MEDIA DEVELOPMENT

Evaluation Report
Executive summary Jordan
Using opportunities of the digital space: Supporting
disadvantaged young internet users in Jordan andneighboring countries

dw-akademie.com

Background

Conclusions of the project evaluation

In the press freedom rankings for 2018 published by Reporters Without Borders, Arab countries are mostly at the bottom of the list. Thecountries in the Levant are ranked 132 (Jordan), 100 (Lebanon) and134 (Palestinian Territories) out of a total of 180 classified countries.
At the same time, the societies of these countries have a high percentage of young people. The civil war in Syria has led to a humanitarian disaster in the region and a growing influx of refugees to theneighboring countries Jordan and Lebanon.

Relevance: It can be confirmed that the objectives of the project corresponded to the media-relevant objectives and guidelines of theBMZ. Similarly, the regional focus and the focus on Jordan were inline with the BMZ's development policy objectives. The project canbe assigned to the key strategy field “Social Participation” of DW
Akademie’s strategic model. As far as Jordan is concerned, it can beconfirmed that the country's media development goals were sufficiently taken into consideration. Partly brought about by the project
itself, the commitment of the Jordanian Ministry of Education to MIL
is undoubtedly a relevant opportunity for DW Akademie. According
to the findings, the target group definition in the project objective
formulation was to be geographically confined to the Levant and thefocus on refugees replaced by an inclusion of refugees. The self-perception of project partners remained ambivalent as to whether theyperceived themselves primarily as recipients of funds, as project
partners or as beneficiaries of DW Akademie. The project partners
made efforts to identify the needs of the target groups, which included digital needs in particular. While all project partners praised
the flexibility of DW Akademie and the freedom granted in the design of measures, project partners relevant to the regional projectline A, which was aimed at informal networking, complained abouta lack of participatory involvement in the project concept. The project team did not take enough advantage of the opportunity offered
by increases in funds to make all necessary adjustments to the logframe. Based on findings which point out that, although the development orientation of the project was generally highly relevant, theconcept of the regional project line A was not sufficiently based on
sound needs analyses among the project partners, the Relevancecriterion is assessed as “overall fulfilled.”

The subject of the evaluation is the supraregional project with afocus on Jordan implemented by DW Akademie and financed by
the Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development(BMZ). The period under review was the current approval period(2017 to 2019).
The project was conceived as a pilot project and consisted of a supraregional project line and a project line implemented in Jordan.
The project objective in the logframe was, “Relevant actors in theMiddle East enable disadvantaged young people, especially refugees, to express their opinions freely and safely.” At the regional level, an exchange of digital rights advocacy groups was encouraged
with the aim of developing country-specific offerings for youngusers on digital security and privacy protection online. Moreover,journalists from the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region
were trained in data journalism. In Jordan, digital and analogue
products were created to enable young Jordanians and Syrians toget to know each other better and to dispel mutual prejudices. In
the Jordanian governorate of Irbid on the Syrian border, a training
program on Media and Information Literacy (MIL) was also established. The project partners included 7iber, Social Media Exchange(SMEX), 7amleh—Arab Centre for the Advancement of Social Media,
Leaders of Tomorrow (LoT), the Family and Childhood Protection
Society (FCPS) and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism(ARIJ). Since Jordan is not a focus country for DW Akademie, themeasures implemented had a pilot character. Based in Bonn andBerlin, the project team implemented the project in remote management mode.
A theory-based evaluation design was chosen for this evaluation.
Contribution Analysis was the key methodological approach. To
a limited extent, Outcome Harvesting was applied. The evaluation of the project's developmental effectiveness was based on
the OECD/DAC evaluation criteria. In February 2019, the primarydata collection took place as part of an evaluation workshop and agroup discussion with DW Akademie in Bonn, the subsequent field
phase in Jordan and Lebanon and by means of Skype interviews.

