Name of Client:
Department of Agriculture (DA)
Country:
Philippines
Length of Consultancy Assignment:
Start Date: 12 May 2014
Completion Date: 14 August 2014
Detailed Narrative Description of Project:
MRDP was designed as a series of four Adaptable Program Loans (APLs) over a span of 15 years. In its first five-year phase (2000-2004), MRDP APL1 covered 32 municipalities in five provinces in Mindanao to initiate and test a process for engaging local government units (LGUs) and rural communities in designing and implementing a rural development program. After successfully meeting the performance targets in Phase I, MRDP 2 was implemented in 225 municipalities in all 26 provinces in Mindanao for a period of five years, from 2007-2012. However, implementation was extended up to the end of 2014. MRDP2 had two-fold development objectives: (i) to improve livelihood opportunities of targeted communities; and (ii) to institutionalize a decentralized system for agriculture and fisheries services’ delivery that promotes participation, transparency, and accountability. Its specific objectives were to: (i) implement and refine institutional, financial, and community-based planning and management systems to support rural development within the targeted agricultural communities in all participating LGUs; (ii) strengthen and operationalize a decentralized agricultural service system through the improvement of capacities of targeted agencies/organizations and communities on collaborative agriculture-fisheries development planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and operation and maintenance (O&M); (iii) address community priorities for sustainable development and agricultural productivity; and (iv) institutionalize community-based mechanisms/systems to conserve and/or restore globally and locally important coastal and terrestrial ecosystems. The EOP evaluation was aimed at an assessment of the overall progress and achievement of MRDP2 with respect to the: (i) attainment of performance indicators for overall Program outcomes and impacts, as reflected in the Program RFM; and (ii) delivery of planned inputs and outputs and the attainment of the corresponding performance indicators for the four Program components. The evaluation related the progress and achievements to how the Program was designed and implemented, and distilled insights and lessons learned and recommended measures that will sustain the Program’s accomplishments and address deficiencies, if any.
PRIMEX fielded an Evaluation Team composed of an Agricultural Economist, a Statistician, a Rural Infrastructure Specialist, an Enterprise Development Specialist, a Governance Specialist, and an Institutional Development Specialist, who assessed the overall progress and achievements of MRDP2 in the Program area based on performance indicators reflected in the Program’s results framework and Monitoring (RFM). In addition, the Evaluation Team: (i) captured the emerging results and benefits and compared them with the situation in the non-program areas, hence, the need to cover “project” and “non-project” areas to assess the “with” and “without” and “before” and “after” subproject conditions; (ii) determined the progress of the program by component vis-à-vis the objectives, outputs, outcomes, and impact on the livelihood and socio-economic conditions of household beneficiaries; (iii) determined the problems encountered during implementation, the assumptions used in Program design, and the delivery systems for its various component interventions; and (iv) extracted lessons learned and insights from program implementation that would be useful in enhancing the positive gains and in curtailing the negative results, if any.