The Integrated-Programme for Community Capacity Building (hereafter referred to as ICCB) of the Bangladesh Northern Evangelical Lutheran Church Development Foundation (hereafter DF) has been under implementation since 2008. This mid-term evaluation was commissioned by Normisjon, the sole donor to the programme. The purpose of the evaluation is reflected in the following abstract from the Terms of Reference (Annex 1):

(a) Assess the progress (outputs and outcomes) of the project against project objectives and planned targets. Analyse reasons for gaps.

(b) Assess strengths/benefits and short-comings of integration of projects into a programme and suggest ways to overcome short-comings.

(c) Assess the...

The current programme integrates activities that were previously organized as separate projects: the Santal Development Project (SDP); the Education Programme; and components of the Health Project and the Participatory Community Development Programme (PCDP).

The team finds that the education project constitutes a particular case, in particular in those areas where schools are not co-located with other programme activities. This is discussed separately below.

For the other components, the actual implementation of the programme demonstrates good integration. This holds for key areas of programme management like planning, decision making, human resource management, financial management, monitoring and evaluation, and reporting. In those...

The team was asked to assess the potentials of the programme to produce the planned short-term and long-term effects. These are listed in section 2.4 of the programme proposal, but also in the formulation of programme objectives (section 3.2.2), and occasionally in other parts of the programme document. To enable assessment of the planned effects, the team extracted the various statements of expected effects – outcomes and impact – in a re-construction of the programme logic with this regard (since it was not presented in the programme documents), see Annex 7.

A limitation in assessing effects is that there is...

The team concludes that the ICCB programme is performing very well and has produced outputs according to, or beyond, planned targets. Staff performance at all levels of the organization is impressive. The team expects that the staff will produce further outputs in the remaining period, as well as achieving outcomes and contributing to positive long-term impact. Of particular interest is that even at local level the groups have, in cooperation with ICCB staff, collectively mobilized towards key aspects of the rights of Adivasis and poor people, such as access to government services, land issues and security (mainly for women), as...