GMEF FINAL FORUM 2011

1. Presentation: Integrating Gender and M&E at the District Level: GRSCDP’s Contribution By: Forster K. Boateng Project Manager GRSCDP GMEF FINAL FORUM 2011

2. Outline of Presentation • What is GRSCDP about? • Why Integrate Gender and M&E at the District level? • GRSCDP’s contribution to integrating Gender and M&E ? • Recommendations • Conclusion

3. What is GRSCDP About? • GRSCDP is one of Government’s interventions to mainstream gender in Ghana’s socio-economic development agenda with the aim to achieving the MDG 3 that calls for the promotion of gender equality and women empowerment.

4. Project Background Information • The rationale of the GRSCDP is to improve gender equitable socio-economic development. • The conceptual framework of the GRSCDP is underpinned by the following issues: • Poverty has a gender dimension and it therefore affects women and men differently. • Gender dimensions of poverty are directly related to the forms of employment and livelihoods in which men and women are engaged. Gender discrimination to productive resources exacerbate women’s vulnerability to poverty

5. Project Background Information • According to the APRM Report (2005), gender inequality is a major obstacle to the promotion of accelerated development in most developing countries including Ghana. • Lack of progress in gender mainstreaming is identified as a continuous development challenge.

6. Project Background Information • Government’s effort to implement a comprehensive policy to address gender inequality is constrained by: • Weak institutional capacity in gender focused development planning and M&E, management, service delivery and policy advocacy and dialogue at both central and district levels; • Limited access to marketable vocational skills training.

7. Project Background Information • The project therefore seeks to address the constraints through a two-pronged approach: • Institutional capacity strengthening for MOWAC and selected line ministries and district assemblies, and also building the capacity of staff of existing AfDB funded projects. • Providing support to women and youth in developing marketable skills and further enhance their access to financial and business development services.

8. Project Description • Project Sector Goal: To promote gender equitable socio-economic development. • Specific project objectives are to: (i) improve national capacities for enhanced gender mainstreaming; (ii) improve access to quality skills training for gainful employment and entrepreneurial development of women; Project is for a period of 4-yrs (It was officially launched on November 30, 2009)

9. Project Description • The Project has three components as follows: • Component I: Institutional Strengthening for enhancing gender mainstreaming • Component II: Support to Skills Training and Entrepreneurial Development • Component III: Project Management • Component III spells out the institutional arrangement for implementation.

10. Institutional Arrangement for Implementation

11. Key Project Interventions • Supporting the MOWAC’s re-engineering process; by providing scholarships for professional and skill training abroad for 4 staff from MOWAC for a period of 6-12 months in Gender and Development related issues. • Enhancing the institutional capacity of the Ministry of Women and Children (MOWAC) for the coordination of gender mainstreaming and women empowerment programmes through provision of Computers and training in ICT. • Strengthening the human resource capacity of Central Government Structures, Bank supported projects, and Decentralized structures through training in gender focused planning, budgeting/resources allocation and monitoring & evaluation.

12. Key Project Areas of Intervention • Increasing the enrolment of girls in value added professional trades (technical, electrical and mechanical) by providing scholarship for 500 girls from poor households. • Increasing enrolment at the vocational and technical training institutes by 2,100 through infrastructure upgrading for the 25 Community Development Vocational Training Institutes located in the ten (10) regions of Ghana.

13. Key Project Areas of Intervention • Improving quality of TVET through the development of curricula for skills relevant to the job market, and the training of teachers in the delivery of the new curricula. • Provision of training and ICT equipment/tools for Vocational and Technical Institutes • Training of Micro-Finance Institutions and Business Development Service providers to render better service to women micro and small entrepreneurs. This is to assure gender sensitive lending. • Training of women micro and small entrepreneurs in business development and management skills.

