Eastern Africa Social and Gender Norms Learning Collaborative Endline Evaluation Report

"The EALC helped me to connect and network globally and with key stakeholders within my country on the theme of gender and social norms."

Co-hosted by CARE International in Uganda (CARE) and the Makerere University School of Women and Gender Studies (SWGS), the Eastern Africa Learning Collaborative on Social and Gender Norms (EALC) seeks to build a network of practitioners, researchers, advocates, and evaluators that supports social and gender norms programming, strengthens expertise at implementation level, informs policy, and influences development outcomes. This endline evaluation, which covers the period April 2020 to September 2021, assesses the outcomes of the collaborative in terms of knowledge gained on social and gender norms and their integration into programme activities.

The endline survey consisted of an online quantitative questionnaire and qualitative interviews. Thirty-seven people participated in the assessment from 6 of the 7 Eastern Africa countries that take part in the EALC: Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi, Tanzania, Kenya, Ethiopia, and Uganda. (There was no response from Rwanda.)

Selected findings include:

• The majority (73%) of the respondents participated in EALC activities during the last 12 months, and 81% found the activities they participated in very useful or relevant for their work. The activity most respondents participated in was thematic group meetings and conferences. In that vein, most of the experiences have been around a EALC being a platform that provided participants with an opportunity to share and learn from each other and connect globally through experience sharing across the various countries.
• There is a significant increase from 38% at baseline to 54% at endline of respondents who reported they had some knowledge of social/gender norms theory and some understanding of how it relates to their work. Only 3% reported knowing little about social/gender norms or how it relates to their work.
• There is an increase in the effort made by organisations to engage communities to better understand social and gender norms, contributing to better programming and resource mobilisation to challenge gender and social norms that contribute to inequalities. This finding is confirmed by the 100% (N=37) of the respondents who reported incorporating social and gender norms perspective into their work, compared to the baseline, which was at 97%.
• The top most three challenges identified are similar to those identified during the baseline and include: lack of understanding of how interventions can be designed to engage with social/gender norms, measurement of social norms and how they change, and lack of funding.
• Much as the majority (73%) of the respondents felt their work is changing social/gender norms, this figure indicates a decline of 7% compared to the baseline. One explanation for the decline could be the fact that COVID-19 affected the operations of organisations. For example, community engagement was severely reduced, with most of the activities and meetings being conducted virtually. This situation could have reduced the impact on gender norms transformation.

Respondents weighed in on how the gains of the EALC can be sustained and (or) improved, as well as on what they would like to see more/less of from the EALC. To cite one example: Complement the monthly working group meets with real engagements of actors expected to act or influence on varied social gender norms. Comments on organisations' work on social/gender norms or networking included, for example: "It seems essential to mainstream the concept and general frameworks of social/gender systems in the global education in general and in different countries in particular."

Closing recommendations based on the evaluation include:

• Conduct more trainings for EALC members to increase their level of understanding on social/gender norms.
• Work with organisations to institutionalise the work of the EALC.
• Support organisations in a network to lobby for funding and designate funding for social/gender norms activities, especially local organisations.
• Adapt creative approaches of implementation of the activities to reduce the effects of COVID-19 on activities addressing social/gender norms.
• Offer specialised training for members on proposal development to position the EALC at the forefront to lobby for funds to support organisations' activities around social/gender norms.