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The purpose of the evaluation was to assess in more detail the programmatic progress and performance of the Joint Programme on Accelerating Progress towards Economic Empowerment of Rural Women (JP RWEE) from the perspectives of relevance, effectiveness, impact, organizational efficiency and sustainability. It provided all partner UN agencies with a useful assessment of project achievements and produced actionable findings, recommendations and documented lessons learnt. Specifically, the evaluation certified that the programme has reached targets for most of its key performance indicators via creating intended positive changes leading to increased income, better livelihoods, food security and leadership role of participating rural women. Factors that facilitated these results include the promotion of solidarity economic models such as self-help groups and group economic initiatives, as well as providing access to training and interest-free commodity and cash loans. Community members who were not directly involved in the programme benefitted from the transfer of skills and knowledge from program participants and development activities implemented by local authorities upon request from the program participants. One of JP RWEE’s important results is that its direct beneficiaries and community members broadened their perspectives and adopted more advanced practices. Moreover, adding GALS into the implementation model considerably increased the JP RWEE’s positive impact on women empowerment and even to some extent offset the disempowering effect of the reduction in leisure time available for women because of greater engagement in income generating activities due to more equal distribution of domestic tasks. However, the evaluation also underlined that despite significant contributions of the JP RWEE towards better livelihoods, increased income, food security and leadership role of participating rural women, its impact on the situation of poor rural women and rural women in Kyrgyzstan is still small.
The JP RWEE has been designed as a 5-year initiative with a total budget of 5 million USD for 2012-2017. It is a joint programme coordinated by four UN agencies in Kyrgyzstan, namely UN women as a leading agency, FAO, IFAD and WFP. The joint programme is part of a global joint initiative implemented in seven countries globally including Guatemala, Niger, Ethiopia, Liberia, Rwanda, Nepal and Kyrgyzstan. The first allocation was received in 2014 from Norway followed by a funding from Sweden in 2015 through end 2017. With the confirmed funding of 800,000 USD for the current phase (2018-2019), the programme intends to replicate the best practices gained over the period of three years and strengthen the capacity of previous cohorts. Under the limited funding and time resources, the programme will partly attend the recommendations of the evaluation although all of the recommendations have been accepted by the partner agencies (see clarifications below). The partners are ultimately responsible for their agreed part of implementation.
Those actions that have been initiated and/or are ongoing have been included in the 2020 AWP, pending approval for the funding from the Government of Norway.
Below only Key Actions joint with UN Women or by UN Women are listed.
WFP, FAO and IFAD have also committed to additional Key Actions in the joint management response process.
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