SDDirect was commissioned to conduct a mixed-methods endline evaluation of ActionAid’s Promoting Opportunities for Women's Empowerment and Rights (POWER), in partnership with DM Watch in Bangladesh, ResearchLime in Ghana and DevLink Consults in Rwanda.
POWER was a five-year (2016-2020) initiative that supported women to engage in agroecology in Bangladesh, Pakistan, Ghana and Rwanda, addressing the intersections of gender, economic and climate justice.
The project aimed to increase the income of 21,000 women in Ghana, Rwanda and Bangladesh and their ability to control their income, through practicing agroecology, awareness of rights, enhancing access to markets, reducing, recognising and redistributing unpaid care work and influencing policy. The project also sought to address issues related to violence against women and girls.
Using remote data collection methods to adapt to the COVID-19 pandemic, the in-country and international team assessed POWER’s contribution to change according to all the latest Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development's Development Assistance Committee (OECD DAC) criteria. The evaluation took a participatory and feminist approach, for example, having a separate evaluation criterion of equity and building the evaluation capacities of local partners.
In-country designers produced contextually relevant visual posters to disseminate findings to local communities. SDDirect involved ActionAid at every step in the evaluation, through inception meetings and validation workshops, to strengthen ownership of findings and recommendations.
The recommendations were intended to help local project partners and communities to continue the project activities and policy influencing, and to document lessons learned and best practices.
Evaluation feedback on tracking violence against women and girls outcomes has already been integrated into ActionAid women’s economic rights and justice programming in Jordan, thus demonstrating the impact of SDDirect’s evaluation.
