Management Response

Recommendation:

UN Women China should continue efforts to sustain growing interest from various stakeholders and to attract new partners and sources of funding to drive the agenda of women empowerment and climate change forward. The QWFIS project provides UN Women with more evidence to showcase progress and share key messages and lessons learnt. This opportunity should be used to engage with other provinces, counties and villages in the country, continue partnership with IFAD and RP and explore new partnerships with other UN Agencies (e.g., FAO). (Findings 1, 2, 12, 13, 14, 15, 19)

Management Response:

The programme team is continuing efforts to sustain growing interest from Qinghai to Hunan province to drive the agenda of women empowerment and climate change. The programme team will use evidence from QWFIS project to engage with Hunan province, continue partnership with IFAD and explore new partnerships with other UN Agencies.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments 1. UN Women China should continue efforts to sustain growing interest from various stakeholders and to attract new partners and sources of funding to drive the agenda of women empowerment and climate change forward. UN Women China 2021/12 Completed UN Women has launched a trilateral partnership with International Fund for Agriculture Development (IFAD) and Hu’nan Department of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (DARA) to increase climate-resilient agriculture productivity and rural economic vitality in 10 counties in the province through women’s empowerment. The Memorandum of Understanding between UN Women, IFAD and DARA is signed on June 28th. 2. Use evidence from QWFIS project to engage with Hunan, counties and villages in the country, continue partnership with IFAD and RP and explore new partnerships with other UN Agencies UN Women China 2021/12 Completed The Hunan project design has incorporated experiences from Qinghai project.

Recommendation:

The project approach and strategy provide a good framework to identify challenges rural women face and to design activities in response to those challenges. UN Women China is encouraged to continue this type of projects during the next strategic period, in order to foster ownership of the reform processes it launched together with the Chinese authorities and to see through the changes it initiated. One option would be to keep the current counties in order to build continuity and monitor moving forward and add more counties from other provinces following a needs identification and selection process similar to the one conducted for this project. (Findings 16, 17, 18)

Management Response:

Further interventions will happen when available funding is mobilized, while knowledge exchange among Qinghai and Hunan could already happen through the convening of UN Women.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments Develop a project building on QWFIS experience taking further the agenda of women’s empowerment as a key element to successfully addressing climate change, enhancing agrobiodiversity, transforming food systems and increasing family incomes. The timing is appropriate as the Chinese government released the 14th Five Year Plan, which is an opportunity to put forward project promoting climate justice in China (e.g. transition to green economy, gender transformative, climate smart agriculture and sustainable food systems; enhancing and leveraging the capacity of women and girls to build resilience to climate and disaster-related risks). UN Women China 2021/12 Completed The Hunan project design has incorporated experiences from Qinghai project.

Recommendation:

UN Women China is encouraged to keep up the good work in terms of project governance and management. The current practices allow for a timely and useful information, ensure transparency of actions, and give UN Women China the proper channels for accountability towards stakeholders, partners and donors. The regular meetings and project site visits were appreciated by all stakeholders. However, the evaluation also noted that local stakeholders may have had diverging expectations regarding project interventions (e.g. expected the project to provide ‘hard’ investments whereas that was never in the scope of the project). The recommendation is to clarify expectations from the get-go and re-confirm these during project meetings. (Findings 5, 8, 9, 10)

Management Response:

The programme team sets up consultation workshop among all relevant stakeholders, including Responsible Party (RP) and other local government sectors to make clear the expectations. Apart from regular monitoring, identifying appropriate RP is vital. Direct implementation partners should be local governments, to increase their ownership to fulfill their obligation, which is also in line with CEDAW.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments Consider setting up a project steering committee, which would convene regularly (e.g. twice a year) to provide strategic guidance to project implementation but also give the opportunity to all project partners to clarify expectations arising from implementing activities in the field. UN Women China 2021/12 Completed Within the Hunan project, the management and coordination mechanism has been set up. Local government partners including agricultural sector and women's federation have been mobilized. Comprehensive project management and implementation training has been conducted by IFAD and UN Women to local government partners.

Recommendation:

The project has set up a good M&E process and tools. It allows gathering information on a regular basis thus enabling adequate monitoring. However, UN Women China is encouraged to think how to include more indicators that gauge unquantifiable aspects such as ‘capacity built and used’, ‘knowledge acquired and used’, and indicators of change to track the extent to which an intervention is producing the changes anticipated in the results chain. UN Women China is encouraged to recruit a M&E specialist, who would work with the provincial levels and the RP to streamline the approach. The expected project results and outcomes are complex processes involving many moving parts. A list of quantitative indicators (no matter how well formulated) is never going to gauge such complex processes and will always tend to collapse multiple aspects into simple-to-track numerical indicators. Therefore, the recommendation is to consider a twin- track approach to monitoring and reporting. (Findings 11, 16).

Management Response:

The office has hired a M&E specialist, who has started to work since December 2021.

Key Actions Responsible Deadline Status Comments Consider a twin- track approach to monitoring and reporting. This connects monitoring the quantitative results and contributions of the Results Framework (Track 1) to monitoring the overall long-term outcomes (Track 2), which are often qualitative or narrative-based. Track 1 will be monitored through the indicators in the Results Framework, while Track 2 will be monitored through the application of the Most Significant Change (MSC) methodology. The MSC approach involves generating and analysing personal accounts of change and deciding which of these accounts is the most significant – and why. MSC is not just about collecting and reporting stories but about having processes to learn from these stories. MSC can be very helpful in explaining HOW change comes about (processes and causal mechanisms) and WHEN (in what situations and contexts). It can therefore be useful to support the development of project theory (theory of change, logic models). As such, Track 2 will capture stories of progress and results – that is, qualitative demonstrations of the impact that the project is having on the ground, to ensure a holistic picture of progress is received over time. These stories could be collected via the project Facebook page or website, creating an open call for members, trainees, and visitors to submit narrative examples of how the project had an impact. UN Women China 2021/12 Completed UN Women China office has hired a M&E specialist, while the project team has a consultant with technical strengths on monitoring and evaluation. Meanwhile, the development and approval of project document will go through regional Project Appraisal Committee for quality control.