Project quality assurance framework & criteria

The Quality Assurance (QA) framework is a key component of #YWC. The overall objectives of the QA framework are to assess and ensure the quality of youth-led project proposals and give assurances to potential sponsors on the quality of these proposals.

We assess the proposal against the following:

1. Does the project contribute to the achievements of the 2030 development and climate agendas as per the priorities identified by #YWC?
   • Is the project youth-led? (is (are) the project leader(s) below 35 years old)
   • Is the project related to at least one of the themes and recommendations of the COP21 White Paper (the themes being Water and Agriculture, Water and Health, Water Sharing & Water and Climate Hazards)
   • Does the project take into consideration different disadvantaged groups especially youth and women?
2. Does the project appear meaningful in terms of issues to be addressed and could it achieve real change?
   • Does the proposal contain an explanation of the situation that needs to be changed, and why (contextual analysis)?
   • Is there evidence supporting the claim that change is needed (policy documents, newspaper, articles, research papers, pictures..)?
   • Does the proposal identify previous or current projects relevant to the project proposal (relevance in terms of location and theme of intervention or similarity of approach in a comparable situation)? Are there lessons drawn from these to support the validity of the proposed approach?
   • Does the proposed approach appear technically valid?
3. Does the organization for the implementation appear credible and adapted to the ambitions set out for the project?
   • Is the proposed implementation mechanism described and does it appear credible?
   • Is there a description about how responsibilities to implement the project will be shared and does it appear adapted to the project (within the group and with potential partner organizations)?
   • Do some of the youth leader(s) have some prior experience with managing or implementing projects?
4. What is proposed could be achieved
   •  SMART goals are defined (specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bond);
   • The proposed planning fits the objectives of the project;
   • There is a budget and a proposed timeline for implementation;
   • The budget appears realistic;
   • The timeline for implementation is sufficiently detailed and appears realistic;
   • The team has thought about how to keep track of the results and has thought about the indicators to be used to report on achieving the goals and the achieved change (monitoring and evaluation);
   • A simple coherent Logframe is developed, linking activities to the objectives that the project wants to achieve and identifying indicators which will be used to track the progress;