Monitoring and Analysing Empowerment
Start Date:
October 2006
End Date:
May 2008
Country:
International
Client:
Various
Funder:
World Bank
Project Information
OPM were contracted by the Empowerment Team in the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management (PREM) Division in the World Bank to develop and pilot mixed-method diagnostic tools that measure and analyze how specific country programs have an impact on empowerment. There had been substantial conceptual work done on measuring empowerment, pulled together by the World Bank’s Empowerment Team (see here for further detail) but there had been few attempts to monitor empowerment in policy and program cycles.
The project was implemented in four countries, each with its own policy or program focus:
In Bangladesh, the diagnostic tool investigated the impacts of the Social Safety Net Program.
In Ethiopia, the diagnostic tool helped the government assess social accountability in decentralising service provision.
In Ghana, the diagnostic tool contributed to the WBI program, “Decentralization and Improved Service Delivery,” by focussing on the relationship between citizen engagement on service quality.
In Jamaica the diagnostic tool supported the improvement of social policy execution and outcomes by measuring and analyzing the relationship between youth and service providers. A paper describing this experience is available.
Empowerment monitoring is designed to contribute to a strengthening of policy and program focus on interventions that impact on empowerment. In all four cases, “empowerment” refers primarily to the kind of engagement citizens have with government officials and service providers. The diagnostic tools go beyond looking at clients’ access to services or their level of satisfaction; they are also intended to measure changes in the capacity of citizens to effectively demand service improvements, and the capacity of service providers to actually provide these services.
Chapter 13 - Monitoring Empowerment in Jamaica (545k) This chapter documents the methodology that was developed during the past five years to monitor and improve social policy in Jamaica. Designed as a key component of the Jamaica Social Policy Evaluation (Jaspev) process, the methodology seeks to embed a combination of methods within a participatory process of institutional change at different levels of governance.
Monitoring Empowerment in Policy and Programme Interventions (202k) This paper describes methodological innovations emerging from a World Bank Trust Fund project that was initiated in 2006 to design and implement diagnostic tools to monitor empowerment in different policy or programme contexts in four countries. The paper focuses on experiences in Jamaica, where empowerment monitoring has been integrated with a community-based social policy monitoring process.