"Colombia’s history of violence and armed conflict has eroded people’s trust in each other and trust, which ranks low among the components that Colombians consider important for reconciliation, is difficult to restore during the course of a project. Still, the Program of Alliances for Reconcilia
...
tion (PAR) has achieved changes in perception that represent an important component in changing mindset that could eventually extend through the communities where participants live and work. Though implementers recognized positive effects on perceptions of reconciliation among participants, these further effects in communities may only be visible among non-participant indirect beneficiaries. Similarly, though PAR participants overwhelmingly reported positive effects of PAR participation on their behavior and some drivers of reconciliation, examples were limited to their personal thoughts and actions and not those of their communities. Without a baseline for comparison, the degree of shifts in attitudes and behaviors cannot be determined, but indications of changes in attitude paired with reporting of ongoing participation and continued use of skills indicate participants remain changed, at least in the short term, by their participation in PAR activities. DecidoSer workshops and the Ambassadors for Reconciliation initiatives are successful tools that provide the opportunity to identify lessons learned and good practices in the management of community changes beyond individual changes. DecidoSer is valuable not just for participants, but implementers (who are themselves members of communities whose contributions to reconciliation are worthwhile and necessary) as well, and the changes in trust and dialogue that contributed to improved business practices are a positive (and perhaps unexpected) result. Respondents generally saw the conceptual benefits of both DecidoSer and Ambassadors for Reconciliation for sustainability of reconciliation, though without specific evidence for believing this, or enough time to demonstrate it. Contrary to the notion that multi-sectoral relationships within a community might contribute to sustainability, the evaluation team did not find evidence of a correlation between PAR’s activities in a community and long-term engagement with other community actors." (Conclusions, page 28)
more
"One of the more important ventures in the world of media and development over the past decade has been The Guardian newspaper’s ‘Katine’ project in Uganda. The newspaper, with funding from its readers and Barclays Bank, put more than 2.5 million pounds into a Ugandan sub-county over the cours
...
e of 4 years. The project was profiled on a dedicated Guardian microsite, with regular updates in the printed edition of the newspaper. In this article, I look at the relationship that developed between journalists and the non-governmental organisation and show that the experience was both disorienting and reorienting for the development project that was being implemented. The scrutiny of the project that appeared on the microsite disoriented the non-governmental organisation, making its work the subject of public criticism. The particular issues explored by journalists also reoriented what the non-governmental organisation did on the ground. I also point to the ways the relationship grew more settled as the project moved along, suggesting the amount of work that sometimes goes into what is often characterised as the relatively uncritical relationship between journalists and non-governmental organisations." (Abstract)
more
"Overall, one finding stands out: the international community has repeatedly overestimated its own capacity and the capacity of its Afghan partners to bring about rapid social change. What has worked best are modest, locally embedded projects with immediate, tangible benefits. What has rarely worked
...
are complex projects aimed at building capacity and changing behaviour. More specifically, interventions in basic health and education, and in improving basic livelihoods, led to results. Interventions in building capacity for the administration, or in sectors such as the rule of law or gender, rarely worked. In reading these 148 reports, one also realizes that the international aid community is often not good at learning. Monitoring and evaluation systems are weak, and have hardly improved since 2002. Back in the early 2000s, many donors pointed out that, in order to achieve meaningful and sustainable development, more time was necessary. Fifteen years later, few sustainable results have been achieved, but many donors continue to suggest that better results will still require more time. Few donors appear to have changed their fundamental strategic approach, despite the fact that their own evaluations strongly suggest that many aid programs are neither e cient nor e ective in the Afghan context. In all fairness, the Afghan context is an incredibly challenging one, as these 148 reports vividly remind us on almost every page. The situation on the ground was and still is characterized by a lack of basic security; Afghan partners in government and in civil society lack basic capacities; many entrenched political actors have little interest in real reforms. Despite these challenging conditions, there was since the early days of the international engagement in Afghanistan tremendous political pressure on development actors to rush in and to provide quick results. An additional layer of complexity was added by the fact that the international engagement was from the beginning both a civilian and a military intervention, and planners in headquarters as well as practitioners on the ground had to learn how to cope with the task of civil-military cooperation. Under such circumstances, designing e ective aid programs is a herculean task." (Introduction, page 8)
more
"Each section of this guide will explore another dimension of digital security—assets, attackers, risks and likelihood—and address these key questions: What do I want to protect? Who are my attackers? Is my attacker able to succeed? How likely is it that my attacker will succeed? Threat modeling
...
