Mid-term Review of Oxfam America’s Climate Change Campaign

iScale conducted a mid-term review of Oxfam America’s climate change campaign, and particularly the activities of the campaign between January and December 2009. The purpose of this review was not only to examine Oxfam America’s work on climate change over the past year, but more importantly to guide opportunities for improving the influence and effectiveness of the advocacy campaign on complex, social global issues. Read the Executive Summary of the final report.

In conducting the review, iScale combined various methodologies to provide a robust assessment of the campaign’s progress to date.  To assess Oxfam America’s achievement of the goals it identified for itself in its US campaign, iScale employed a method of process-tracing to identify the influence of Oxfam’s activities and provide the organization with insights into which goals it had achieved and those to which it might dedicate more attention.  In its assessment of Oxfam America’s programs in other countries, which followed more emergent paths, iScale developed influence diagrams  to retrospectively represent the implicit theories of change pursued by the country programs to assist the programs to develop more explicit strategies for building on their achievements.  Finally, to identify cross-cutting lessons for Oxfam America’s climate change campaign, iScale employed a comparative case study approach that used multiple data sources – from key stakeholder interviews to public polling data – to examine not only what change Oxfam America’s efforts had contributed to but also how and why.

This engagement with Oxfam America, is one of iScale’s action learning collaborations to to support and strengthen innovations for the meaningful monitoring and evaluation of international advocacy, which includes embedding such efforts within a broader context of planning, assessment, reporting and learning.