3 minute read
grant programme
The funds from the Barents Secretariat are given to projects within five areas of work:
1. Business development 2. Competence-building and education at all levels 3. Environmental protection 4. Welfare/Culture 5. Indigenous people
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In order to structure an assessment of an intervention, e.g. a project, it is necessary to have an idea of the theory behind the intervention. Evaluations often refer to programme theory. Theory in this context should not be understood as an intricate academic exercise, but be used a practical tool to help bring forth the assumed relations between the interventions (inputs) and their outputs and outcomes, and the relations between the outcomes and the solution of the problems that the intervention seeks to reduce or solve. Programme theory, like other theory, suggests links between causes and effects. One could also think in terms of configurations of context, mechanisms and outcome (CMO): What outcomes are results of what mechanisms under what preconditions? The following questions are helpful in structuring the analysis of a project’s effects and impacts: 1) Is there reason to believe that the intervention, measure or project will lead to the anticipated output? Outputs are the direct results of the activity (the “input”). In the context of the Barents Secretariat’s grant programme the number of people trained in welding, or the time transmitted in Saami on the radio would be considered outputs. 2) Is there reason to believe that the output will lead to the desired outcome? Will the trained welders use their recently acquired skills for the purposes sought by the project, i.e. work migration? Will someone listen to, and understand, the Saami radio transmissions?
3) Is there reason to believe that the outcome will lead to the wanted impact? Will work migration of skilled welders and a Saami awakening on the Kola Peninsula make the regions of the BEAR come closer to each other? Will it contribute to a common identity and to a better social and economic development within the BEAR?
In other words, what mechanisms leading to the desired goal will the project bring into play? What makes A (the input) lead to B (the output)? What makes B lead to C (the outcome), and what is the link from C to D (the impact)? A definition frequently referred to defines programme theory as ”… a specification of what must be done to achieve the desired goals, what other important impacts may also be anticipated, and how these goals and impacts would be generated”1 . What then are the assumptions underlying the Barents Secretariat’s grant programme , what is its programme theory? The overall assumption is that regionally based projects will bring the Norwegian and Russian parts of the BEAR closer to the desired goals, which the Guidelines and Conditions for Grants from the Norwegian Barents Secretariat identify as a common identity and a better economic and social development. On a general level well-run cross-border projects in themselves are a mechanism that lead to a common identity and more economic activity. Therefore, the grant programme encompasses projects from a wide variety of fields. Also, there is great variation as to the type of projects supported by the Barents Secretariat. Not only large and prestigious project initiatives receives (co-) funding, but the Barents Secretariat’s granting policy also considers the needs of small, enthusiastic groups, like organised housewives in small Norwegian fishing villages and their Russian counterparts. Socalled people-to-people co-operation has been considered a useful mechanism to create a common, trustful identity in the Barents region.
1 Chen, Huey-Tsyh, Theory-Driven Evaluations, Newsbury Park CA, Sage Publications, 1990, p. 43.