consists of two types of assessments: Firstly, an analysis of the project’s environment (questions one and two). Secondly, an estimation of the likelihood that potential attacks will really happen (questions three and four). To prepare for threat modeling, we have added a “question zero” for project managers: Who are we and what do we do? This helps to establish a clear understanding of the entire project, with all of its workflows and challenges that employees face in their day-to-day work environment. A threat model is the basis for a digital security concept that should be developed along with IT experts so that your concept is both technically sound and practically enforceable. Having a clearly defined list of assets and their vulnerability empowers employees to protect them with appropriate countermeasures, and educates them on risks. This will increase the efficacy of a security concept in practice." (Executive summary)
more
"Engagement of key stakeholder groups in operations financed by the Asian Development Bank (ADB) promotes good governance, transparency, innovation, responsiveness, and development effectiveness. Effective engagement of stakeholder groups, including civil society, project beneficiaries, and project-
...
affected people, requires the understanding and effective use of participatory tools throughout the project cycle. However, while one participatory tool may work well in one context, it may not be appropriate in another. This series of explainers provides a range of tools from which practitioners can pick and choose, according to different phases of the ADB project cycle, context, and available time/resources. Some tools may be specific to particular phases in the ADB project cycle, such as monitoring and evaluation tools, while others may be used throughout the project cycle, such as participatory assessment tools." (Stakeholder analysis, page 16)
more
"Overall, the program set out what it achieved to do—namely to strengthen the institutional capacity of civil society organizations to improve their credibility, visibility, effectiveness and sustainability. There is evidence that many partner CSOshave refined theirmission, developed a multi-year
...
strategic plan, a communications plan, a gender policy and an HR policy. In addition, they are beginning to integrate new financial reporting and M&E structures. All of the partner CSOs have improved their sustainability byreceiving additional funds to continue their work, and many of them hav developed strategies to diversify their revenue generation, such as expanding their offices to rent out board rooms. A number of organizations are eager to pass their new knowledge onto others, with many training peer CSOs on what they learned through the Search program. Finally, the program was effective in improving their own confidence, with all of the partner CSOs expressing their appreciation of the program, and in particular the freedom they had to define their own priorities and objectives.A number of lessons emerged during the course of implementation that are relevant for Search’s future work in civil society strengthening, as well as for other organizations working in this sector: 1. The participatory benchmarking approach is useful to help organizations track improvments in their organziational capacity over time. However, there was a tendency for CSOs to overstate what was possible within a limited timeframe. As a result, benchmarks were not consistently met, and many of the capacity-related development were not fully institutionalized by the project end. 2. The integration of radio programs with other civil society organizing approaches—town hall meetings, workshops, and house to house outreach—is an effective way to improve awareness and engagement of citizens in governance reform issues on a mass scale. 3. Programs to improve the capacity and sustainability of CSOs, and to professionalize the sector, are crucial but often overlooked, in efforts to improve local governance in fragile and trasitional countries such as Liberia. 4. There is a need to continue efforts to link civil society actors together for cohesive action and to further improve the enabling environment for civil society in Liberia by providing opportunities for CSOs to develop strategic collaborations, improve organizational capacity development, and attract donor funds to support their work." (Conclusions)
more
"Dieses Handbuch fasst die wichtigsten Schritte und Entscheidungen zusammen, die für ein gutes Wissensmanagement getroffen werden sollten. Es richtet sich an TZ-Vorhaben und ihre Partnerinstitutionen auf lokaler, regionaler oder zentraler Ebene sowie an die Organisatoren von Netzwerken. Das Handbuc
...
