Summative Evaluation of the Canada-Ukraine Trade and Investment Support Project (CUTIS)

The purpose of this evaluation is to share the results achieved by the Canada-Ukraine Trade and Investment Support (CUTIS) project with key stakeholders, and to enhance future programming regarding economic growth by recommending ways to strengthen the involvement of Ukrainian SMEs in trade and investment.

The CUTIS project, valued at US$13.8 million and implemented by the Conference Board of Canada and the Canada-Ukraine Chamber of Commerce during 2016-2021, aimed to stimulate economic growth in Ukraine through expanding Ukrainian trade with Canada and encouraging Canadian investment in Ukraine. The project focused specifically on SMEs, including women-owned/operated businesses, in five trade sectors (information and communication technologies (ICT); chocolate and confectionary; clothing; footwear; and furniture), to help them to take advantage of increased access to global value chains. It encouraged Canadian companies to invest in Ukraine and to forge links with Ukrainian SMEs and other suppliers through global value chains.

The specific objectives of the evaluation are to:

• Assess the achievements, relevance, and sustainability of the CUTIS project results;
• Identify key factors that contributed to/hindered the achievement of results;
• Assess gender equality results in light of Canada’s Feminist International Assistance Policy (FIAP) and consider their relevance for future programming; and
• Provide findings, conclusions, recommendations, and lessons learned.

In the course of conducting the evaluation, PMCG is undertaking the following activities:

• Conducting preliminary document analysis and engaging in consultations with key stakeholders;
• Preparing an evaluability assessment, including:
• Preparing a brief description of the development intervention and stakeholder mapping;
• Describing the evaluability assessment methodology, details of the data collection techniques and data analysis, and justification for the methodological choices; and
• Documenting the main findings and suggesting options for conducting the evaluation.
• Developing an evaluation work plan, including:
  – Developing an evaluation evidence matrix;
  – Providing an explanation of the sampling and proposed samples;
  – Describing the data analysis plan covering how the information collected will be organized, classified, tabulated, inter-related, compared, and displayed relative to the evaluation questions, etc.;
  – Analyzing the limitations of the evaluation; and
  – Elaborating a detailed work plan for field visits, including a list of interventions for in-depth analysis in the field preparation process and logistics.
• Conducting data collection activities, validation, and preliminary analysis according to the approved evaluation work plan;
• Conducting a post-data-collection debriefing;Compiling and organizing data to prepare and facilitate systematic analysis of all collected information;
• Developing a final evaluation report, including:
  – Describing the main findings of the evaluation based on the collected and analyzed information;
  – Developing a conclusion for each of the evaluation issues;
  – Developing recommendations which flow logically from the conclusions; and
  – Conducting a presentation of the evaluation results.