Evaluation of the CROSSDEV project to promote sustainable tourism in the Mediterranean

Title Cultural Routes for Sustainable Social and economic Development in the Mediterranean – CROSSDEV

Location Italy, Lebanon, Palestine, Jordan

Duration September 2019 – August 2022

Partners International Committee for the Development of Peoples (CISP), Culture Cooperative Society, Jordan University of Science and Technology, Association for the Protection of Jabal Moussa, The Royal Marine Conservation Society of Jordan, Palestinian Heritage Trail, Italian Ministry of Culture

Framework European Commission’s European thematic objective A.1 – Business and SMEs development and the priority A.1.3 – Encourage sustainable tourism initiatives and actions

Funding  ENI CBC MED Programme of the European Commission

 

Context

There is a need for building up an area of peace and stability in the Mediterranean, reducing disparities, increasing opportunities for decent life and jobs for all, promoting dialogue and understanding for peaceful coexistence. The CROSSDEV project proposes a way to address these challenges through the exploitation of local culture and heritage to be turned into assets for socio-economic local development. The project identified specific cultural routes and destination to enhance and strengthen such as: Via Selinuntina in Sicily (Italy), Jabal Moussa Biosphere Reserve in Lebanon, Palestinian Heritage Trail in Palestine, Umm-Qais and Aqaba in Jordan.

The main objective of the project is, thus, to contribute to the economic (business & SMEs) and social development in the Mediterranean region, strengthening and enhancing sustainable tourism practices, emphasizing common heritages and resources.

In particular the project aims at:

  1. Increasing attractiveness of less known touristic destinations in Mediterranean areas. The main expected improvements are considered in terms of economic, income generating and job opportunities as well as social inclusion. In this sense, cross-border synergies and collaborations will reinforce attractiveness of identified destinations.
  2. Diversifying the tourism offer with niche territorial assets, developing new Sustainable Tourist Products. A cross-border perspective shall be adopted both for developing and marketing the Sustainable Tourism Products, to widen to the maximum extent the economic benefits for local communities.

 

General Objective

To assess the achievement of results of the project, the Local Development Unit carried out the Mid-Term evaluation. The evaluation considers two levels of analysis, the country-level and the “aggregate” level.

 

Our contribution

The mid-term evaluation is results utilization-focused, an approach that implies a participatory and interactive evaluation involving all project beneficiaries, such as: tourism-related stakeholders, institutions, economic actors, youth, women and communities living in and around the cultural routes and sites targeted by the project; partners and other relevant stakeholders at regional and country levels.

For the Mid-Term evaluation, the Local Development Unit applied a methodology composed of four main strands of analysis:

  • Assessment of the alignment between CROSSDEV design and the objectives/priorities of ENICBCMED, and evaluation of the completeness and adherence to reality of the Project’s Theory of Change
  • Analysis of the compliance to the OECD-DAC criteria
  • Analysis of the added value provided by the cross-border dimension of the project
  • Performance of the Project with regard to the following specific aspects of interest
    • visibility
    • cross-cutting issues such as gender, youth involvement, environmental impact, disability
    • capacity building
    • awareness raising on sustainable tourism concept, cultural heritage valorisation and conservation, sustainable tourism and socio-economic development links.

In line with the methodology, the Local Development Unit has developed a set of data collection tools necessary to evaluate the project outcomes in the Mid-Term Evaluation report: desk review of Project’s documentation, semi-structured interviews with lead partner, project partners, associate partners and key stakeholders, survey questionnaire with local stakeholders/beneficiaries.

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