiaries as they try to address and cope with multiple chocs and challenges without USAID assistance. The presentation will also recount beneficiaries’ stories about why program outcomes have not been sustained and what needs to be done to improve the sustainability of future programs.
Relevance Statement: Development projects often operate in very complex and challenging environments but most of them manage to produce valuable benefits for the individuals, communities, and institutions they are designed to serve. These benefits often dissipate after donor funding ends unless key conditions are in place to ensure the sustainability of those benefits over time. USAID defines sustainability as “the ability of a local system, network, or institutions to produce desired outcomes over time. Programs contribute to sustainability when they strengthen the ability to produce valued results and to be both resilient and adaptive in the face of changing circumstances.”
The proposed panel presentation will provide a general picture of recently completed USAID projects that underwent ex-post evaluations with particular focus on USAID/Uganda Sustainable, Comprehensive Responses For Orphans and Vulnerable Children and their Families (SCORE) Project and USAID/Mali Youth Out-of-School Project. These projects were highly “successful” according to the final project implementation and evaluation reports. The remarkable achievements of these projects and particularly the stories of project beneficiaries recounting how the projects changed their lives fueled a great interest from USAID/Africa Bureau and USAID Missions to examine the extent to which project outcomes had been sustained and the factors that facilitated or inhibited the sustainability of these outcomes. Through ex-post evaluations, evaluators looked back, resurfacing the beneficiary status before the end of the projects, and collecting and hearing their voices regarding their current conditions, struggles, and hopes for the future. Sustainability factors were also examined in that process. This presentation will share the data and particularly the powerful stories of success and struggles gathered through these ex-post evaluations. Looking forward and using those stories, we will suggest recommendations for improving the design of future projects with the aim of making development assistance more locally-led and locally sustained over time.
This abstract is relevant and important to the field of evaluation in many ways: a) The findings from the ex-post evaluations add to the critically needed evidence on sustainability of project interventions in order to design projects that are sustainable, b) Since ex-post evaluations occur many years after projects have ended, they present methodological challenges which will be described during the presentation along with suggestions for improving the design and implementation of future ex-post evaluations; c) ex-post sustainability assessments are the only means of checking on past program beneficiaries and showing them that those who supported them still care. It’s also a good way to promote sustained locally led development in a meaningful and respective way while maximizing the long-term impact of development aid. We expect the proposed presentation to raise greater awareness of the importance of ex-post evaluations and generate more interest in conducting ex-post evaluations. We also hope lessons and recommendations distilled through the two ex-post evaluation cases will be used to improve the sustainability of future programs and to better monitor and evaluate sustainability during and post project implementation.
Presenter: Fiona Watta, n/a – USAID/Uganda
Presenter: Alphonse Bigirimana, n/a – USAID/Africa Bureau