14. Project Beneficiaries • MOWAC and other line Ministries • NDPC • GSS • 25 CDVTIs • 500 Girls from poor households • 59 District Assemblies • Staff of other Bank funded Projects in the country. • MFIs & BDS Providers • Micro and small women entrepreneurs

15. PROJECT BUDGET: Sources of Finance

16. Why integrate Gender and M&E? • Gender encompasses the economic, political and socio-cultural attributes, constraints, and opportunities associated with being male or female. • Women and men have different needs and face diverse constraints due to social and economic roles. • One major obstacle that has consistently hampered progress to gender equality is the inability to mainstream gender issues in developmental activities and monitor progress over time at the national, regional and district levels.

17. Cont. • To address this handicap, M&E seeks to establish an appropriate results-based for performance measurement of the relevance, efficiency, effectiveness, impact and sustainability of development programme/project interventions. • To promote Gender Analysis of M&E System, which is a building block for gender sensitive M&E.

18. Gender Analysis of M&E • Monitoring: a continuous assessment of progress achieved during implementation of for example a SMTDP in order to track best practice, to identify reasons for success and failure, and to take necessary corrective action to improve performance. • It focuses mostly on the inputs, outputs and processes related to an activity

19. Gender Analysis of M&E • Evaluation is the systematic and overall objective assessment of project/ programme for example GRSCDP, its design, implementation, achievements and results. • It centers mostly on the outcomes and impact.

20. Gender Analysis of M&E • Gender Analysis of M&E System therefore requires a mix of input, output, process, outcome and impact indicators that reveal the extent to which an activity has addressed the different needs of women and men, boys and girls. • The information should feed into the project/programme on a continual basis to improve implementation and maximize efficacy and efficiency.

21. Gender Sensitive M&E Plan • Gender Sensitive M&E plan requires that gender becomes an integral part of monitoring, evaluation and review exercises.

22. GRSCDP Approach to integrating gender and M&E • GRSCDP engaged the services of an M&E Firm to carry out an assessment of the gender sensitiveness of MMDAs M&E Frameworks. Findings: • The use of the NDPC planning guideline has compelled the MMDAs in building gender concerns into every stage of the planning process. • Gender is considered in the design, and the development process as a whole, it is often weakly or not at all addressed in monitoring, progress reporting and evaluation. • Weak gender analytical skills to develop the requisite gender sensitive indicators for M&E.

23. GRSCDP Approach to integrating gender and M&E • Provided long term gender training for MOWAC staff. • Developed and trained GDOs and Planners in the use of Gender Analysis Framework and Planning Template for mainstreaming gender into Agriculture, LED, Infrastructure and Poverty Reduction interventions at the MMDA level

24. GRSCDP Approach to integrating gender and M&E • Developed curriculum for the training of officials of central and decentralize government structures in mainstreaming gender into planning, budgeting, resource allocation and M&E.

25. RECOMMENDATIONS • Gender perspectives must be articulated and integrated throughout the whole MTDP planning , M&E system design process and development of the logical frameworks. • To achieve this, there is the need to strengthen the consensus of different stakeholders and thus increase impact of gender-sensitive programming by supporting widely based partnerships.

26. COnt • Advocate for the promotion and use of sex disaggregated data as well as gender analysis at all stages of programme and projects lifecycles in order to identify and address the gender implication of issues through appropriate gender sensitive interventions.

27. Cont. • Establish a network of support. The network of gender specialists and gender focal persons and network of evaluation focal persons. It will play an important role in providing guidance, support, and quality control in the MTDP and M&E Plan development and implementation stages.

28. CONT. • NDPC should review and adapt the GAF (infrastructure, Agriculture, LED and Poverty Reduction) developed by MOWAC/GRSCDP to the planning guideline for the MMDAs to make their MTDPs and M&E Plans gender sensitive.

29. CONT. • NDPC and GSS should integrate gender statistics, gender planning, gender budgeting and gender analysis into its curriculum in the training of MDAs and MMDAs Development Planning Officers, Budget Analysts, Internal Auditors, Finance Officers, Coordinating Directors etc. to support the mainstreaming of gender into the operations of the MMDAs.

30. Conclusion • GRSCDP through the development of the curriculum for the short term gender training has integrated gender planning, gender budgeting and gender analysis as major analytical tool in equipping MDAs and MMDAs with the requisite knowledge and skills to mainstream gender.

31. END THANK YOU