So, welcome to the Improving Development Evaluation Podcast. I'm your host, David Wand, and in this episode, we're going to feature again the Global Community Engagement Resilience Fund, GSERF, G -C -E -R -F. You can find out more about this organization at their website at GSERF, G -C -E -R -F .org. In this one, we're going to talk about 1 .1 million U .S. dollars that the G -Surf
received from the Canadian taxpayer. Being a fund, I featured them before on another episode for $5 million that they spent with the United States government. This is for the Canadian government.
And what they do as being a fund is they then develop either one single grant project or several sub... projects or sub grants out of this 1 .1 million then they give it to a variety of organizations in developing countries and then hope that they deliver services based on that money to achieve a series of outcomes now the good news is g -surf has done a lot of work to tell you in advance what if you give them money what they expect to achieve with that money when they deliver
services in developing countries. So just to repeat, if you haven't seen the other episode, heard the other episode, there are four outcomes they expect to achieve if this money is effective. The first one is increased social cohesion. Number two, increased ability to mobilize, organize. represent their own interests. That's what they call agency. Outcome number three, increased knowledge, skills, as well as subsequent increases
in income, access to livelihoods. Outcome number four, increased confidence, critical thinking, life skills, self -worth, and resilience, what they refer to as sense of purpose. So that's on their website, in their strategy documents. They basically are very clear, which is good. You give us the money. We'll deliver services. And in the short term and in the long term, we're going to achieve any one of these four possible
outcomes. So that's pretty clear. They also mentioned on their website, very clearly, that although they're a fund, they are still responsible for, and I quote, at the grant level, each project is guided by a theory of change and a results framework with outcome and output indicators. requiring grantees to collect baseline data, report quarterly, and conduct final assessments.
So it's pretty clear that even though they're a fund, they're still responsible for making sure the organizations they give the money to are achieving any one of those four outcomes. So you would expect in their reporting they would have some outcome indicators on how they measure social cohesion, how they measure agency, how they measure increased knowledge, how they measure
access to livelihoods, i .e. increases income, and how they measure sense of purpose, increased confidence, critical thinking, life skills, self -worth. So it's pretty clear from that point. So given that, I'm going to give you a bit of history here because it gets a bit complicated.
In September of 2024, over a year ago, I made the request to Global Affairs Canada through an access to information request for the performance measurement frameworks for the sub grants that GSURF would produce or projects out of this 1 .1 million US dollars that you as a Canadian taxpayer has given to GSURF who then turn around and produce and create. these grants in these developing countries to achieve any one of these
four outcomes. October 2024, Global Affairs Canada replied, no performance measurement frameworks exist for these sub -grants. So I submitted a complaint to the Information Commission of Canada and I said, if there's no PMFs, give me something, give me anything that can show that they're actually measuring using outcome indicators that any one of these four outcomes are actually being achieved. And they came back in February of 2025 and they said, well, you're right. They don't have any
PMFs. They're not required. But there are, quote, quarterly reports linked to this 1 .1 million U .S. dollars. And I said, great. So then in July 2025, I made a request for these quarterly reports, attaching this email from Information Commission of Canada, confirming that these quarterly reports actually did exist. And I said, again, give me the outcome indicators for these funds
out of these quarterly reports. And in August, Global Affairs Canada came back to me and said they needed a time extension on my request, even though these quarterly reports were produced way back in 2024 because the money was coming out of 2023. So even despite the fact the report's sitting on a shelf for over a year, they needed an extension. So I said, all right, waited for
the extension. October of 2025, I finally received a five -page report dated from GSURF in June of 2024 from a board meeting where they talk about the so -called results or outcomes that I had requested. Now, before we get into the critique of that five -page report and its insufficiencies, I would like to digress a bit here and talk to you about the fact that we have made a few changes to the podcast in the sense that I'm advocating. for proper evaluation, but I'd like the listeners
to send an email. So in the notes, I'll give you the email addresses and the names of the members of parliament responsible for the NDP and conservative shadow critics on international development, as well as the secretary of state for the liberal government for international development, so that you can recommend that they do proper evaluation. And until they do, they should suspend funding to these organizations. So in this case, And also, as usual, I will be
prepared to reply to any email. You can email me at evaluatecanadaid at gmail .com if you want a copy of any of my critiques of any of the performance measurement frameworks from any of the previous episodes and, of course, the critique for this episode. And you can also make a donation. There's a donation button where you can buy me a coffee. because I need $5 to ask for more performance
measurement frameworks. And despite the fact that they're produced years ago and money's already been spent, there's incredible delays in producing them for this podcast. Some journalists have suggested that's because it's a political stalling tactic. I don't know, but it's unfortunate that I have to wait for these PMFs or their equivalent before I can do an episode. And I have noticed in the last 14 days that there's people in Saudi Arabia, Ethiopia, Ghana, Nigeria, and Brazil
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Supina cotton, that is. And were voted the best men's polo shirts in 2024 in Men's Journal, Forbes, and Esquire. So there you have some sales, interesting, relevant products to your work in the global south. Now what we're going to do is get into details about the five -page report. that was provided to me in response to my request for outcome indicators. Because that's critical, right? And the first problem with this five -page report is that they make these claims, but there's
no outcome indicators. Most of them are output indicators. Talking about... what they've actually delivered in terms of services, but they don't talk about the next step, which is once you deliver the services, what expected outcomes of the four that we mentioned previously, did they achieve?
