As the implementation of the project it@coops is on its last year of implementation, InWEnt decided to conduct an evaluation. It is assessed if the project was able to meet its goal of “addressing poverty alleviation by benefiting members of Southeast Asian co-operatives by affording them basic and advanced information technology (IT) skills while stimulating virtual cooperation thus making them globally competitive”. it@coops is a three-year (2004-2007) project being implemented by the Asian Women in Co-operative Development Forum (AWCF) in partnership with InWEnt gGmbH and Germany’s Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ).

In the evaluation being conducted with the aim of further improving the services of the it@coops project, Mr. Benjamin Coester, InWEnt Consultant, will look into the three pillars of the it@coops project, namely, a) capacity-building in ICT of selected co-op members, b) creation of business development centers (BDCs), and c) forming a co-op virtual network. In his field visits, which will run for about two weeks per country, he will be visiting selected co-operatives who are members of the Forum for Indonesian Co-operative Movement (FORMASI, Indonesia), the National Confederation of Cooperatives (NATCCO, Philippines), and the Credit Union League of Thailand (CULT, Thailand). From 19 April until 10 May 2007, he already visited eight co-operative affiliates of NATCCO and conducted his evaluation by asking selected co-op members to answer an evaluation questionnaire, carrying out a one-on-one interview, and conducting a document review.

Mr. Coester will be evaluating the project progress in Thailand from 10 to 25 May 2007, while the last leg of his evaluation will be in Indonesia from 26 May to 2 June 2007. Results of his evaluation will be presented in the next it@coops Steering Committee Meeting scheduled on July 2007.