DanChurchAid commissioned IOD PARC to conduct an evaluation of their resilience work in vulnerable communities. The evaluation was conducted between September 2020 and February 2021 and assessed social, economic and environmental resilience programmes against the three evaluation criteria of relevance, coherence and effectiveness. This was a theory-based evaluation, examining the policies and programming underpinning the resilience portfolio. The evaluation team took a realist approach to understand the different experiences of actors implementing and benefitting from resilience programming, including DCA staff and partners, as well as the recipients and beneficiaries of programmes. This involved examining the context, mechanisms and outcomes of resilience programming in each of the case study countries. Links with the triple nexus were examined, particularly for the case studies in Fragile and Conflict-Affected States such as Myanmar and South Sudan.

As this was a theory-based evaluation, i.e. an evaluation examining the Theory of Change (ToC) to identify pathways of change and understand how the intervention was intended to produce results, the team designed and ran a workshop with key DCA staff in the inception phase to design a specific resilience ToC for the purpose of the evaluation. Key deliverables for the evaluation included the resilience ToC, an inception report and a final report. The final report included recommendations designed to support DCA senior management and the Build Resilience team to strengthen their approaches to resilience programming.