Management Response

Recommendation:

Sort hierarchical Issues, Institutionalization and Establishment of the WTLGE Training Program

Management Response:

UN Women understands the need for coordination and complementary between the leadership capacity building support provides to its partners both at federal and regional level. Hence, it encourages collaboration between these actors. For instance, in Amhara and Oromia regions, where the institutionalization of a Transformative Leadership for Gender Equality Training curriculum is currently being supported, UN Women is facilitating experience sharing to ensure that the later benefits from all interventions carried out already in Amhara. Where a curriculum exists, for instance in Oromia region, UN Women supports its contextualization to address the challenges women leaders face based on a needs assessment carried out in the region. For UN Women evidence-based interventions are critical to ensure relevance. Though the general challenges women face towards participation and representation in leadership spaces are similar, their capacities and needs are various partially due to their varied access and the patriarchal ecosystem they live in. Hence, capacity building needs assessment is critical to identify their specific needs. Therefore, UN Women will continue to carry out need assessments where it decides to support a leadership enhancement intervention.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Experience sharing between Oromia State Leadership Academy and Bahir Dar University Transformative Leadership for Gender Equality training program. UN Women 2020/07 Completed 2. Create coordination mechanism between TLGE training programs overseen by regional and federal level partners. UN Women 2021/02 No Longer Applicable UN Women facilitated one experience sharing mission between Bahirdar University, TLGE Training Center and Oromia Leadership Academy and Oromia Bureau of Women, Children and Social Affairs project focal persons. However, the TLGE training program in Oromia Region could not take off as planned due to the security situation in the country at the time. Currently, there is no longer funding for the Oromia TLGE programs including capacity building trainings and establishment of TLGE training center. Hence, this action point is no longer applicable.

Recommendation:

Adaptation & Roll-out to Regions

Management Response:

UN Women already started the effort to ensure coordination among partners where an experience sharing mission is planned to take place between Oromia Leadership Academy, Curriculum Development Committee Members and Bahir Dar University, Curriculum Development Committee members which are currently the main partners in this intervention. Regarding training delivery approach and method, it has been similar from the start as UN Women closely worked with all its stakeholders and ensured that in all TL capacity building intervention knowledge is transferred to each of its partners from Federal level MoWCY to Regional level in Amhara and Oromia Regions. TORs and resource persons are shared across regions. As for needs assessment, at least for the currently targeted regions, Amhara and Oromia, it is critical to ensure cultural specificities as correctly noted by the evaluators in this recommendation.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Undertake baseline study in Oromia to ensure adaptability of training delivery methodology and content with local socio-cultural specificities and specific needs of women leaders in the area. Oromia BoWCYA and Oromia State University 2020/09 Completed 2. Translate training materials to local vernaculars UN Women and Oromia BoWCYA 2021/04 Completed Translated one in Afan-Oromo language, as of the largely spoken languages in Ethiopia

Recommendation:

Improve the efficiency and impact of trainings through a series of interrelated measures.

Management Response:

UN Women is currently supporting Bahir Dar University to copy, edit and clean a Facilitators Guide and Learners Handout in addition to the technical support provided during the entire training material preparation process. It also identified the need to create a pool of master trainers and organized a first-round training solely focusing on adult learning skills which will be followed by content-based training for the same batch of trainees. The Transformative Leadership module is already considered as foundational module based on which other modules will be developed. This is already being implemented where a Women Political Empowerment module is being developed by Bahir Dar University where the previously developed Transformative Leadership Training Modules are taken as foundational courses.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Finalize copy/editing of Bahir Dar University TLGE Training materials UN Women, Amhara BoWCYA and Bahirdar 2020/07 Completed The copy/editing of the Training materials have been completed. It should however be noted that the training materials are living documents at this stage and can not be published since it is expected that continuous update will be made on content and structure based on feedback from the different cohorts of trainees. This is also based on the experience of ACTIL which has not so far made it straining materials public after 6 years. 2. Organize content-based TOT for master trainers and develop TOT and refresher training program UN Women and Amhara BoWCYA 2020/08 Completed 3. Ensure that TL standard modules are used while continuing to develop additional courses under the TLGE Training program in Amhara region and when support continues in other training programs that might be delivered at federal and regional level. UN Women, Amhara BoWCYA and Bahir Dar University 2020/12 Ongoing WILG team has already started using the standard training materials in the different capacity building trainings it is providing in 2020 and 2021.

