CED was established in 1997 by a group of local volunteers and was officially registered as an NGO on 19th November 1998. In the early years CED’s work focused on healthcare, agriculture and affinity groups for development. In more recent years, as natural resources have become such a contested livelihood issue for communities in CED target areas, the majority of CED’s work has been in the area of Natural Resources Rights and Management and securing people’s livelihoods through education and awareness-raising and advocacy.
CED has engaged in projects like community forestry, Prey Lang advocacy and protection, biodiversity education and surveys, indigenous people’s rights and advocacy, IP land titling, River Mekong wetlands protection. These projects aim to build local people’s knowledge and understanding of their rights, their capacity to advocate for and protect these rights, their ability to protect their environment and lobby for sustainable land use management by local government. Ultimately, these projects aim to secure local communities livelihoods and natural resources into the future.
CED participates in networks like River Coalition in Cambodia and 3 Rivers Network in order to keep up-to-date on the plans for hydropower-dam development on the Upper Mekong. Such developments will hugely impact on CED target areas in Sambor. CED is also participating in the DPA Mining Network as CED target areas in Kratie (Rolous, Sre Cheis, K’bal Damrei and Boeung Char communes) are current or planned mining company areas.
A strategic plan was developed in 2008 covering the implementation period of 5 years (2008-2012). On-going monitoring activities were conducted on a routine basis and a number of improvements or adoptions were made as results of the lessons learned. Annual review was conducted on 2011 by an internal consultant to assess the successes and challenges during the half way of its strategic plan implementation, including an emphasis for strengthening CED monitoring and evaluation system. The implementation of its first strategic plan will be completed by the end of 2012, and thus it is necessary to conduct a final evaluation, to be conducted by external consultants.
Goal and objectives
The overall goal of the evaluation is to assess achievements and challenges of program implementation and support functions during the implantation of strategic plan 2008-2012, in order to generate lessons learned and suggestions for improvement regarding program implementation and organizational practices in the next phase. The objectives of the evaluation are:
Program
- To review achievements, successes and challenges against strategic plan 2008-2012;
- To assess outcomes and impact of CED program on natural resource management and livelihoods and on communities that it worked with;
- To assess the relevance and effectiveness of CED’s work;
- Identify important lessons learned and make suggestions for future strategies to improve program implementation;
Organization
- To identify organizational systems established during the period, and their appropriateness in ensuring organizational learning and accountability;
- To assess leadership successes and challenges as well as staff feeling in working at CED, and suggest ways for improvement.
Expected outputs from the evaluation are:
- Relevant documents reviewed
- Important stakeholders including staff consulted
- An evaluation report (no longer than 40 pages highlighting findings, analysis of successes and challenges, lessons learned and recommendations produced and available