Evaluering
Development Cooperation through Norwegian NGOs in South America
In order to increase knowledge about the development cooperation carried out in South America through Norwegian NGOs, the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) have commissioned this state-of-the-art study.The objectives of the study are to:•Present an overview of the Norwegian NGOs that are, or have recently been, working in South America, focusing on their activities, thematic and geographical priorities, qualifications and practices. The overview should include the organisations' local partners.•Identify and present an overview of existing knowledge and sources of information about the engagement of Norwegian NGOs in the region. This overview should include an assessment of the necessity for a comprehensive evaluation of the development cooperationthrough Norwegian NGOs in South America. Findings •Significant reduction of Norad funds to South America; a 31 per cent decrease since 2003.•Bolivia, Ecuador and faith-based organisations dominate the picture; Norwegian missions in Development (NmiD) an umbrella NGO for several mission organisations, channels close to 50 % of Norad's 'civil society funds' to South America.•Most of the Norwegian NGOs combine rights-based 'mobilisation-oriented service delivery' with 'organisational capacity-building'.•Small budgets may threaten the learning capacity.•Assessment of the performance; the projects funded by Norad through Norwegian NGOs and their local partners are implemented according to plans.•Target groups; the 'service-delivering NGOs' tend to target marginalised children and youth: street children, drug & alcohol addicts, children in areas without access to school, while the 'mobilisation-oriented service-delivering' NGOs target social groups denied basic human rights.•Partners and partnership relations; CSOs which support social movements for profound political-social changes. As a rule the Norwegian NGOs enter into partnership with NGOs operating at the national level.•Norwegian NGOs'roles and value added; while the Norwegian NGOs do respect the partners' autonomy with a hands-off approach, the Team found 'value added' in the partnerships.•Coordination and coherence; extensive coordination within nationalnetworks of their partner organisations. Many NGOs emphasise coordination with international organisations or networks. Basic administrative arrangements are in place, but the quality assurance system can beimproved. As to basic financial, organisational and administrative routines connected with planning, budgeting, accounting and auditing, we found that all the Norwegian NGOs had a system in place. However, feed-back to the donors from the clients/target groups in terms of user satisfaction surveys, trustworthy complaints mechanisms, focus group interviews, or user assessment meetings are not used by any of the observed Norwegian NGOs. Les nyhetssak om rapporten