Performance Monitoring Plan (PMP) for the Support of the Urban Policy (SOUP) Project

The project's period of performance consists of one Base Year and four Option Years, with the Base Year covering the period from October 1, 2015, through September 30, 2016. The project's objective is to support the implementation of USAID's Urban Policy, which aims to harness the rapid growth of cities in developing countries to achieve USAID's core development objectives. The SOUP Project entails training programs, conducting urban analyses, and performance and impact evaluations of related USAID programs, as well as a focus on knowledge management, communications, and outreach. The project will deliver a series of inter-related activities to support USAID's Urban Programs Team to demonstrate the importance of sustainable urban service delivery in making progress in key development sectors such as climate change, health, education, food security, and economic growth. The project's results framework is aligned with USAID's Global Climate Change (GCC) results framework, which requires the integration of climate-resilience considerations into all United States international development work. The SOUP Project activities support the integration of climate-resilience into the efforts under the Urban Policy and correspond to Strategic Objective 3 (SO3) of the USAID GCC results framework: "Strengthen development outcomes by integrating climate change in Agency programming, learning, policy dialogues, and operations." The project's performance monitoring plan (PMP) describes how ECODIT will monitor and evaluate progress towards achieving SOUP Project objectives. The PMP proposes indicators against each of the expected results of the activity and describes the processes that ECODIT will use to perform monitoring and evaluation (M&E) throughout the life of the project. The PMP provides a Performance Indicator Reference Sheet (PIRS) for each indicator, as well as a consolidated Performance Indicator Table that presents the indicators with associated baseline and target values for the duration of the project. The SOUP Project will be implemented through an integrated systems approach, which will involve training programs, urban analyses, performance and impact evaluations, knowledge management, communications, and outreach. The project will encourage buy-in from Agency staff and technical and regional bureaus and country missions, as well as from collaborating donors and host country partners, for the successful implementation of USAID's Urban Policy. The project's geographic focus is on developing countries, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where cities are experiencing unprecedented urban growth. The project's timeframes are aligned with the Base Year and four Option Years of the project, with the Base Year covering the period from October 1, 2015, through September 30, 2016. The SOUP Project will be implemented by ECODIT LLC, with a major subcontractor being the International City/County Management Association (ICMA). The project's budget and resources will be managed in accordance with USAID's guidelines and regulations. The project's implementation will be monitored and evaluated through regular reporting and evaluation, with the PMP serving as a dynamic and flexible document that will be updated throughout the implementation process.