MEDIA DEVELOPMENT

Evaluation Report
Executive summary
Palestinian Territories
Leadership, management, institutional learning:
Analyzing project partners’ capacities in the Palestinian
Territories

dw-akademie.com

BackgroundThe dynamics of the conflict in the region continue to determine all
aspects of interaction between Palestinians and Israelis. Young Palestinians in particular bear the brunt of the consequences with regard to their development (freedom of movement and travel, accessto education and the job market, etc.). And it’s the foundations ofbasic freedoms such as freedom of expression and of the media thatare among the first to become subject to pressure, as demonstrated,for example, by the law on the prosecution of cybercrimes decreed
by Palestinian President Abbas.
Thus, young Palestinians are under pressure from outside as well asfrom within (politically, socially and economically). Since their use of(social) media is highly pronounced while their media competency
tends to be rather low, the project to be evaluated starts out fromthis very point: the target group is young people in the West Bank,
the Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem.
At the outcome level, the objective of the project is: Young Palestinians (…) are strengthened in their social participation particularlyin the digital space (DW Akademie’s strategy field “Social Participation”). The Media & Information Literacy approach is currently being implemented at the output level in various strategic approaches
within a range of four project strands (A,B,C,D) (funding period 2017–2019 of the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation):
A: Establishment of the project partner Pyalara as an MIL competence center at national and regional levels
B: Provision of sensitization and qualification initiatives for young
people as part of web security / privacy (7amleh)
C: Provision by NGOs Saraya and TAM of a forum of exchange ongender-based violence online (GBVO) for young people and theirmothers
D: Provision at the Media Development Center of Birzeit Universityof a range of courses as supplementary digital training for young
journalists

The goal of this evaluation was clarification regarding 1. management and leadership performance of the project partners, and 2.
promotion of institutional learning among the organizations involved. The OECD/DAC criteria provided the frame of reference forthe evaluation. These five DAC criteria were combined with the conceptual approaches of the evaluation (management and leadershipof the project partners, project management of DW Akademie, quality of the cooperation relationship between DW Akademie and theproject partners, and prospects of institutional learning). The designof the evaluation follows the principle of method triangulation, i.e.
that both quantitative and qualitative methods are to be employed,and data and information are interfaced from various sources. Thefield phase included a stay in Israel/Palestinian Territories between
February 3 and 8, 2019.

Conclusions of the project evaluation
DAC Criterion(average of allassessments)

Numeric value,
averageAssessment

Explanation

Relevance

4.5

comprehensively fulﬁlled

All ﬁndings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Eﬀectiveness

3.5

overall
fulﬁlled

Most ﬁndings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Eﬃciency

3.0

partially
fulﬁlled

Regarding performance, the ﬁndingsof the evaluation are ambivalent.

Impact4.0

overall
fulﬁlled

Most ﬁndings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Sustainability

3.75

overall
fulﬁlled

Most ﬁndings of the evaluation showthat the criterion has been met.

Overall assessment of the project partners: What stands out when looking at theoverall result — besides the good to very
good results in the respective categories—
is also the mediocre result for the DAC category Efficiency. This does not mean thatthe partner organizations’ management
and leadership are inefficient in themselves.
Rather, it became clear that relatively little
attention is given to the efficiency of processes in operations. Next to the premiseof “austerity”, internal processes are mostlyconsidered under the aspect of supervisionof staff. This aspect of control, in conjunction
with hierarchy, authority and charismatic
leadership within the organizations needs

to be put into perspective: three of the four
partner organizations we investigated aremanaged by female directors. All three ofthese are strong leadership personalities,
in the sense of charismatic leadership, andalso have long-standing experience in therelevant fields. This fact alone should be considered a positive aspect in a so called “hybrid society” (characterized by modernism,tradition and conservative patriarchalism).
Considering the more recent developments
in Palestinian politics in the context of Arabauthoritarianism, these organizations may
well become even more important in thefuture.

DW Akademie

is Deutsche Welle’s center forinternational media development.
As a strategic partner of the Federal
Ministry for Economic Cooperation
and 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.

ContactDr. Jan Lublinski
Head Research and Evaluation
jan.lublinski@dw.com
53113 Bonn
Germany
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.