Evaluation database

Evaluation report

2004 MGL: An Assessment of the Family Empowerment Strategy of the Convergent Basic Social Services Programme of UNICEF Mongolia

Author: Baidya, B. G.

Executive summary

Background:
Based on the lessons learned from the past cooperation, current MPO includes the Convergent Basic Social Services (CBSS) Programme, which seeks to strengthen the bottom-up planning. The main focus of the CBSS is on the promotion of community-based actions for the growth and development of children. Although the CBSS programme is sub-national in scope at present, it has been considered as a flagship programme of UNICEF Mongolia. As specified in the current MPO, piloting of the CBSS/FES was initiated in 2003 in five of Mongolia’s 21 aimags (provinces) and two districts of Ulaanbaatar, the capital city. Altogether, the CBSS programme covers a population of 59,511 (2003) in an area of 67,040 sq.km. This represents the CBSS/FES coverage of 2.47 percent of the total population and 4.46 percent of the total land area of Mongolia. Typical of Mongolia, the population density in all the CBSS pilot sites is very low and the population is widely scattered within the soums. Lack of roads and scattered population make access to services extremely difficult, especially in the harsh winter months of Mongolia.

Purpose/Objective:
The Government of Mongolia plans to expand the CBSS/FES to all other aimags of the country and has requested UNICEF to provide support for this planned expansion. In view of the request for the expansion and upcoming Mid-Term Review of the Country Programme in September 2004, UNICEF planned this consultancy for an overall assessment of the CBSS/FES.

The specific outputs expected from this consultancy are as follows:

an assessment of the family empowerment strategy in terms of its effectiveness in the creation of demand for, improving access to, and increasing utilization of, basic social services critical to child growth and development among the disadvantaged and vulnerable groups;
an assessment of the FES in terms of its contribution to policy and programme development;
an assessment of capacity building at national and sub-national levels;
an assessment of the institutional framework for the CBSS/FES and sustainability of the FES; and
an assessment of partnership with other developmental partners of Mongolia for the CBSS/FES.

Methodology:
Upon consultation with UNICEF, it was decided that a more meaningful way to conduct this assessment would be to observe, as much as possible, actual implementation at the community level. Fourteen days out of this consultancy period was devoted to field visits to aimags/districts and soums/ khoroos to talk to the stakeholders at the grassroot level and to observe the CBSS/FES activities at the communities. Although field visits were mostly to programme aimags and soums, the consultant also visited a non-programme soum (Burd) in Uvurkhangai aimag, a non-programme aimag. Altogether, three of the ten programme soums and all four urban programme khoroos were visited. In the course of this consultancy, consultations/interviews were carried out with a total of 102 persons, which included national counterparts, aimag/soum level officials, service providers, parents and caregivers, UNICEF staff members and donor agency officials. Similarly, the documents related to the CBSS programme were reviewed.

Findings and Conclusions
Although the implementation period of the CBSS/FES has been fairly short (about one year), the FES has shown very positive results in spite of several operational difficulties in implementation. The FES has been appreciated by the national- and subnational-level decision makers as well as service providers. The community leaders and families have also appreciated the FES and shown their commitment by allocating funds for CIPs developed through the FES. Some of the major achievements of the CBSS/FES are:

Developed a model bottom-up participatory process of planning.
Participating families have been educated, aroused and empowered to take actions for the growth and development of their children.
Has developed innovative approaches (ger-kindergartens, mobilization of volunteers, family growth monitoring, etc.) to enhance access of services to hitherto unreached children. This, together with empowerment of families, has led to increased demand and better utilization of services. This has also saved time of service providers. Greater utilization of services and increased knowledge of parents and caregivers have already resulted in improvements in key indicators used for family education and assessment purposes.
Has provided simple and practical indicators as well as a method to monitor and evaluate changes in the status of children at the family, community and soum levels.
Has increased awareness among service providers as well as the service takers on the importance and need for convergence of basic social services for the growth and development of children.
Has also helped service providers realize the importance of involving parents and caregivers in planning and implementing activities for improving the life of the children.

The mobilization of volunteers has been one of the innovative approaches for outreach activities. However, several issues regarding mobilization of volunteers have come up, e.g., incentive, quality, etc.

