Welcome to the Improving Development Evaluation Podcast. I'm your host David
Wand and welcome to season two, episode three. It's been quite a bit of time
since my previous episode and this is because I've been waiting several months
from the United States Agency for International Development as well as the
United States State Department to both confirm in writing that an activity
monitoring evaluation learning plan or its equivalent has not been found for
the organization I'm going to talk about today that received five million dollars
from the United States Agency for International Development. So I'm going
to give you some background on that and what I'm doing next. So we're going to
talk about the Global Community Engagement Resilience Fund, GCERF, G-SERF
and you can learn more about this organization at their website gsERF.org.
They're an organization that claims to be preventing violent extremism as they
get funds from various donor countries. They then turn around as a fund and then
give those funds in terms of creating grants they call them or projects to
their implementing partners that are located in developing countries. If you
go to their website at gsERF.org there's some very good information that they
provide. The first thing they do is according to their strategy documents
they very clearly state that if you give them money they will achieve one, two,
three or four of the following expected outcomes because they argue that if
these outcomes are achieved this in turn will reduce or prevent violent extremism.
Those four expected outcomes are one increased social cohesion, two increased
ability to mobilize, organize, represent their own interests which they call
agency, expected outcome number three increased knowledge skills as well as
subsequent increases in income or access to livelihoods and expected
outcome number four increased confidence, critical thinking, life skills, self-worth,
resilience which they call sense of purpose. So it's very clear what they
expect to achieve if they get these funds which they then turn around and
give to implementing partners in developing countries in the form of
grants or projects. The other thing that's important to note on their website
at gsERF.org is they make the claim that they will be responsible for properly
evaluating whether or not these expected outcomes have been achieved which is
good and I quote, at the grant level each project is guided by a theory of change
and a results framework that would be the equivalent of an activity MEL plan
which is what USAID uses with outcome and output indicators requiring grantees to
collect baseline data, report quarterly and conduct final assessments. So given
this information I sent a request, a freedom of information request to USAID
in April of 2024 requesting all results frameworks from gsERF and this is more
importantly since they're a fund the results frameworks from the implementing
partners that they work with because I don't want to see the results framework
of gsERF for the five million dollars that I found from their annual report
that they received in 2023 because it could be just project management that
they sent funds or grants out to ABCD and E international development
organizations located in developing countries. No, I need to see the results
frameworks like they claim on their website for each grant that's been
created from that five million dollars. So I asked in April of 2024 USAID to
provide all of the results frameworks for all of the grants that were created
out of this five million dollars that gsERF received and in September I
received a letter from USAID saying they could not find any record of an activity
mail plan or its equivalent for 2022 and 2023. Then luckily on November 11th I
emailed USAID with the project details of the five million dollars because I
managed to locate the exact description of that five million dollars that USAID
sent to gsERF and it is the following activity ID number 77266 project number
SCTOOP21VC004. The funding agency is clearly stated as USAID. The managing
agency is clearly stated as the Department of State. The dollar amount
was five million dollars USD. The activity end date was September 15th 2023.
