U.S. Embassy Public Affairs Section Grant: Evaluating Foreign Assistance Programs in Georgia

The purpose of these third-party evaluations is to understand the extent to which programs implemented by the Public Affairs Section of the U.S. Embassy in Tbilisi influence the attitudes, awareness, and actions of their participants. The three programs the Embassy seeks to evaluate include a non-formal youth journalism program, a professional development program for mid-career professionals in the national security sector, and a media education program for university administrators.   

The primary audiences for this evaluation are staff members of the Embassy’s Public Affairs Section, and policy makers at the Embassy and in the European Bureau of the U.S. Department of State. They will use the results for the following purposes: 

1) Understand how effectively the current program designs achieve the desired results of building skills, developing attitudes, and increasing awareness among participants; 

2) Understand the extent to which participants maintain the skills, attitudes and awareness six months after the program’s completion, or twelve months in the case of teacher training program;  

3) Understand the extent to which participants implement activities that make use of the expertise they developed through the program beyond its scope; and 

4) Understand the extent to which students taught by alumni of the teacher training program achieve higher teaching outcomes in their classroom the following year. 

This evaluations will be a joint effort conducted in collaboration with Embassy staff, program implementers, and selected evaluation partner(s), who will have primary responsibility for survey design, data collection, analysis, and report generation. The evaluation partner will need to address geographic and linguistic barriers in data collection. The program evaluations are expected to take two years to fully complete. They will include surveys of program participants and control groups before the new cohorts of participants begin activities around October 1, 2021, when the program activities are concluded, and six months after the program ends. Specific schedules will be developed in consultation between the U.S. Embassy, the program implementor, and the evaluator.