h ersetzt keine kohärente Wissensmanagement-Strategie. Diese muss stets im Einzelfall definiert und umgesetzt werden. Das Handbuch schlägt eine Schrittfolge, eine Methodik und Instrumente vor, die einen Überblick über die relevanten Fragen bieten. Es muss aber nicht in jedem Fall in dieser Weise umgesetzt werden. Das Handbuch empfiehlt sich, als Einstieg und Ergänzung für einen systematischen, durch geeignete Experten begleiteten Veränderungsprozess. Das Handbuch basiert auf Erfahrungen der GTZ und ihrer Partner. Es geht aus der Einführungsveranstaltung für neue Mitarbeiter der GTZ hervor. Die Inhalte wurden für die Fortbildung von Fach- und Führungskräften der Partnerinstitutionen angepasst. Regionale Expertennetzwerke entwickeln es laufend weiter." (Ziel des vorliegenden Handbuchs, Seite 3)
more
"This is a practically oriented Guide on indicators for human rights based approaches to development programmes for UNDP COs. The Guide contains separate sections on different aspects relating to the development and use of indicators across the key elements of human rights programming. The Guide sum
...
marizes the normative evolution in human rights and explains how human rights have been mainstreamed into the activities of all UN agencies. It also reviews the main existing indicators for human rights and discusses their limitations for human rights based programming. Two hypothetical programme examples on access to clean water and the prevention of torture are used to show how indicators can be used for human rights programming. Finally the Guide offers advice on how COs can use indicators for all phases of programme design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation." (Abstract)
more
"Using detailed checklists, the authors explain the stages of a typical consultancy, paying close attention to the practical, ethical, financial, and legal aspects of the process. Drawing on their own extensive experience and a wide-ranging survey of international NGOs and freelance consultants, the
...
y discuss how to develop more effective working relationships with all the relevant stakeholders, including donors, partners, programme managers, local staff, and local communities. They also show how development agencies can manage particular consultancies in order to promote long-term learning and thus improve the general quality of their programmes." (Oxfam website)
more
"Development is not a question of project-based interventions, or of quantifiable inputs and outputs, but a complex process of negotiation over meetings, values, and social goals within the sphere of public action. This collection of papers, from the journal 'Development in Practice', draws on The O
...
pen University's ground-breaking work in the field of development management. It includes in-depth accounts by academics and development managers that range from civil society organizations in Brazil to NGO workers in Egypt, government departments in Tanzania and Poland, donor agencies in Bangladesh, and black feminist activities in the UK." (Catalogue Intermediate Technology Publications 2000)
more
"Este manual intenta proporcionar a los administradores de proyectos y a los analistas de políticas las herramientas necesarias para evaluar el impacto de los proyectos. Está destinado a lectores con conocimientos generales de estadísticas. Para algunos de los métodos estadísticos más profundo
...
s analizados, el lector es remitido a la literatura técnica sobre el tema. En el Capítulo 1 se presenta una visión general de los conceptos y métodos, en el Capítulo 2 se analizan los pasos clave y temas relacionados que hay que considerar durante la implementación, en el Capítulo 3 se ilustran diversas técnicas analíticas a través de un estudio de casos y en el Capítulo 4 se incluye un análisis de las lecciones aprendidas de un valioso conjunto de evaluaciones de “prácticas óptimas” de los proyectos de pobreza que se revisaron para este manual. Los estudios de casos, incluidos en el Anexo I, se seleccionaron de una variedad de evaluaciones realizadas por el Banco Mundial, otras agencias de donantes, instituciones de investigación y empresas consultoras privadas. Se eligieron por su rigor metodológico, en un intento por cubrir una amplia combinación de escenarios de países, tipos de proyectos y metodologías de evaluación. En los Anexos también se incluyen muestras de los principales componentes que serían necesarios al planificar cualquier evaluación de impacto: muestras de términos de referencia, un presupuesto, indicadores de impacto, un marco lógico y una matriz de análisis." (Prólogo, páginas 5-6)
more
"Esta guía es una primera introducción a la temática de evaluación de proyectos de desarrollo. Presenta los diferentes componentes a considerar, explica los pasos a seguir y discute los métodos de recogida de datos. No obstante, a pesar de llamarse "manual" le falta a este libro proporcionar in
...
sumos concretos que sean directamente aplicables." (commbox)
more