What can we learn from evaluations of projects funded by the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women?

Two Women's Justice Initiative's Community Advocates who are leaders, women's rights educators, and mentors to their peers in rural Patzún, Guatemala. © Women's Justice Initiative/Liza Blackburn.

To improve global efforts to end violence against women and girls, we must effectively monitor and share lessons on what worked and what did not.

To this end, a key pillar of the 2015-2020 Strategic Plan of the UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women (UN Trust Fund) is to build a global Evidence and Learning Hub.[1]

Over the past five years, the UN Trust Fund team has sought to collect and disseminate practice-based knowledge and lessons learned from the work of its grantees, and has achieved this through support on evaluation management, promotion of national evaluation capacities, as well as periodic analysis, across the work of grantees, managed by the UN Trust Fund.

In 2020, the UN Trust Fund engaged an independent, external evaluation team to produce a meta-analysis based on 30 high-quality external evaluations commissioned by its grantees in 26 countries[2] covering projects implemented between 2015-2019. This meta-analysis will:

• generate and disseminate knowledge based on evidence from civil society organizations of what works and what does not work in the field of ending violence against women and girls; and
• contribute to developing an Evidence and Learning Hub to inform those who are working in the field based on quality assured material and practice-based knowledge from civil society organizations.

The meta-analysis has generated recommendations in three critical areas: effectiveness, impact and sustainability. These highlight the unique and diverse dataset of civil society organizations working to end violence against women and girls, as well as how this data can translate into practical do’s and don’ts when designing projects interventions on ending violence against women and girls. Key recommendations include:

• Time, skills and intensive community engagement are essential to change social norms in relation to violence against women and girls.
• Methods of data collection and measuring impacts need to be adapted when implementing short-term projects with limited resources.
• Institutionalizing project results, investing in networks and ecosystem building are different forms of sustainability over and beyond the scale-up of the project.

The findings of the meta-analysis will deepen the UN Trust Fund’s understanding of the projects it funds, enabling it to better support the management of projects and the crucial work of civil society and women’s rights organizations.

Read the meta-analysis report: English / French / Spanish. 

Read the meta-analysis brief here.

[1] UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women. Strategic Plan 2015-2020. https://untf.unwomen.org/en/digital-library/publications/2015/09/un-trust-fund-strategic-plan-2015-2020

[2]  Afghanistan, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bangladesh, Chile, Cambodia, Colombia, Democratic Republic of Congo, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Jordan, Kenya, Liberia, Mali, Malawi, Nigeria, Serbia, South Africa, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Republic of Tanzania, Tunisia, Viet Nam, Zambia.