The Institute for Development (I4DI) Impact is currently implementing an independent project evaluation for NGO Education Partnership (NEP), the national education coalition in Cambodia. Established in 2003, NEP is the national coalition of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) working in the field of education. NEP represents the views of its members to government and decision-makers, undertakes original research and analysis, and builds the capacity of member NGOs in order to secure equal access to quality education for all in Cambodia.
NEP is at the end of a five-year strategy and corresponding funding agreements with UNICEF and the German Catholic Bishops’ Organisation for Development Cooperation (MISEREOR) and has commissioned I4DI to conduct an end-of-project evaluation. I4DI is uniquely positioned to conduct this evaluation after including NEP as part of a seven-country case study evaluation that was performed for the Global Campaign for Education’s Civil Society Education Fund (CSEF). For the CSEF case study, I4DI conducted focus group discussions and key informant interviews in Phnom Penh over five days in August of this year with development partners, the Ministry of Education Youth and Sport, and NGO coalition members.
For the current evaluation, I4DI is working with a local consultant in Cambodia to collect an additional data set that will look deeper into the core functioning of the coalition and performance over the past five years. This data collection will include an additional two focus group discussions, 14 interviews, and a survey administered in Khmer language to the 140 NGO members of the coalition. The focus of this evaluation is to review and assess the relevance, performance and outcomes of the various activities supported by MISEREOR and UNICEF over the five-year period and provide evidence of the emerging impact.
In addition, the evaluation will also highlight strengths and weaknesses, identify and document emerging best practices, gather lessons learned, and make recommendations for future programming. In close collaboration with our local consultant, I4DI will focus qualitative data collection in three Cambodian provinces with local NGOs and also conduct a focus group discussion with Ministry of Education department heads and a key informant interview with the Minister of Education’s Secretary of State, H.E Nath Bunroeun.
When the evaluation is complete, I4DI will have analyzed qualitative data from 18 interviews and five focus group discussions, in addition to a thorough document review and a quantitative on-line survey administered over 21 days to 140 members. At the beginning of December, I4DI will present the preliminary results to key stakeholders in a participatory feedback briefing in which key findings will be reviewed and a PowerPoint presentation tool will be presented to display the results for use by NEP with its partners.
