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4.1.1 Project end line monitoring to assess achievement of project
4.1.2 Community Self-evaluation
4.1.3 Project Process Evaluation
HELPFUL TOOLS AND RESOURCES
4.1.1 Project end line monitoring to assess achievement of project
An overview of the exit and evaluation phase supported by the steps that follow are outlined in Figure 44 below:
Figure 44: Overview of Process for Assessing Whether to Exit Project
To help inform determination of whether to exit and withdraw support, final end-line monitoring of indicators in accordance with the monitoring plan is an essential first step. It is also important to assess where the community are in terms of the stages of change and facilitate whether they feel they can maintain the behavioural changes to sustain their animal welfare improvements. It is also useful for you as the facilitator to listen for change talk, and assess their progression, or the progression of others they sought to influence (e.g. animal health service providers), into the maintenance phase for the behaviours they sought to promote.
Once collected, analyse data, and compare end line results with results from the baseline assessment to determine the extent to which project objectives were achieved and preconditions for adopting and maintaining the desired behaviours have been addressed (e.g. barriers and motivators to desired behaviours). Identify successes as well as underperforming outcomes, for further follow-up discussion, reflection and learning with communities. Providing opportunities for such collective reflection and experience sharing can be powerful tools for learning and change, help inform adaptive management, and can foster motivation and a sense of self-efficacy and ownership of change amongst the community.
In addition, it is helpful to share the lessons learned more widely. They may be shared with the whole community to which the animal owners’ group belongs, and through workshops where different CBOs or communities come together from across a wider geographic area. This can generate motivation amongst others to support or take part in similar activities and helps to increase the reach and effectiveness of your programme.
4.1.2 Community Self-evaluation
The purpose of this step is to assess the longer-term impact of the group’s efforts to improve the welfare of their animals, to enable community group members to understand the positive changing trends in animal welfare and reflect on any issues that might need further action and identify potential needs for external support. Your job is to determine whether the group can stand on its own feet before the project withdraws support and exits.
For this step you will need to gather community members together to perform end-line monitoring to review the effectiveness of their community action plan and decide future objectives. You will need to plan this meeting in advance because it will take longer than a regular group meeting. Some groups decide to hold a two-day meeting, whereas others plan to spend two hours every day for three to four days on the self-evaluation process. It is very useful to involve local stakeholders and service providers identified during the initiation and planning phases. Their involvement will help to strengthen the community action plan by encouraging them to continue working closely with the group on improving service provision for animals.
During these discussions, two main areas will be evaluated:
1. Success and failures of the community action plan
Facilitate the group to look together at their activities to investigate how well they were carried out and whether they led to the desired change in the welfare issue and refer to any monitoring results collected from their Animal Welfare transect Walks and results available from the project’s monitoring. The group analyses which actions have been most effective and which less effective and the reasons why. This helps participants to learn, to change their interventions if necessary and to plan for continuing action.
Start by asking the group to remember what happened right at the beginning when their interventions started. Conduct a Before and Now Analysis (T11b) and/or compile a Historical timeline (T7) of the events and challenges that occurred throughout the period since they began to work together. If changes in the quality of animal health service providers was an aim of the group, reviewing any recent results from the Community Score Card (T35) activity, or conducting the activity anew to evaluate changes from initial results can be helpful. Such activities will set the climate for in-depth discussion. During this part of the analysis, it is also useful to discuss the achievements and difficulties faced while working together as a group, with reasons for these, and how any difficulties were overcome.
2. Evaluating sustainability
Once the community action plan and resultant changes in animal welfare and related impacts have been evaluated, it is important to evaluate whether improvements in animal welfare can be sustained, both in terms of the group’s functioning and members’ maintenance of new behaviours.
Facilitate the community group to reflect on whether their plan has achieved the desired results and agree on any areas that may still require continued action and/or support. If the community finds that at least most of them can sustain their changes in behaviour without any support (are at the at maintenance stage of change) and, if possible, that performing these new behaviours have become part of their norms/values or habits, then it can be said that these changes have become sustainable.
In addition, conduct or revisit results from the Group sustainability mapping (T27), along with the Group Governance Self-Assessment (T31), and Group Inter-loaning Analysis (T14), for CBOs with savings and loaning function, as appropriate. Review results with the CBO and support them to self-evaluate the sustainable functioning of the group and/or association if this has been feasible to organize in terms of the extent to which the necessary elements are in place to enable them to maintain their results and continue functioning without support from the project.
4.1.3 Project Process Evaluation
In addition to end line monitoring, it is recommended the project conduct an evaluation of the project using internal or external evaluators, with preference for using impartial third-party evaluators whenever feasible. These process evaluations are particularly essential if desired changes in animal welfare were not achieved as it will enable you to assess opportunities for the project to improve its implementation strategy or processes to improve outcomes, as well as help inform the determination of whether to continue the project using a different strategy. Evaluations should seek to assess the following in consultation with relevant stakeholders:
- The appropriateness and effectiveness of the processes employed to:
- improve and sustain animal welfare and the adoption of desired behaviour change,
- promote participatory engagement and empowerment of communities, and
- promote gender equality and safeguarding of vulnerable groups. - Stakeholder satisfaction with the project:
- assess stakeholder perceptions related to the benefits and value of the plan both in terms of animals and people,
- satisfaction with the project/implementing organization
- recommendations for improvement
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
PLA Tools
Historical timeline (T7)
Before and now analysis (T11b)
Community Score Card (T35)
Group sustainability mapping (T27)
Group Governance Self-Assessment (T31)
Group Inter-loaning Analysis (T14)
