As with your monitoring plan, the evaluation of your VAW prevention program will need to be planned at the initial design stage, not once implementation has started.
As a Program Manager, your job is to:
● Ensure the engagement of an M&E specialist. If they do not have experience specifically in evaluating VAW programming, you will need to work with them to identify risks and ethical issues from the start.
● Develop evaluation questions in line with your program’s ToC and the indicators you have developed. You may also want to draw on the OECD DAC evaluation criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, sustainability.
● Identify an appropriate evaluation design (see following slides)
● Ensure adequate resources (time and budget) are reserved to conduct an evaluation
● Decide whether an independent evaluator is needed, given the size of your program. If so, you will need to identify, commission and retain a good evaluation team, with the right mix of qualitative and quantitative expertise. This team will need to have specialist skills in evaluating VAW prevention programs and will need to have undergone necessary training.
●Ensure the evaluation team is brought in at the beginning of a project, so that they can develop an evaluation design and can work with local partners to coordinate the evaluation with the priorities of the program.
