I received
some very good questions on the outcome mapping discussion forum following my
post on logical framework vs. outcome mapping. Another member in particular, Chew,
asked me to present examples of results-based projects that need to focus more
on institutional relationships to improve their performance. Here is my reply:
Example n.1
is a very ambitious food security project. Here is the logical
framework:
OO: To reduce the incidence of poverty and improve the well-being of the population in XXX
PP: To improve food security, income generation and socio-economic conditions of small scale farmers in XXX and XXX District through the development of a sustainable and efficient agricultural sector.
R1: Appropriate agricultural practises developed, land productivity and farm yields enhanced for 4200 small scale farmers
R2: Management of post harvest improved, availability of storage facilities extended to serve 3,600 HH and selling of produce optimised.
R3: Diet diversification improved
R4: Capacity of operating conscious planning and management of business at HH level ameliorated
R5: Access to financial resources and productive inputs improved
It would fit in the bottom-right corner of my table (hard project,
small organization). The LF is pretty good: the logic is clear and coherent and
the indicators are very specific (not included here). There is no confusion in my mind when I
analyze the cause-effect relationships: with more and better inputs, training
and infrastructure, farmers will be able to get more food for consumption and
even sell some of the surplus. The timeframe is tight though (2 years) and it
takes a huge effort to achieve all the outputs indicated in the LF: production,
productivity, number of hectares, number of trainings, etc. The project team dove headfirst in the
implementation dedicating 100% of its attention to the activities. When the
mid-term monitoring mission arrived, it represented the first opportunity for
the project managers to analyze the situation from an outside perspective. What
they saw wasn’t encouraging: in their frantic effort to keep up with their
ambitious design, they had forgotten about the other actors working in the area
and had promoted only a limited involvement of local institutions.
The result
was that the outputs had been produced, but very few people were using them,
the impact of the intervention was very small and there were very slim chances
of achieving sustainability. The different stakeholders hadn’t modify their
behavior and the relationships between them had not changed since the inception
of the project:
- beneficiaries’ organizations were brand new and mainly composed of illiterate farmers, living in remote areas. They had received trainings, but remained institutionally weak and had very limited technical capacity.
- Local development organizations showed very little appropriation of the intervention. They were getting paid to perform a task. Period.
- Local government officials were satisfied to receive reports every semester and take credit for the distribution of tools.
A
combination of results- and actor-based approaches would have contributed to a
more balanced intervention, where productivity is linked to a change in
behavior and relationship among stakeholders. Adopting an actors-based approach,
the NGO would have set achievable goals for the groups of beneficiaries and
promoted a bigger role for local institutions in order to enlist them as
committed actors in the process of achieving food security in the area.
Example n.2
is a solid-waste management project aimed at increasing recycling in a big
Latin-American capital. The intervention fits somewhere in between the two
bottom quadrants of my table (small organization working on a mix of hard and
soft issues). The NGO implementing the action had been working for a few years,
mainly raising awareness and promoting the dialogue between the different
actors involved in the solid-waste management sector through an institutional
platform created and coordinated by the NGO itself. However, the new project
required the NGO to focus on setting up recycling centers, organizing groups of
citizens, starting cooperatives and coordinating garbage collection routes – a
significant increase in the workload and the type of activities. Once again,
all the effort was spent on achieving outputs, while the vision of
institutional change got lost somewhere in the meanders of procurement and
logistics. The NGO staff was so pressed to achieve output indicators, that
there was no time to coordinate the solid-waste platform. As a consequence, the
platform virtually stopped functioning. An opportunity for spreading lessons
learnt and best practices was wasted. The impact of the project was much
smaller than originally envisioned.
In this
case, a combination of the two approaches could have helped to extend the
results of the intervention to a bigger population.
