Once the project came to an end, it is necessary to conduct the final evaluation to measure the project impact and sustainability. Stakeholders should be involved in the evaluation. It is also recommended, if possible, to use independent external evaluators.
Evaluation criteria
The evaluation of a project usually takes into account five criteria:
- The relevance of project objectives vis-à-vis the assessed problems and needs.
- The efficiency of the project: does the project results have been achieved at a reasonable cost?
- The effectiveness of the project that is evaluating how the results have met expectations and needs of beneficiaries.
- The impact of the project: the impact of the project on its wider environment and its contribution to the overall policy or objectives of the sector (health, environment, fight against poverty, etc.)..
- The sustainability of the project: will the benefits of the project persist over time?
The evaluation report
It is essential to prepare an evaluation report to be circulated to stakeholders, partners and donors.
An evaluation report generally includes the following parts:
- The summary - Well-written and used as a standalone document. Short, no more than five pages, it focuses on the main points of the analysis, shows the conclusions, lessons learned and recommendations.
- The main text – it begins with an introduction describing the purpose and objective of the evaluation. The body of the report should follow the five evaluation criteria, the description of the facts and their analysis in accordance with the key issues relating to each criterion.
- Conclusions and recommendations – For each main conclusion we have to find a corresponding recommendation. The final value of an evaluation depends on the quality and credibility of proposed recommendations. The recommendations must be realistic, operational and pragmatic.
Capitalizing on the experience
Monitoring and evaluation are expected to capitalize on the experience of the team. Capitalizing is turning the experience into knowledge to be shared with others, that is to say:
- highlighting our skills and competencies;
- Theorizing the know-how in order to avoid losing them;
- Modeling knowledge in order to not losing it;
- Transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge.
So it is just giving us the keys to prepare the future.
The final report of your project including the tools you have developed may be published on the site of Indaba-Network.
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