Effectiveness: The results logic was mostly conclusive and coherent,
but the project strand dealing with the qualification of journalists
and developed with additional funds and a set theme remaineddetached. The target values of five of altogether ten indicators are
expected to be achieved by the end of the project term. One will either be achieved or partially achieved, depending on the definition,and the remaining target values will only be partially achieved. In theproject line implemented in Jordan, the objectives of the two strands
were appropriate in principle. However, as part of the reconstructionof the intervention logic, adjustments had to be made to the output
formulations. In the regional project line, the output formulationsof the project strands were only partially appropriate. The digitalrights advocacy groups in Jordan, Lebanon and the Palestinian Territories did not jointly develop products on digital security and privacy
protection. They developed these products separately and just exchanged experiences and knowledge. The results level of the output
formulation of the project strand on the qualification of journalists
was too high. Evidence on the achievement of the result formulated
in the logframe can presumably only be provided subsequent to thecompletion of the cash-funds project period (end of April 2019), as even though DW
Akademie initiated the measures, it will notaccompany the implementation of the activities until their conclusion due to the limited
contract period. Since the individual measures, products and tools in all strands wereoriginal contributions, the results observed
were derived from the activities conducted
by DW Akademie and its project partners.
However, the unique selling points of theconceptual approaches varied. Unintended
negative effects were not observed directly but could be anticipated in one project
strand. Since the partly incomplete achievement of intended outputs and target valuesof indicators was primarily due to theoreticalerrors and not implementation errors, theEffectiveness criterion is rated as “overallfulfilled”.
Efficiency: Despite the travel costs of theproject team, it can be assumed that remotemanagement was more cost-efficient thanpossible operational costs of local officestructures. The allocative efficiency washighest where proportionality of financial
expenditure and results was given and/or
per capita expenditure was low. The allocative efficiency was lowest where results did
not meet expectations or were not sufficiently verifiable and/or administrative costs
and/or per capita expenditure were high.
The project partners’ own contributions
were mainly focused on the provision oftechnical expertise and networks. According
to the project partners, remote monitoring
did not have any negative effects on the cooperation. Depending on the organizational
strength and implementation capacity of
project partners, DW Akademie granted aconsiderable amount of freedom in the conception and implementation of individual
measures. The Efficiency criterion is rated as“overall fulfilled”.
Impact: Naturally, a pilot project diversifies
its activities and thus the initial impact is lessprofound. The broad impact of the project
also remained limited due to the available
resources and the clearly-defined mandate.
Broad impact can be achieved through multiplier effects of the training-of-trainers approach and the reach of digital products.
Anecdotal evidence on the effectiveness ofMIL activities was gathered in a focus group
discussion with Jordanian and Syrian youths.
The extent to which the measures Digital
Heroes and Mo7aka achieved results, suchas transfer of knowledge and behavioral
changes, could not be answered satisfactorily. The indicators in the logframe did not include coverage targets for digital products,
but nevertheless, project partners monitored the coverage. Such statistics, however,
have limited informative value regarding thepurpose of use. The Impact criterion is rated
as “partially fulfilled”.
Sustainability: As a pilot project diversifies
to put activities to test, sustainability is compromised to the extent that some approaches may only be initiated but not followed
up. This implies a focus on the most promising approaches in the application for a follow-up project. It can be assumed that theknowledge gained at individual level will besustainable. The project partners are not institutionally dependent. The scope of design
options and actions granted obviously enabled the generation of an increased senseof responsibility on the part of the project

partners. The project partly used existing
websites, partly initiated them. Maintenanceappeared to be secured, however, further
development seemed to be tied to additional
financial resources. The Sustainability criterion is rated as “partially fulfilled”.

DW Akademie

is Deutsche Welle’s center forinternational media development.
As a strategic partner of the Federal
Ministry for Economic Cooperationand Development (BMZ), DW Akademie
carries out media development projects that strengthen the human rightto freedom of opinion and promote
free access to information.
DW Akademie also works on projects
funded by the German Foreign Oﬃce
and the European Union — in approximately 50 developing and emerging
countries.

Contact

Dr. Jan Lublinski
Head Research and Evaluation
jan.lublinski@dw.com
53113 BonnGermany
DWAkademie@dw_akademie
youtube.com/DWAkademie
dw-akademie.com

The objective of the external evaluation is to provide a constructive assessment of the project results. It does not necessarily align with theperspective and planning of DW Akademie. Nevertheless, all ﬁndings were discussed in order to allow lessons learned to be incorporated into thedevelopment of future strategies.