Engendering Change Mid-Term Learning Review Laura Haylock Kaia Ambrose October 2012

ENGENDERING CHANGE PROGRAM A five year program (2009-2014) co-funded with CIDA Civil society actors are key agents of change Works with diverse partnership portfolio—36 partners Ultimate outcome: Women will actively advance their rights, improve their status and reduce gender inequality. Explain the diverse partnership, 4 areas (Central America, Cuba, Southern Africa, Horn and East Africa, Pakistan) , women’s orgs, feminist orgs, mixed orgs, membership, coops, networks, NGOs, grass-roots orgs, different periods in their org life cycle, Program originally designed in an RBM framework, based on theory of change

ENGENDERING CHANGE PROGRAM Based on a Theory of Change: Partners can become more effective agents of social change at the beneficiary ‘societal’ level when their internal organizational structures, policies, procedures and programming are also more democratic and gender just

COMPLEXITY IN THE ENGENDERING CHANGE PROGRAM

ENGENDERING CHANGE MONITORING AND EVALUATION SYSTEM Learning system from a feminist lens Utilization focused Developmental evaluation, fluid system that is building on the each of the evaluative steps

MID-TERM LEARNING REVIEW Formative evaluation with partner learning at the centre Review carried out by Kaia Ambrose, Kevin Kelpin and Terry Smutylo with support of Carol Miller and Laura Haylock Oxfam staff (internal-external combination) Document review, three experiential learning workshops Participants from 30 partner organizations. Data collection in the MTLR workshops was centred on significant change stories identified, presented and ‘written up’ by workshop participants. These ‘stories’ were descriptions of events that represented significant changes in the capacity of Oxfam Canada partner organizations to promote women’s rights and gender equity or in the capacity of their partners, stakeholders and/or beneficiaries. The significant change stories and the workshop exercises provided the data for analysis to produce these findings. Consultants plus Oxfam staff worked well together, internal plus external dynamic

Purpose: Guiding Questions: Is our model of Capacity Building effective in the program? If so (not), how and why? What do strong, effective and gender just organizations look like? C. How do stronger, more gender-just organizations do better, more effective programming? Purpose: Produce strong and quality data that will provide sufficient evidence to assess the Engendering Change program; Support and strengthen partners’ ability to identify and monitor changes in organizational capacity on gender equality and women’s rights; Create an action-oriented, participatory monitoring and evaluation space for partners. Strategic moment to reflect on progress and learning to date in the Engendering Change Program Build on the strength of current monitoring techniques to deepen and triangulate our body of evidence within the program Experiment and adapt various participatory, learning-oriented tools and methods (internal process)—no single tool is best, eval guiding questions guide our selection of the methods but part and partial to this was looking for tools that embraced the complexity, focused more on specific behaviour changes, and could meet partners with where they were at in terms of development,--not wanting to force performance measurement frameworks—indicators don’t resonate often but stories do… not a CIDA mandated MTE, experiment with methods, OM and MSC were identified as two methods we wanted to work with based on the guiding questions of the eval, and how we intend to use the info, Meta narrative—a learning system, interrogate our theory of change --deepen our understanding of what gender just orgs look like, some illustrations about partner programming and look at the about the effectiveness CB model and

METHODOLOGICAL SYNTHESIS Theoretical Underpinnings: Utilization Developmental Feminist Methodological Synthesis: Outcome Mapping Most Significant Change Outcome Harvesting

CONCEPTS USED FROM OUTCOME MAPPING CONTRIBUTION OUTCOMES SPHERES OF INFLUENCE BOUNDARY PARNTERS

STEPS USED FROM OUTCOME MAPPING MISSION STATEMENTS OUTCOME CHALLENGES PROGRESS MARKERS

STORIES OF SIGNIFICANT CHANGE Gathered in a workshop journal 94 stories - internal significant change 83 - societal significant change

Current organizational mission linked to Women’s Rights 1 6 Identification of challenges and solutions in organizational capacities 3 Actors and Factors that contributed to change 2 Significant change stories related To our partners‘ beneficiaries 5 Ideal organizational mission (women’s rights ) Transformative Leadership 4 Significant change stories in our partners’ internal organizational capacities Internal Processes and Structures Program Design (advocacy and campaigns) External Relations

USE OF FINDINGS FROM THE REVIEW Integrated use of guiding questions in journals to on-going monitoring of program Partners using certain techniques for their own purposes Adjusted and adapted our model of capacity building and supported tool based on findings Critical enablers as broader indicators for the program Approach to capacity building is flexible, because process is evolving, non-linear, complex, often unpredictable, based on a capacity assessment tool, flexible support, partners prioritize, put forward the hypothesis of the differences working with different organization types—feminist lens to program – meeting partners where they are at. Oxfam sees organizations as dynamic systems that many actors contribute to change

LEARNING FROM THE PROCESS Focus on the Formative Balance between adaptations and comparability Learning-by- doing key in our program Adapting, experimenting and engendering tools Sensitization to new approaches and Evaluative Thinking Learning plus documentation

Report publically available in Spanish and English: http://www. oxfam