Assessment on performance, progress and gap of Project Design, Monitoring and Evaluation system; the Case of World Vision Ethiopia Grant Projects from 2014-2015

Abstract

Project design, monitoring and evaluation (DME)are the mile and corner stones of the project cycle where it plays its critical and unreplaceable role in project management.As part of the project cycle, project design, monitoring and evaluation have been a practice of many government and non-government organization.Despite that fact that all projects, implemented by GO or NGO, have their own life span, grant projects which this study focused on, do have very limited time frame, defined objectives with a very defined allocated budget. Usually grant projects do lack strong project management in many organizations as regular development project benefited because of their limited time frame, diversified in nature, relatively small in size and have various donors. This includes, most grant projects are believed to lack strong and well stablished DME systems. Similarly, in WVE, program design, monitoring, and evaluation have not come out strong over the past few years and this has negatively impacted program results and the organization image. Understanding the performance, progress and gap of WVE DME system is, therefore, expected to contribute on what WVE is good at, continue on the progress and address the gaps that ultimately improve DME effectiveness in WVE that will have multiple positive effects. This research was conducted to assess if effective DME process, system and tools were being used in World Vision Ethiopia Grant Projects and to identify gaps in DME that affect the effectiveness and efficiency of Grant projects. The researched focused on grant projects that were implemented in FY’2104 and FY2015 under Grants Operation Department. The study interviewed 258 people (86 Kebele, elders and religious leaders and 172 men, women and youth)in four different Woredas selected from Oromia, SNNPR, Amhara and Benshagul Gumuz Regional States. 16 Grant Project Managers, coordinators and grant officers and 7 non-grant project staff from Finance, quality assurance, technical team (program development) and quality assurance participated in the study. Besides, 32 grant projects documents were reviewed and analyzed on the availability and practice of DME systems, tools and process. vii | P a g e Descriptive analyses were employed as the main research approach to collect, review and analyze the data. As a result,assessment was made on performance, progress and gap of DME system of grant projects using the data collected from survey and secondary data. Qualitative and quantitative data were collected using semi structured and structured questionnaires for community members, WVE grant and non-grant staff. Self-assessment questionnaire was also used to measure the DME competency of grant projects staff as indicated in their own perception.Detail Key DME checklist was prepared to review and examine the 32 grant project documents that were implemented in FY2014 and FY’2015. The study concluded that there is good performance of grant projects in including local community need, planning appropriate activities, having achievable project goal and creating awareness in the community about the project goal. Utilizing project evaluation plan as part of project management, defining role and responsibilities of project managers and partners, using monitoring tools and systems to review project performance and setting clear indicators linked with logical hierarchywere found to be excellent performance of grant projects.The study came to conclusion that mechanism to select external consultant, process steps employed to decide project activities and evaluation TOR preparation, review and approval process have shown progressive improvement. The study also concluded that there are gaps on availability & utilization of tools and systems for grant project design, establishing completed theory of change, allocating realistic cost for project activities, developing clear monitoring plan, monitoring project evaluation process, organizing continuous capacity building training for grant staff and community members, documenting and sharing evaluation recommendation and utilizing MIS as DME tool. Besides, community participation in the design process, project quality and engagement of women in grant project were found to be a concern. The researchalso concluded that Grant project staff competency in project design and monitoring were found to be in a very good status but there is huge gap regarding competency of grant project staff in understanding and effectively applying project evaluation process, systems and tools.