Institutionalizing results based on monitoring and impact evaluation practices in community based social services development projects Kristine Grigoryan Grants and Outsourcing Specialist

Armenia is a small land-locked country with population of 3mln people bordering Azerbaijan, Georgia, Iran and Turkey. Following its independence in 1991 and post soviet era the country has gone through tremendous changes. During the last 16 years, the country has staged a remarkable economic turnaround.

 Each year thousands of dollars are spent on more than sixty programs to improve social sector outcomes in Armenia. But very few programs benefit from studies that could determine whether or not they actually made a difference.  This absence of evidence is an urgent problem and urges the donors and the current government to build monitoring and evaluation capacity for programs implemented.

 Community-based social services for vulnerable groups jointly with the local government  Capacity building using the social services development projects  Social services development pilot projects in four communities

 Series of trainings provided by international expert trainers.  Guidelines and international evaluation theory and practice materials.  Demonstration exercise for logical framework development.  Joint development of indicators and the logical framework approach to exercise planning stage.  Monitoring of current grant projects with the program and monitoring departments  Site visits  Report review

 Pilot projects identify the stakeholders for the community social services development  Local government  Community leaders  Social services representatives  Mobilizing community leaders to develop social services goals and objectives  Jointly with the stakeholders developed competition process

 I Stage - Project design  II Stage – Logical framework of the selected project  III Stage – Implementation of the Monitoring  Impact evaluation

Decision making process of the local government I phase Outsourced project design II phase Logical framework, development of the indicators III phase Implementation of the monitoring Impact Evaluation of the outsourced projects

 Developed Request for proposal for the outsourced projects  Jointly with the community group developed the project proposal and selection criteria  Provided on going consulting and step by step coaching on NGO selection and outsourcing

 Developed logical framework for the selected project  Jointly with the community group developed the project indicators, outputs and outcomes  Impact evaluation questions  Developed the monitoring schedule

 Data collection  Reports from the outsourced projects  Interviews conducted by the project managers  Site visit reports

 Use the background information and M&E database to conduct the evaluation  Evaluate the projects outsourced to NGOs  Base community social services development decisions on the evaluation reports and outcomes of the report  Communicate the results and outcomes of the outsourced projects to the public