Through EnCompass’ innovative, evidence-based approaches for communicating and processing strategic evidence, the evaluation of the Promoting Accountability, Inclusivity, and Resiliency Support mechanism (PAIRS) will inform the direction and strategy of future PAIRS projects and provide useful evidence to PAIRS stakeholders for improving programming.

Under PAIRS, the International Republican Institute and the National Democratic Institute implement a range of programs focused on democratic advancement, protecting and expanding fundamental freedoms, and strengthening political rights. This 2-year evaluation will aim to identify the extent to which PAIRS succeeded in its objective, the extent to which programs met current needs, and its overall outcomes and impacts.

Using appreciative and utilization-focused evaluation techniques, a complexity-aware and whole-systems approach, and iterative and adaptive processes, the PAIRS mechanism evaluation team will incentivize ownership of the evaluation process by the Department of State’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) and key stakeholders, address intended and unintended consequences, monitor alternative pathways of program contributions to results, and incorporate multiple perspectives of actors and actions on change processes into the final report.

This is the first time the PAIRS Mechanism has been evaluated at the portfolio level. Given that PAIRS is a large and important part of DRL’s grantmaking, EnCompass has the unique opportunity to provide DRL with a holistic understanding of program contributions and context to guide future programming for DRL, partners, and the larger democracy, human rights, and governance community.  PAIRS is a task order under the Department of State Performance Management and Evaluation Services IDIQ.

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