Family Health International (FHI 360) has been running the No Means No program in Ethiopia since 2020 as part of USAID’s Caring for Vulnerable Children (CVC) activities focused on primary prevention of sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and HIV among 9-14-year olds. The No Means No program (called “IMpower-IMsafer” in Ethiopia), is implemented by 5 Prime Implementing Partners (IPs) and 24 Local Implementing Partners (LIPs) located across 7 regions of Ethiopia. The program started in Ethiopia in 2020 when 30 Ethiopian women were certified as Instructors, and of those, 26 were certified as Trainers of Instructors (TOIs), also known as Lead Trainers for other projects, in 2021. Those women have since proceeded to train over 750 Ethiopian women as Instructors, who then trained over 75,000 adolescent girls by the end of 2021.
As part of the activity plan for ongoing partnership in FY22, NMNW and FHI 360 jointly developed a Technical Program Quality Assessment (TPQA) designed for Implementing Partners. FHI 360 provided technical guidance based on Program Quality Assessments from other CVC programs while NMNW provided the technical standards required to implement the No Means No program with high quality. The objective of conducting this TPQA was to identify the partners’ strengths and opportunities to improve the No Means No intervention in the Ethiopian context.
The TPQA tool designed for use in Ethiopia assesses the No Means No program at three stakeholder levels – partner, Instructor, and beneficiary – which are weighted equally in the tool. Based on the results, partner performance is classified as “good,” “needs improvement,” or “needs immediate remediation.”
At the partner level, the TPQA assesses if the partner meets NMNW minimum requirements for implementing partners.
At the Instructor level, the TPQA assesses if the partner’s team of Instructors are teaching the No Means No curricula with fidelity and quality. These standards are evaluated through Instructor Development Visits (IDVs), where observers attend No Means No classes and monitor Instructor performance and program delivery.
At the program beneficiary level, the TPQA assesses the level to which partners are reaching benchmarked standards of program outputs and outcomes with adolescent girl beneficiaries by reviewing monitoring data, beneficiary feedback, and pre-post questionnaires.
NMNW conducted a TPQA for four LIPs in four different regions of Ethiopia in partnership with FHI 360 and the regional Prime partners in May 2022. The regional Prime partners conducted additional assessments with other LIPs in their region and submitted the results to NMNW to include in a final report.
After the assessment part of the TPQA process was completed, each LIP worked with their Prime partner to design a “Performance Improvement Plan” that addressed any gaps or areas of improvement identified in the course of the assessment. These Performance Improvement Plans were then compiled to inform the design of technical mentoring sessions that NMNW and FHI 360 jointly led for an audience of Prime Partner staff, LIP staff, and TOIs from all program regions.
NMNW is incredibly excited about the TPQA tool and the opportunities it presents for our other global partners to be able to assess the quality of their No Means No programs. NMNW has already started to use our learnings from this project to adapt this tool with other global partners and contexts as needed. Please stay posted for more information and let us know if this type of activity is of interest to your organization!
Finally, NMNW would like to appreciate and thank FHI 360 for their partnership and hard work towards ending gender-based violence in Ethiopia!
