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

2. ENGENDERING CHANGE PROGRAM
A five year program ( ) 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

3. 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

4. COMPLEXITY IN THE ENGENDERING CHANGE PROGRAM

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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

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

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

10. STEPS USED FROM OUTCOME MAPPING
MISSION STATEMENTS
OUTCOME CHALLENGES
PROGRESS MARKERS

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

12. 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

13. 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

14. 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

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