Funded by
Action contre la Faim
Background to the YεRεTALI project
The cross-border program to support community recovery and resilience began on November 1st 2022 and is due to end on January 31, 2026. It is taking place in a very special operating environment, “straddling” two countries in a highly unstable region. In Burkina Faso, the security crisis that began in 2015 has led to an unprecedented humanitarian crisis. Attacks by armed groups have forced over one and a half million people to flee their homes, leading to massive population displacement within the country. Although the North and Sahel regions were the first to be affected, the violence has spread to the whole country, recently reaching the western regions of the country and the border areas with Côte d’Ivoire. The massive arrival of Burkinabe refugees in northern Côte d’Ivoire is exacerbating an already fragile socio-economic situation. Regional inequalities, scarcity of resources and deteriorating public services are exacerbating inter-community tensions. Attacks targeting certain communities, notably the Peuls, are fuelling a climate of mistrust and fear. This situation, similar to that experienced in Burkina Faso a few years ago, underlines the importance of implementing urgent measures to prevent conflict escalation and protect vulnerable populations.
Evaluation objective
The aim of the “YεRεTALI” project is to strengthen the livelihoods and access to basic social services of individuals, households and communities in a sustainable and integrated way.
More specifically, it aims to:
- Meeting the immediate needs of the newly displaced after a shock;
- Protect the immediate livelihoods of already vulnerable populations, hosts and displaced persons;
- Support these populations in developing sustainable activities to strengthen their autonomy;
- Strengthen government services for multi-sector emergency preparedness and response (as part of ACF’s exit strategy).
To optimize results and ensure that the project remains relevant, Groupe URD will carry out two iterative evaluations with mini-seminars (EIMS): the first in January 2025 and the second in September 2025, 6 months before the end of the project. In complex and changing contexts, regular evaluations provide the necessary time for teams to reflect and adapt their response to changing circumstances, risks and needs.
Specifically, each EIMS will :
- Evaluate progress on cross-border, nexus and integrated approaches to emergency response and community resilience to socio-economic, security and environmental challenges in targeted communes/sub-prefectures in both countries;
- Analyze the relevance of strategies, approaches and the quality of implementation of project activities, ensuring that they respond effectively to the needs of local communities and are adapted to contextual changes;
- Identify the strengths and weaknesses of project management, assessing the coordination of internal players and with external players in project management;
- Provide technical and operational recommendations to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the “YεRεTALI” Project, taking into account the lessons learned from the first two years of implementation;
- Organize on-the-spot feedback sessions in both countries to share initial evaluation results with project stakeholders, facilitate information exchange and encourage collaboration to improve future project implementation;
- Organize a mini-seminar for feedback and co-construction of recommendations.
Crédit photo : ©Olympia de Maismont
Iterative Evaluations with mini-workshops (EIMS – Évaluations Itératives avec Mini-Séminaires): what are we talking about?
As indicated by its name, it is an evaluation process that is repeated regularly through the course of a project/programme5 that includes workshop sessions (mini-séminaires) with the organisation(s) whose activities are being evaluated, to validate the findings and co-construct the recommendations and next steps for responding to these findings.
In such process, Groupe URD evaluators bring an external eye to a project, helping staff who may be caught up in the day-to-day, to take a step away from the “coal-face” of implementation, take a broader look at the progress of the project and ask questions such as “Are we going in the right direction?”, “How can we build on good practices?” or “What do we need to change to better deliver to affected populations?”.
EIMS is not a one-time process. Over the course of the lifetime of a project, an EIMS may be conducted regularly at key moments – generally once or twice a year, depending upon the length of the project. Different aspects of the project may be examined during an EIMS, but there is a continuity to an EIMS process that accompanies a project from the start to the finish.
The mini-séminaire method aims to bring together key stakeholders to validate the findings, review or co-construct the good practices, lessons learned and recommendations and develop a plan of action to support the institutional response to the EIMS.
Carried out by