So for example, on page one of this document, they say, G -SURF funded projects continue, for example, to educate and create livelihood opportunities, build critical thinking skills, rehabilitate and reintegrate former combatants and their families. and often claim with, quote, remarkable efficiency and cost effectiveness. The problem is there's no measures of effectiveness, which is a Development Assistance Committee criteria. There's no outcome
indicator. So I'm going to read for the record verbatim from the results that they do provide in my request for outcome indicators. Quote, a selection of results to date. which illustrate the diversity of these efforts include 358 local partners funded in 22 countries, 27 new grants signed and 59 grants in total with 44 under active implementation in 2023. Nearly 20 million indirect beneficiaries reached in addition to 3 .8 million
reached directly. You notice heavy emphasis on reach, but not what happens after they reach them with these services. So let's get to the more specific ones. More than 35 ,000 religious leaders engaged in conflict resolution, but did it resolve the conflict? No measurement. Peace advocacy? We don't know if they have ability to advocate. Critical thinking? No measures of critical thinking. Leadership skills, no measures
of leadership skills. More than 57 ,000 individuals reached with livelihood and employability related interventions. Again, no measures in the report of indicators, outcome indicators to measure income or vocational skill acquisition. And here's the big one. More than 400 ,000 participants reached with cultural and sports activities to, quote, build social cohesion. and prevent violent extremism. There's no measures of social cohesion
in the report, nothing. And as I mentioned on my previous episode with GSERF for the 5 million in the United States, I'll say it again here, for $40 you can get the University of California Irvine Net, UC Net, social networking software that will measure levels of social cohesion. before, during, and after a sports activity. For example, G -Surf has held a soccer football game between religious madrasa students and public non -religious students to see if that would
build social cohesion. But there's no measure of that before, during, and after. And you could do it very easily, measuring something called reciprocity as a measure of social cohesion. That's an example. And Marco Rubio on a YouTube video has shown testifying that he's proud of taking away a $14 million project in Mali that was building social cohesion. And he said, quote, whatever the hell that is. Well, here's an example where you could show him this is how you measure
and build social cohesion. And that may, maybe not, convince him, oh, okay, I see what you mean now. Let's go ahead and continue the funding. But if you don't do that, obviously people will use that, as this example shows, where they have scrapped the funding. There could be other reasons, of course, for why the funding was suspended, but that's a major one. So this is the problem with this response. to my request for outcome
indicators. There's none in this report. To be fair to GSERF, the government of Canada, when they provided this funding to GSERF, may not have required it. We still don't know. So I've issued a complaint to the Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada to go to the next level and say, I did receive a response, but once again, I didn't get any outcome indicators. So I would like to know if they do exist, and if they do
exist, can we see them? But currently, here was an opportunity for GSERF to provide some outcome indicators, and they did not. So I would go ahead and recommend that funding be suspended for GSERF until they start properly evaluating their projects. They can't just say, because we're a fund, we're
not responsible. Because as I have said earlier, It's clear on their website that they are responsible for grantees in developing outcome indicators and measuring them to make sure that any one of those four indicators, social cohesion, agency, or increased knowledge or increases in income or sense of purpose are being achieved. So that
is not the case right now. So when it comes to rehabilitation and reintegration of former combatants, There is a plethora of outcome indicators you can use in the field of psychology to measure levels of reintegration and levels of rehabilitation. And there's no mention of that in this report. They have an opportunity to hire a consultant, a psychologist, to develop some of these measuring instruments, or not even develop them, but get
them from the literature. The other one that's a big stretch that I've mentioned before is this claim that if they achieve these four outcomes, those in turn will contribute to a reduction or prevention of violent extremism. And just to quote again from the report, more than 400 ,000 participants reached with cultural and sports activities to build social cohesion and prevent violent extremism. There's no evidence in the
report. of any outcome indicator showing that social cohesion has actually been increased. And there's absolutely no evidence provided in this report that shows that that in turn, or for that matter, any of the outcomes that they expect to achieve have contributed to a prevention of violent extremism. Now, it is possible to show that link. One way to do that is to develop a multiple regression statistical model, which
you could do. And again, you could hire a statistician to do it and say, here are some outcome indicators for the four expected outcomes you have. Here's how they would look in a multiple regression equation. And then on the dependent variable side, we could have a measure of whether or not violent extremism has been reduced or prevented, as this report is claiming with absolutely no
empirical evidence at all. So that's why we can't fund GSERF until they start producing outcome indicators with the related data that shows these expected outcomes have been achieved. And I would give them a break and I would say, look, that's good enough. If you can show that you've achieved any of these four outcomes, increase social cohesion, especially outcome number three, which is very
easy to do. I did it in Kano, Nigeria. With Adam Smith International, they were training adolescent female women who were vulnerable to violent extremism and human trafficking, becoming suicide bombers. So they were training them in vocational skills. You can measure those skills to see if they actually become, through a certification test, a certified seamstress. And then from that, you can track to see if they actually made income from that new acquired skill. That would be sufficient.
To make the link from there to preventing violent extremism statistically would be a little bit more complicated. But at least they could try to show through the social cohesion example I gave of an outcome indicator and a measuring instrument called UCNet software. And of course, vocational skills and followed by subsequent
increases in income. Those would be pretty easy to show that the... organizations that g -surf has funded with your 1 .1 million dollars has actually been quote effective but right now there's no evidence that any of this money has been effective certainly not cost effective as this five -page report claims so we'll leave it at that and i'll keep you up to date on whether the investigation from the independent Office of the Information Commissioner of Canada goes back to Global Affairs
Canada and goes back to GSERF and says, where are these outcome indicators? Because we still don't see them. Thank you for listening and bye for now.