Obama Foundation: Girls Opportunity Alliance Learning and Evaluation Partnership

The Girls Opportunity Alliance (GOA) is a programme of the Obama Foundation, which seeks to empower adolescent girls around the world through education, allowing them to achieve their full potential. GOA’s vision is a world in which girls everywhere have the resources they need to transform their lives and the lives of their families and communities. The overall programme aims to serve grassroots organisations and leaders working to break down the barriers that keep adolescent girls from fulfilling their potential. Since its launch in 2018, the GOA has worked tirelessly to build a network of over 4,000 girls’ education champions and raise funds for promising grassroots projects focused on girls’ education and empowerment. 

Between September 2022 and August 2023, Kore Global was engaged by the Obama Foundation as the Learning and Evaluation partner for the GOA. The overall objective of the partnership was to improve the ability of the GOA to capture the outcomes of its work and to surface key learning to inform the future direction of the program.  Over a period of 10 months we:

• Designed and implemented a comprehensive monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) framework and related tools for the GOA to track the outcomes and impact of its work including its funding support to grassroots organizations.

• Assessed the impact of the GOA’s efforts to drive awareness, action and funds to advance adolescent girls’ education and empowerment outcomes. 

• Led a series of capacity-strengthening workshops on MEL for the GOA’s grassroots grantees. 

• Produced a final evaluation report and related deliverables including practical recommendations.

• Served as a strategic thought partner and adviser on programme design and delivery for the duration of the assignment.

Guided by feminist evaluation principles, a theory-based and developmental approach was employed to analyse the GOA program’s work to date, assessing its strategies and impact. The evaluation questions were guided by select evaluation criteria* including effectiveness, relevance and impact. Gender equality and social inclusion (GESI) and monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) were also explored as cross-cutting themes. 

The evaluation methodology employed a mixed-method approach, which encompassed several components including a desk-based review of key documents and existing monitoring tools and data, qualitative data collection with grassroots grantees, and an online survey with the GOA grantees and supporters. By closely examining progress within each of the program's three strategic pillars, we produced valuable insights and key learnings, thereby contributing to the informed evolution of the GOA’s future direction.

*As defined by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development's (OECD) Development Assistance Committee (DAC). OECD (2020). Better criteria for better evaluation. Revised and updated evaluation criteria.