Internalization of the FES approach has been only partial. The FES has been internalized by the national government, to some extent, in policies, but it is yet to be practiced at the grassroot level on a nationwide basis. Some national level policy and programme documents (e.g., NPA) have included the FES as an approach, but participatory approach of planning is still not practiced in non-programme areas. Some programme aimags (Khentii, Dornogobi) have decided to adopt the FES approach in all of their soums but it is still at discussion stage and not the actual practice even in these aimags. Some bilateral and multilateral development partners of Mongolia have also shown interest in the FES, and some of them have already used it. Some INGOs (WVI, SCFUK, Catholic Church Mission) involved in community development activities in Mongolia have shown serious interest in the FES. They already had their staff trained on the FES with UNICEF’s support.

Success of the FES in putting children’s interests in the development agenda of different levels has been varied. At the level of programme soums, it has been relatively successful, however, it is less so at the aimag levels. It is mainly because soum level decision makers have been much more involved in the FES process than the aimag decision makers. Although children’s interests are now increasingly becoming part of the national development agenda, credit for this goes more to national and global level advocacy efforts of UNICEF than the FES per se. The CBSS/FES has been relatively successful in mobilizing additional resources at the sub-national level for CIPs. The contribution of sub-national level amounted to about US$ 70,000 or 27.3% of the total CIP expenditure. The families themselves have contributed a substantial amount of funds for the implementation of CIPs. This implies that a participatory, bottom-up planning process would be able to mobilize a substantial amount of additional resources for children. It should be noted that this amount does not include value of time (person days) of the local field implementers. If they were also to be valued, then the local contribution would be even higher.

A very high proportion of the total budget (52% in 2000 and 56% in 2001) of Mongolia is spent on the social sector. Social sector expenditures are also extremely high in terms of GDP proportion (22% in 2000 and 24% in 2001) (EGSPRS, 2003). In view of already high allocations to the social sector, it will be extremely difficult for the Government of Mongolia to allocate additional resources to the social sector in general, and for children-related activities in particular. Additional allocation of government budget for children will be possible only on the basis of real economic growth. Government will be hard pressed even to maintain the present proportion of allocation to the social sector in view of increasing demand for physical infrastructure.

One of the lacunae of CBSS/FES so far has been technical capacity building for the FES. Capacity to provide technical support to the lower level would need to be further strengthened both at the national level and at the aimag/district level. UNICEF/Mongolia also needs to strengthen further its staff capability to provide technical support to the FES. So far, UNICEF/Mongolia has relied on the services of a consultant and paid less attention to develop staff capability, even when the CBSS is being considered as the flagship programme that is to be implemented through the FES approach. It could be because the implementation period of the FES has been just over one year and, during this period, more attention has gone to the development of a model and its field implementation rather than in developing capacity.

Although the government has requested for the expansion of the CBSS/FES to other areas, both the government and UNICEF need to enhance their human and financial capacity for such an expansion. At the most, it might be possible to expand to some other soums within programme aimags as there does already exist some experience and capacity for the FES at these aimags. Since the FES approach has generated substantial interest among donors, there is potential to mobilize donor resources for the expansion of the CBSS/FES.

The NBC is a very appropriate focal point for a multi-sectoral, child-focused programme like the CBSS. However, NBC is constrained by its positioning and capacity. The institutional framework of the CBSS at various levels (aimag/district and soum/khoroo) is also appropriate, but all relevant sectors are not always represented there. The working groups at the aimag level consist of department chiefs rather than implementation level people. Given the numerous other responsibilities of the department heads, they hardly have time to properly communicate the decisions of the working groups to their implementation level people. Therefore, there is a need for a mechanism at the aimag level for the involvement of implementation level people.

The current institutional set-up for the CBSS/FES has no provision for children’s participation. However, children do participate in the planning process of the CIPs.

There is lack of clear strategy for institutionalizing the FES.

The CBSS/FES faces a number of operational level difficulties. UNICEF procedures are practical for large supports but less practical for supporting small projects like the CIPs. In spite of these difficulties, the FES approach of planning has shown its potential in improving basic social services.

Although the CBSS/FES has been considered the flagship programme of UNICEF/Mongolia, its linkages with other programmes of UNICEF still needs to be made clear. As a result, there has not been enough coordination of the CBSS with other programmes of UNICEF/Mongolia in terms of better convergence of these programme activities at the CBSS programme areas. Similarly, lack of coordination has led to less effective advocacy for the CBSS/FES.

Recommendations: