Project evaluation strengthening the resilience of Bedouin communities in Palestine

Title From emergency food security to durable livelihoods: building resilience in the OPT
Location Cisgiordania, Palestine
Partners Oxfam Italia, Land Research Center, Palestinian Livestock Development Center
Funding Direction Générale de la Coopération au Développement (Belgium)

Contesto
The Bedouin people, historically pastoral and nomadic, lived in the Negev area at the creation of the state of Israel. The Jahalin Bedouin has since been displaced to the West Bank, around the Israeli settlement of Ma’ale Adumim, and the Jordan Valley.

Acknowledging that Bedouin communities are facing an enduring and structural emergency that gradually deteriorates their livelihoods, the project aimed to manage the humanitarian emergency in these communities and build different protection mechanisms as a way to build resilience. The project also envisaged to put some bricks to build a longer term development process.

Resilience, in this context, can be defined as the ability of a complex system and, in particular, as a social ecologic system (SES) to “absorb disturbance and reorganize while undergoing change so as to still retain essentially the same function, structure, identity, and feedbacks”. Resilience is inherently context based and multidimensional and multilevel.

Obbiettivo Generale
The Inclusive Development Unit has been involved to carry out the final evaluation of the project.

Cosa abbiamo fatto?
The evaluation methodology has been based on a set of tailored methods aimed at collecting information from multiple sources. Besides an in depth analysis of project documents, the evaluation collected both qualitative and quantitative information from project staff, relevant stakeholders, grassroots beneficiaries. Researchers involved main relevant stakeholders in semi-structured interviews, quantitative questionnaires and structured focus groups discussions.

Overall, the evaluation of this project has been particularly challenging given both the complexity of the context and the structure of the project.