Recommendation:

Sustainability of current efforts

Management Response:

UN Women understands the need to further advocate for promotion of legislative quota and affirmative action to increase the participation of women in leadership. Such advocacy has been going on since 2019 where UN Women started to implement an electoral support project towards Ethiopia’s 6th general election. UN Women will expand its effort on this by revising its women in leadership and governance program to include such advocacy . Also, UN Women already supported the development of a mentorship guideline as part of its transformative leadership capacity building support. This will be reviewed to expand its application to participation of women in political parties.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Finalize partnership with the Ethiopian Human Rights Commission to advocate for positive measure towards women’s increased participation and representation in leadership and decision-making. UN Women 2020/05 Completed Partnership has already been finalized and various awareness creation and capacity building initiatives area already taking place. So far two capacity building trainings on Gender and Elections with a component of learning on Temporary Special Measures were organized while a panel discussion on gender response electoral process were conducted. While partnership has been created with EHRC and couple of activities took place, the intervention will continue to expand. 2. Revise current program document to include thematic area for women’s political participation and explore ways to expand partnership with other key stakeholders to advocate for legislative measures to promote affirmative action for women’s representation in leadership. UN Women 2020/08 Completed 3. Explore ways to use the Mentorship Guideline already developed for political party structures and aspirant women. UN Women 2021/07 Ongoing The timeline is revised taking into consideration the time required to incorporate suggested changes in the revised program document.

Recommendation:

Enhance the Inclusiveness and Gender-friendliness of Training Interventions

Management Response:

It is common sight to see women leaders coming to training carrying either infants together with caretakers or toddlers. Noting this, UN Women has already included the setting up of a day-care space as part of its support to Bahir Dar University Transformative Leadership program. It is also exploring a way to check with training participants beforehand whether they are coming with children and caretakers to facilitate meal and sleeping arrangements by factoring such issues in its training budget.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Support Bahir Dar University TLGE Centre in furnishing its Day Care facility. UN Women, Amhara BoWCYA, Bahir Dar University 2020/09 Ongoing 2. Develop a standard questionnaire to identify trainees that will bring children to training facilities and facilitate support mechanism. UN Women, Amhara BoWCYA and Bahir Dar University 2020/07 Ongoing Completed in Bahir Dar and ongoing in other regions 3. Lobby other leadership training institutions and partners engaged in facilitating leadership training for women to consider gender sensitivity towards women with children. UN Women 2020/12 Ongoing

Recommendation:

Revise Theory of Change

Management Response:

UN Women understands the need to revise its TOC most significantly due to the change in the political landscape of the country in line with Option a) of the evaluation where it will restrict the scope of the formulation in the TOC and at the level of its result statements. It however does not plan to expand its outreach to economic governance and other similar sectors since this is outside the scope of the UN Women HQ Flagship Program Initiative guideline where UN Women globally focus on enhancing women’s political participation under its result area one. Leadership in other sectors is expected to be covered by other portfolios of UN Women i.e. for instance Women Economic Empowerment will have a component of women’s leadership in the economic sector. The program teams at UN Women Ethiopia will ensure coordination within different interventions and thematic areas.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Revise Women in Leadership and Governance program document including its result framework and TOC UN Women 2020/08 Completed .

Recommendation:

Revise the M&E Arrangements including Indicators & means of Verification

Management Response:

As already indicated in the evaluation, under the TLGE Training program a pre and post training assessment tool has been prepared and will be used for all other TL trainings. UN Women also plans to develop a long-term impact assessment tool. One of the objectives of the MTE was to provide input on how to ensure indicators are SMART and inputs from the MTE in addition to other comments from partners will be used to further refine the program indicators. UN Women is currently supporting a national status of women in leadership assessment which will help build the first step towards having a national baseline data. This combined with the different in-depth baseline studies, adequate quantitative data is expected to be generated to serves as a baseline to track progress. UN Women is also supporting the development of a database system where all capacity building trainings will be registered with details including who, where what, when. As for qualitative measures to track changes, UN Women ensured that its partners such as Bahir Dar University learn from institutions such as ACTIL that has a system in place to track changes in different capacity building training cohorts. Accordingly, UN Women will build upon already started initiatives to ensure that the programs’ changes are tracked both in qualitative and quantitative terms.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. Revise the WILG Program document including its result framework and its indicators. UN Women 2020/08 Completed 2. Identify methods to continuously gauge quantitative and qualitative change resulted by the Program’s intervention UN Women 2020/12 Ongoing 3. Identify ways to influence current data and statistics collection methods to consider women’s representation and participation in leadership and decision making at all levels. Collaborate with other teams both within UN Women and other organisations. UN Women 2020/12 Ongoing