Women and Girls' Education in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States, 2018-19 to 2022-23 – Evaluation Summary

About the evaluation

抖淫视频’s (GAC) Evaluation Division conducted an evaluation of Women and Girls' Education in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States (FCAS) for the period 2018-19 to 2022-23. The evaluation examined the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and the results of the department's approach to gender-responsive education programming in FCAS. The evaluation also identified lessons learned for designing and implementing effective education programming in these contexts.

Key findings

• The Initiative aligned with international consensus on the importance of inclusive, equitable and quality education for women and girls’ empowerment and economic equality, especially in FCAS. However, the Initiative's timelines were insufficient to design an approach tailored to FCAS.
• While best practices and accepted principles for education in crisis contexts were integrated, due to a lack of departmental standards and guidance for partners, GAC could not ensure their consistent application across projects. As a result, not all projects were responsive to the FCAS context.
• The Initiative increased access to education by addressing barriers faced by women and girls, led to improvements in the quality of education and resulted in positive social outcomes beyond expected project outcomes. Partners applied creative and innovative approaches to education which enabled participants to learn in disruptive and sometimes traumatizing environments.
• The response to the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the importance of flexibility in funding and reporting mechanisms and the benefits of innovative and adaptive interventions when operating in crisis contexts.
• Despite a history of delivering successful programming in FCAS contexts, GAC did not apply previous lessons learned on the need for flexibility in funding mechanisms in complex environments.
• A lack of accountability for performance measurement and reporting throughout the Initiative's implementation prevented GAC from understanding and communicating the Charlevoix results story and limited its capacity to make evidence-informed decisions on future programming.

Recommendations

1. Ensure GAC project leads and implementing partners working on education programming in FCAS are knowledgeable about: conflict-sensitive design, Triple nexus considerations, disaster risk reduction practices in climate change-affected regions, and Gender-Based Analysis Plus.
2. Review and establish standard performance indicators for ongoing and future education programming (including in FCAS) that all partners must report on to facilitate calculation and reporting of total programming results.
3. Coordinate updating the Authorized Programming Process (APP) to include guidance from relevant internal policy teams on launching programming in FCAS contexts. This process should focus on simplicity and speed, providing tools and support that reflect the needs of users, including implementing partners.
4. In preparation for the launch of new initiatives, review and propose options to ensure robust accountability mechanisms for performance measurement are integrated to support results reporting at the initiative level throughout its lifecycle.
5. Support projects in FCAS to remain relevant by streamlining project approval processes and building flexibility in funding agreements to respond to unexpected crises.