Final evaluation of the project “Libraries as Third Places”

Project Overview

Tamer Institute for Community Education is an educational non-governmental organization established in 1989 as a response to the urgent needs of the Palestinian community during the first intifada. Tamer works across West Bank and Gaza Strip focusing principally on the rights to education, identity, freedom of expression, and access to primarily targeting children and young adults to encourage and deepen opportunities of learning among them. Tamer institute is currently implementing the project of “Libraries as Third Places”. The project was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Economic and Development Cooperation (BMZ). The project was implemented in cooperation with 60 school libraries and 30 community libraries in the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. The locations were identified during the preparatory stage of this project and are located in 10 districts. It mainly aims to contribute to the fulfilment of Palestinian children’s right to healthy cognitive and social development through the promotion of libraries as inclusive third places.Therefore, a final evaluation is needed to provide a comprehensive and sufficient analysis of the project during the entire lifecycle of the project (3 years of operation) by conducting an independent external assessment of the level of achievement, performance of the set objectives and expected results/outputs/outcomes/activities listed in the project documents, observing the programme impacts (planned, unplanned, negative or positive), determining the successes and/or shortcomings, as well as the factors that have hindered or facilitated the success of the project, identifying lessons learned and best practices, in addition to provide actionable recommendations related to the theory of change, performance management framework, and strategic interventions of the project under evaluation. As well as recommendations to be shared with key stakeholders and to be used by Tamer institute for follow up and to enhance the quality of future projects and programming as well.To this end, Tamer Institute has contracted General Consulting and Training (GCT), to implement the final evaluation for the Libraries as Third Places” project according to their requirements and expectations.