Assignment Name: Endline Evaluation of the Promoting Opportunities for Women’s Empowerment and Rights (POWER) Project

Country: Bangladesh

Client Name: Social Development Direct (SDD), UK

POWER was a five-year initiative (2016-2020) supported by the Netherlands’ Ministry of Foreign Affairs under the Funding Leadership and Opportunities for Women (FLOW) funding mechanism. The POWER project addressed the intersections of gender, economic, and climate justice by supporting women to engage in agroecology. By supporting women’s groups, the project incorporated efforts to address, acknowledge, and resolve women’s unpaid care deficits and considered power relations and violence against women and girls (VAWG) by supporting women’s broader empowerment, capacity, and livelihoods. The project was primarily carried out in Bangladesh, Ghana, and Rwanda, with initial activities also in Pakistan, and reached over 19,500 beneficiaries. The core vision in POWER’s Theory of Change (ToC) was a world in which women have equal access to and control over resources and opportunities, including skills development and market information, and live in a social, cultural, and political environment where they have control over their time, access to income generation opportunities, and control over that income.

The main objectives of the evaluation were:

1. To assess how and in what ways the project contributed to immediate changes in policies, practices, ideas, and attitudes, and to identify any negative or unexpected effects.
2. To evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the expected outcomes and indicators in the project logframe:
3. To evaluate the POWER project against selected OECD-DAC criteria, including relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability.
4. To provide recommendations that would help local project partners and communities continue the project activities and policy influencing.
5. To engage and involve local project partners throughout the evaluation process to build their evaluation capacities and strengthen ownership of the findings and recommendations, ensuring continued delivery for their communities after the project ended.

To document lessons learned and best practices of the intervention, including formats that were highly accessible to project participants and partners.

The endline evaluation of the POWER project was conducted to examine its role in facilitating gender and social transformation among beneficiaries in Dinajpur (Ghoraghat), Gaibandha (Fulchari and Gobindaganj), and Lalmonirhat (Lalmonirhat Sadar). The evaluation adhered to the OECD-DAC criteria of relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, impact, and sustainability. The following services were provided:

Data Collection:

• Designed and implemented a robust quantitative survey conducted via telephone with 254 respondents (204 women and 50 men) across all POWER project districts.
• Conducted in-depth telephonic interviews with 48 local and national stakeholders, including government officials, representatives of civil society, women’s rights organizations, and project beneficiaries.

Framework Application:

• Applied intersectional and gender-focused frameworks to evaluate the POWER project’s impact on addressing unpaid care work, violence against women and girls (VAWG), and economic empowerment.
• Incorporated tools to assess how gender relations intersect with agro-ecological methods and time use.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Facilitated structured discussions with local and national stakeholders to gather qualitative insights on project implementation, challenges, and opportunities.
• Engaged with representatives of women’s rights organizations and feminist movements to evaluate their involvement and contributions to the project areas.

Policy and Advocacy Assessment:

• Reviewed the project’s engagement with national government ministries and its alignment with policy and planning processes concerning gender equity and unpaid care work.
• Evaluated advocacy activities related to improving budgets and accessibility for VAWG services and legal aid.

Programming Analysis:

• Assessed mechanisms for tracking and addressing VAWG and its inclusion in broader women’s empowerment programming.
• Reviewed activities aimed at shifting societal norms around masculinity, unpaid care work, and violence.

Documentation and Recommendations:

• Documented project strategies and mechanisms to address resistance, backlash, and barriers to gender equity interventions.
• Compiled practical tools, methodologies, and lessons learned for strengthening partnerships, fostering local and national alliances, and enhancing programming effectiveness.

This comprehensive evaluation process ensured that the project’s design, implementation, and outputs were assessed systematically, providing actionable insights to enhance future programming and advocacy efforts in gender and social transformation.