The Oxfam Australia Program Framework for South Africa
Formative Evaluation Scott Drimie, June 2012
1. Background The significant expansion of the Oxfam Australia (OAU) program in South Africa over the five years has been managed principally through the establishment of new thematic programs relating to food security, children’s social protection and water, sanitation and hygiene. However, this framework has become complex and cumbersome because the differentiation between programs is blurred in reality, as OAU and their partners address multiple, overlapping issues facing communities. Issues around vulnerability and marginalisation seldom adhere to strict, program boundaries. The resultant impact of OAU programming often go unrecognised as these fall between the “silos” of differentiated programs, leaving limited options to capitalise on opportunities to consolidate learning and apply them across programs. A redesign process has led to a new framework which addresses the need to reflect the subtleties of programming, making an effort to better align with a ‘one program’ approach, and setting out the beginning of a monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) system that is geared towards recording and evaluating change in communities and partners. The framework is characterised by three main elements namely (1) the facilitation of an integrated approach that allows for coordination and alignment of focus areas (as defined under the one program approach), of (2) enabling change at community level through programming which is informed by guiding principles and activities relating to accountability, the disjuncture between policy and implementation and establishing an enabling environment for active citizenship, and (3) strengthening partners through capacity strengthening activities, support and administrative allocation.
2. Formative Evaluation In order to place the new framework on a strong analytical foundation and to ensure that the elements were in place to practically guide the emerging programming, a formative evaluation has been undertaken. This evaluation has as its basis the program learning from the past five years. In essence, the formative evaluation is intended to elicit feedback and critique of the new framework to allow modification of the approach at an initial stage. The OAU programs emerging recently are principally the products of a vision for social change imagined by staff and partners. This vision has guided the course of action whereby social wrongs would have been addressed, particularly to alleviate inequalities of socio-economic conditions that define contemporary South Africa. OAU programs have thus been shaped by a vision of change, and succeeded or failed according to the veracity of that vision. Building on this concept, the formative evaluation has the task of testing out the underlying program theories – the theories of change that define how the program expects change to happen within a given context. In evaluating “realistically”, the evaluator should return to the core theories about how a program is supposed to work and then interrogates it - is that basic plan sound, plausible, durable, practical and, above all, valid? In so doing, the underlying theory of change of the new framework would be verified and tested, as this is fundamentally built on what has worked for OAU in the past. A largely desk based process was undertaken consisting of a broad review of OAU literature, particularly program documentation (see Annexure Two), with a series of key informant interviews with OAU staff in South Africa and Australia (see Annexure One). This approach was designed to promote mutual learning and reflection as the evaluator and OAU staff jointly interrogated the framework. The source data for the evaluation were the program reports from the last phase of the Oxfam HIV and AIDS Program (OHAP), the Southern Africa Child Social Protection Program (SACSPP) and the uMkhanyakude Livelihoods and Food Security Partnership Program as well as the design documents for the AACES program and the Disaster Risk
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