Developing a Progress, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning Framework

We are utilising decades of experience in building Progress, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (PEAL) frameworks and processes, alongside our track record of monitoring and evaluating Women’s Economic Empowerment (WEE) initiatives, to help develop a PEAL Framework that fits the needs and principles of the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation.

Macroeconomic policies have gendered impacts but many of them neglect important areas such as unpaid care work and reinforce and replicate power inequalities, including those between different genders.

Recognising this, the Foundation’s WEE Strategy (2022 – 2027) seeks to strengthen the gender-responsive macro-level WEE field and expand gender-responsive macro-level economic solutions. It also aims to strengthen WEE advocates working at the macro-level, and leverage the influence of international finance institutions (IFIs), multilaterals, and bilaterals.

Our role

Itad is supporting the Foundation to deliver its strategy by undertaking a PEAL process. We aim for the PEAL process to be iterative, conscientious and mutually enriching.

Through the process, we hope for Hewlett, grantee partners and the wider field to benefit from shared learning and understanding of how the WEE Strategy is delivering on its Theory of Change (ToC) and progressing toward improved gender-responsive macroeconomic policy supporting women’s opportunities, well-being and agency across East and West Africa.

Methods and approaches

Our overall approach will be guided by the Foundation’s guiding principles, Itad’s own complementary values and by the PEAL values as set out in the ToR.

We will work with the Foundation’s WEE team to develop a PEAL plan that is:

1. Inclusive: we acknowledge the reference to the GEG Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Justice (DEIJ) principles outlined by Hewlett, as well as committing to a feminist evaluative approach.
2. Relevant: the starting point for our PEAL plan development is the WEE strategy Theory of Change. All learning questions, data collection and analysis methods and reflection activities will flow from this specified Theory of Change. We will also reflect on the learning questions themselves with grantees, and co-develop indicators to ensure optimal relevancy.
3. Practical: we will also seek to navigate through complexity by using simple language, and focusing on getting the fundamentals of the PEAL framework right. In addition, our grantee engagement plan will be built around non-extractive and inobtrusive data collection approaches that minimise the reporting burden for Grantees
4. Adaptive: we recognise that the Foundation and Grantees will have to take an adaptive approach, responding to opportunities and changes in political contexts to achieve the WEE strategy outcomes. We will therefore take a flexible approach that can cyclically adapt to any shifting strategy priorities and activities on the ground.
5. Transparent: we will ensure that the content and processes surrounding the development and testing of the PEAL plan are accessible and transparent to Hewlett and all Grantees, thereby facilitating the adaptive learning process.

Outcomes and impact

We hope to develop and maintain a PEAL framework for the Hewlett Foundation’s WEE work that is reliant on clear and logical links between strategy objectives and portfolio activities. It will focus on achievable goals and be clear how much monitoring data a PEAL framework can realistically gather and use within given resources and timescales.