Management Response

: Jordan
: 2016 - 2016 , Jordan (CO)
: Promoting Social Cohesion through Women's Economic Empowerment and Protection Initiatives in Irbid and Zarqa
:
: Jordan
:

The final evaluation of the Project ‘Promoting Social Cohesion through Women's Economic Empowerment and Protection Initiatives in Irbid and Zarqa’ provided highly instrumental findings, lessons learned, conclusions and recommendations for UN Women Jordan country future programming. A particularly positive finding was the relevance of the project to the social and economic needs for both Syrian refugees and host communities; the interventions were aligned with UN Women priorities at national and global levels. The evaluation found that a) UN Women should continue engaging with stakeholders including women through more spaces and platforms, b) UN Women should explore alternative modalities for targeting the poorest women, c) continue the practice to develop theory of change for all its projects. UN Women agrees with most suggestions and in the response details actions that will be taken to implement these recommendations.
: Approved
Recommendation: UN Women and other agencies should provide women as rights holder– when appropriate- with more space on platforms such as “Community gathering” to express their voice and needs to duty bearers to claim the work rights for all women
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women plans for 2017 includes continuation of supporting safe spaces for women in Zaatari and Azraq camps, as well as enhance women spaces to interact with the community and flourish their leadership, this includes supporting the formulation of women committees in the camps and in host communities.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Establishment of one safe space for women in Azraq camp Ana Lukatela 2018/01 Completed
Conduct “Community gathering” and “District regular meetings with partners to express their needs and convey their voice to duty bearers. Ana Lukatela 2018/01 Completed 10 Focused Group Discussions organized between November and December 2017 engaging 115 participants in order to assess needs and perspective in the field to inform future programming and advocacy efforts.
Recommendation: UN Women should hold an initial meeting with all project partners to discuss the overall goals of the project and provide an opportunity for networking to create synergy between the different project stakeholders.
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women will continue the approach of engaging all partners and stakeholders in the planning, monitoring and evaluation of projects. More opportunities to create linkages among different stakeholders on different projects will be coordinated.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Coordinate a yearly meeting for all UN Women stakeholders on board to present their projects, share knowledge and good practices, and build networking possibilities. Ana Lukatela 2017/10 Completed UN Women has coordinated with stakeholders within several conducted steering committee meetings. Furthermore, a series of consultations with different stakeholders governmental and non-governmental, donors, UN agencies etc.. took place during May to discuss on priority areas of work, build networking and share knowledge, and also fed into the formalization of the CO SN 2018-2022.
Recommendation: UN Women should make it a practice to develop a theory of change for all of its projects; it will allow UN Women and partners to clearly know what should be long term and short term objectives of the project; strategies flowing from the same and the degree of alignment between objectives, strategy, outcomes, indicators and activities. Revisiting the assumptions inherent behind each outcome would enable the project team to assess the soundness of the overall strategy and effectiveness of current activities.
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women Jordan adopts theories of change in formulating projects and programs. UN Women will continue this approach and utilize theory of change modality in building and monitoring next projects and programs.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women is adopting a new Theory of Change in its Strategic Note and also the practice is now applied to adding a TOC when drafting project documents. Ana Lukatela 2017/12 Completed The Jordan CO Strategic Note 2018-2022 has been endorsed in November 2017 and it includes an overarching Theory of Change. Similarly, all new project documents drafted by the CO include a dedicated TOC.
Recommendation: Safe spaces should be equipped to welcome and host disabled beneficiaries. Many women expressed that they have disabled friends but they are not able to join because of the infrastructure. As an action, assessment should be conducted by AYA to assess which spaces are possible to be improved.
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women programming ensures values of inclusiveness, including accessibility to people with disability for provided services. UN Women Jordan will ensure taking into consideration the mandatory measurements for any new interventions, and guarantee easy access for people with disability. For established centers and services by other partners, UN Women will highlight the importance of providing accessible and friendly services for people with disability. In order to insure this, UN Women will consider adding criteria on disable accessibility in the CBO’s assessment.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will adapt the infrastructure of the Oases to include disability access during 2018. Ana Lukatela 2018/10 Completed The construction engineer has finalized the design and construction have just started.
Recommendation: The contents of the social cohesion training should be collected into one curriculum to be developed with a TOT approach, so it enabled the CBOs to run it independently. Same for JEFE trainings, a curriculum should be shared with participant, such curriculum can act as a suitability factor for both CBOs and for beneficiaries.
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women will ensure in any form of collaboration to develop a curriculum TOT approach as recommended for future sustainability. UN Women has previously produced and trained beneficiaries using ToT approach, however specifically in this project, AYA and JEFE were contracted as service providers. Both organizations utilized their own training modules which they hold the copy rights for. For future partnerships or contracts with service providers, a production for toolkits or curriculum and conducting a TOT will be integrated.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
This will be part of the Call for Proposals for Partners in 2018, as opposed to service provider approach. Ana Lukatela 2018/05 Completed This component has been successfully integrated in the Call for Proposals for Partners launched in Q1 2018.
Recommendation: There should also be a final in-kind reward for women who completed the full social cohesion training, as a contribution towards the costs they incurred and to enhance their financial income.
Management Response: Applicable. Though in all other interventions there was a form of rewarding whether through a ceremony or project closing event, yet for women who attended the social cohesion sessions there was no plans in this regard, as they are open sessions for women and do not require registration or commitment. Overall this is an important note for the evaluator, UN Women will continue rewarding women involved in projects.
More detail
Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Ensure budget allocation for rewards in all projects working with women Ana Lukatela 2017/02 Completed In our planning for the next projects this was taken into consideration
Recommendation: The modality of targeting the poorest women -who benefited from social cohesion component- with economic opportunities should be explored, as the current modality is more relevant to the less vulnerable women “university graduates”.
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women under the UN charter is mandated to work with the most vulnerable and excluded women. UN Women will do a thorough vulnerability analysis when targeting women in the host communities. The vulnerability analysis will inform the livelihood programme design to make sure that livelihood projects are well-tailored to vulnerable women needs and priorities.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
In the first half of 2018 UN Women has committed to a gender analysis of those women farthest behind in order to more effectively target them in programming Ana Lukatela 2018/12 Completed Due to a renegotiation between UN and EU at HQ levels UN Women and EU were unable to sign the local agreement to do the gender analysis. It has been postponed to Q1 2019. However UN Women used the process of consultations in governorates to collect data and context about vulnerabilities and targeting of beneficiaries. UN Women also collaborated with UNCHR on the VAF 2018 to improve its gender approach and analysis so that the data would be more useful to all humanitarian partners, not only UN Women.
Recommendation: An advanced protection capacity-building process should target the social workers of community-based organizations (CBOs), not only to enhance their knowledge but also confidentiality, referral and counselling practices.
Management Response: Accepted. This recommendation was shared by the evaluator while the project is running. Based on that UN Women organized a retreat for all social workers involved to reflect on their practical experience after the training and build their capacities when it comes to critical issues in their work including confidentiality, referral and counselling practices.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UNW hosted a retreat for social workers engaged in the program July 18th. The retreat discussed all raised concerns by the evaluator and provided capacity building and guidance on issues including confidentiality , referrals ...etc Ana Lukatela 2016/12 Completed
Recommendation: The existing results monitoring system should be revised so reporting system should be unified starting from the partners’ level to be in line with the office strategy.
Management Response: Accepted. For future programming; the project's results monitoring framework is to be shared with partners as appropriate so that they can report on the same indicators.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
UN Women will ensure that partners are aware of all required indicators through the review of the project document Ana Lukatela 2017/12 Completed UN Women reviews all new project documents with partners, providing guidance for the identification and reporting against the required set of indicators.
Recommendation: Revision of modality of monitoring women workers placed into the new jobs, ensure decent work conditions. Finally, accountability systems should be strengthened with systematic feedback sessions conducted with beneficiaries.
Management Response: Accepted. UN Women experience in women and job placements under several projects highlights the key issue of monitoring.
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Description:
Management Response Category: Accepted
Thematic Area: Not applicable
Operating Principles: Not applicable
Organizational Priorities: Not applicable
UNEG Criteria: Not applicable
Key Actions
Responsible Deadline Status Comments
Collaborate with better work Jordan in selecting employers and ensure budget allocations for implementing partners to cover monitoring and accountability Ana Lukatela 2018/01 Completed The component related to the collaboration with Better Work Jordan is included in the Madad project which starts implementation as of February 1, 2018.