| Name: | Evaluation of the Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM) Project |
| Year: | 2012 |
| Client: | FANRPAN |
| Country: | Malawi; Mozambique |
| Background: | Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM) was a three-year pilot project to help rural women farmers influence agricultural policy development in Southern Africa. The project sought to strengthen women farmers’ ability to advocate for appropriate agricultural policies and programmes. The goal was for women farmers to have access to the tools that help them farm more successfully, such as access to credit and better seeds, by ensuring that local and national policies and services address their needs. By empowering women farmers to advocate for their concerns, the WARM project aimed to ensure women farmers had what they needed to increase their income and provide for their families. FANRPAN piloted the project in two countries, Mozambique and Malawi with the intention to extend results and findings from these two countries to other Southern and East African countries. The WARM project used an innovative tool, Theatre, as a means of packaging and disseminating concerns and needs of women farmers in order to advocate for policy change. With this model, rural women farmers were organized into groups where they were given training on various aspects of theatre tools and techniques to best express the challenges they faced particularly in accessing markets, better seeds fertilizers and extension services. |
| Objectives: | The evaluation was intended to assist the WARM project team assess the achievement of the objectives, intended outcomes and impact of the project. The evaluation was also meant to capture the contribution of the project to influence changes in policies and realignment and access to markets in favour of women at both local and national level. Additionally, the evaluation sought to find out what changes if any had been experienced by women farmers in terms of producing more and getting more income from farming. The evaluation offered stakeholders an opportunity to capture lessons learnt from this experience and suggestions on how this can be rolled out in other countries. |
| Activities: | Jimat evaluated the Women Accessing Realigned Markets (WARM) Project on behalf of FANRPAN. Jimat carried out the evaluation in Malawi and Mozambique. We carried out an intense documentary review of reports and documentation available for the project. We also carried out field data collection in the two pilot countries. The team then put together an evaluation report.The evaluation report was be guided by an investigation of the following issues:Assessment of the relevance and quality of project designEvaluation of the appropriateness and performance of project management structureReview of the implementation process with special focus on documenting best practices, achievements and challengesAssessment of the quality of project results achieved (outputs outcomes, impacts)Assessment of the value for money and cost effectiveness of programming and approachMeasure results achieved.Draw lessons learnt from the WARM project and suggest recommendations for future programming |
