The ‘Promoting Safe and Fair Migration from Kenya to the Gulf States’ focused on strengthening pathways for ethical labour recruitment from East Africa, with an anchor in Kenya, to the Gulf, with a specific focus on Qatar. It was implemented by Verité in close partnership with the Kenya office of the International Organization for Migration (IOM) and Lawyers Without Borders and was funded by the United States Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour (DRL). The project targeted stakeholders across sectors in Kenya and Qatar and internationally, including the private employment agency industry, corporate partners, government, civil society organisations, and migrant workers.

The final evaluation set out to assess the project’s effectiveness, progress towards achieving long-term goals, and the likely sustainability of achievements and change. It also aimed to extract lessons from the implementation process to inform future interventions.

Throughout the evaluation, IOD PARC offered a consultative, participatory approach. We supported Verité to review and tighten the project’s monitoring and evaluation framework and retrospectively develop a theory of change. The evaluation team worked with Verité to establish a set of key evaluation questions and sub-questions to focus the evaluation.

IOD PARC then developed an evaluation matrix to frame the inquiry and help systematise data collection and analysis. The team conducted a document review and survey and held semi-structured interviews with Verité, implementing partners, and immediate beneficiaries to collect data. Having been commissioned prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, the evaluation process was adapted and tailored as the pandemic progressed.

The evaluation culminated in a Final Report that offered findings against each of the evaluation questions, a set of lessons learnt and recommendations to guide future Verité work.