Ex-post Outcome and Impact Evaluation of Rural Development Projects - Experiences of a Non-Governmental Organisation

The sustainable positive outcomes and impacts of development cooperation have been at the focus of public discussion for many years now. The need to credibly demonstrate outcomes and impacts under resource constraints poses special methodological challenges to project-execution and funding agencies in Germany and partner countries, especially when they have to keep their expenses within reasonable bounds in their role as recipients of private donations and public funding. As a non-governmental organisation, Welthungerhilfe took this challenge and subjected six rural development projects to an ex-post outcome and impact evaluation in 2007. The aim of the independent evaluation was to analyse completed projects in terms of their sustainable outcomes and impacts in attaining selected millennium development goals and to identify those factors critical to success as well as those factors constituting constraints so that they should be taken more into account in the future in project planning, implementation and evaluation. Important and often sustainable development outcomes and impacts on poverty, hunger, gender equality and resource management along with the respective key internal project factors and external factors were identified with an adapted evaluation approach using a combination of different methods.