Evaluating and Learning from our Asia Refugee Cluster Work

About the Cluster

Our Asia Refugee Cluster work from June 2019 to December 2022 aims to strengthen the rights and protection for displaced people in Southeast Asia. The projects implemented by our NGO partners included a wide range of interventions such as: advocacy for policy and law reform, legal assistance and legal representation, education, vocational training, coalition building, and capacity strengthening with advocates, CSOs and refugee communities.

Evaluation

Porticus commissioned an external evaluation of the Refugee Cluster by Lighthouse Partnerships. As the Cluster’s work was greatly affected by the pandemic, we decided to focus the evaluation on two areas: 1) learning and adaptation and 2) contribution to systems change. Each focus area had a specific evaluation methodology. We designed the evaluation to produce learning and insights for Porticus, NGOs and the wider sector with participatory data collection and sensemaking activities to grow the evaluation capacity for all participants.

The key recommendations include:

1. In grant application processes, we should identify and plan for uncertainty and learning opportunities, including allocating adequate resources to learning.
2. Porticus, MEL partners, and partners should contribute to a stronger learning culture in the sector.
3. Experiment with practical and feasible methods for documenting and embedding project lessons within organisations.
4. Experiment with ways to share learning beyond organisations (Porticus, partners, MEL partner), including people with lived experience of displacement.
5. Look for and experiment with useful and meaningful systems thinking processes to identify, analyse and communicate the complexity and interconnectedness of target problems and outcomes.
6. Reflect on how organisations who focus on service delivery and individual-level outcomes can strengthen and better articulate the contribution of their work to systems change.
7. Strengthen our capabilities to articulate and evidence our outcomes (Porticus and partners with help of MEL partner).

 

For a full list of the improvements we are committed to, please download the management response and a summary of the evaluation report below.

Learning

As we strive to live out our Daring Goal in Meaningful Participation, we have also tried to build in participation into our Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) work. A one-day workshop on ‘Power, Partnerships and Participation’ was designed and facilitated by people with lived experience and Lighthouse Partnerships last year in Malaysia with participants from refugee communities, civil society organisations, and funders. It aimed to create a space for Porticus’ partners in the refugee sector in Southeast Asia to share, listen and reflect with one another about issues of power, meaningful participation, and partnerships. We dived into deep discussions about how we can truly practice meaningful participation and shift power imbalance to create new narratives.

We are excited to share the learnings that have been captured from this valuable workshop. Find out more in the learning brief below.