The international sector was government and civil society. The United States
government sector was counter-terrorism. So there was no confusion about this
money and I gave it to USAID and asked them again by email given that
information do you have any activity mail plans that come out of this five
million dollars and they replied sorry we don't but they suggested that I send
another freedom of information request to the US Department of State because
quote they are the managing agency for that award. Fine no problem. So I did on
December 4th 2024 I sent a freedom of information request to the United States
State Department with the same detailed information for the five million dollars
project number activity ID amount etc and then on January 23rd 2025 I received
another letter from the United States Department of State that states it has
no records of an activity mail plan or its equivalent for the five million
dollars USD. And they recommended in that letter that I contact the US
Agency for International Development but as I mentioned I'd already done that and
actually by email had indicated in detail the project number the activity ID and
everything. So with that result I then decided on February 6th to send a hard
copy letter to the chairman Brian Mast of the Foreign Affairs Committee along
with the copies of those two letters from the USAID and US State Department at
raising concerns that there were no outcome indicators for these four
expected outcomes that GSERF keeps claiming that they are achieving. There's
nothing wrong with claiming you're going to achieve these outcomes but as you
know from my podcast you either put up or shut up so if you're going to make
these claims you need to provide the measurement on those outcomes. Increased
social cohesion for example for 40 bucks you can buy a software called University
of California Irvine Net, UC net and for 40 bucks you can show increased
social cohesion between two groups. That's just one idea but we have no
idea what measurement on social cohesion they're doing at all and they I do
recall them having a project an event sporting event between madrasa students
having a soccer match against non madrasa non-religious students to create
increased social cohesion and trust between these two groups. That's just a
one example where you could measure using this software before the match
starts although it's not very scientific you could show that levels of density
and reciprocity between the two groups is low they hold the soccer match and
lo and behold the levels of density and reciprocity between the two groups that's
the madrasa religious students on one team and the non madrasa non-religious
public school students on the other soccer team playing that it's gone up
after the match. That's just one example of please attempt to measure the
expected outcomes using outcome indicators that you're claiming you're
achieving these outcomes. That's all we're asking for. So what I did was I sent a
letter to the chairman Brian Mast indicating that these results frameworks
that G-SERF is claiming that they are developing in collaboration with their
implementing partners in developing countries that Brian Mast demand that
they put these results frameworks for this USAID five million dollars that G-SERF
received on their website so we can actually see if they achieve their
expected outcomes. That's all we're asking about. We're not talking about
disputing whether or not they should get the money in the first place whether
it's charity whether it's meets American interests all we want to do is have them
put up or shut up. So that's the latest stage we are at right now and it I had
to send them a hard copy because most of these US government departments don't
have emails where you can send attachments. So I've sent a hard copy of
the letter to Brian Mast who's the chair of the Foreign Relations Committee
because they actually have a mailing address with the letter and the two
copies of the letters from USAID and US State Department saying they can't find
any results frameworks with this reflecting this five million dollars and
I've also sent electronic version of this letter to the US State Department
their contact form where you can't include attachments and we'll see what
happens but I very much doubt given the volume of projects they're reviewing
right now that I'll get a response but at least it's on file and it's been
documented. I will also send a copy of the letter to Brian Mast along with the
USAID letter and the US State Department letter to GSERF but I don't expect them
to reply or even respond but maybe maybe they will begin to put results
frameworks and the data that actually shows the outcome indicators and the
fact that they're achieving their indicators their targets such as
increased social cohesion has gone up from the project or increased skill
levels for women that they teach how to sew and subsequently increased incomes
have gone up that's you know the the second outcome or maybe hopefully
they've shown increased ability to mobilize or organize because they train
these individuals how to lobby their own local governments so maybe they have a
measure of increased knowledge and skill and finally expected outcome number four
maybe they have some measures of increased confidence critical thinking
life skills self-worth resilience these are all old very familiar constructs and
social psychology that they can easily measure at least attempt to measure and
off they go but we don't see anything so far so let's hope that they move in that
direction like all of the other organizations on my podcast where they
have not moved in that direction and we'll see if I get any response I will
update you in an additional episode but right now the American people have no
idea if G surf is actually achieving these expected outcomes that they claim
they are achieving on their website so without these results frameworks they
cannot make this claim that they're achieving these expected outcomes until
we get a look at those results frameworks and the outcome indicators to
see actually if they're properly validly measuring the expected outcome shouldn't
be difficult they can hire a social psychologist to design a psychometric
tool very easily to be very precise for the location and the target group that
they are targeting depending on the developing country so there's really no
excuse so they either have to put up and show they're achieving those outcomes or
just go down the other pathway and say look we can't prevent violent extremism
because we don't have the evidence that shows we're achieving any of these four
expected outcomes we're just a charity and we're delivering these services
because the people need them that's fine too but this middle ground is
unacceptable where they're claiming they're achieving these expected
outcomes and then going further and making the stretch that they're even
preventing violent extremism when we don't even know if the expected outcomes
that they claim you first have to achieve to then reduce or prevent
violent extremism we don't even know if they've been achieved so it's a bit of a
stretch as they say so thanks for listening and I'll give you an update if
there is one if there's a response from the Foreign Relations Committee and or
G surf on whether or not we're going to see these results frameworks otherwise
the American people are getting ripped off