School Feeding and Cash Transfer Project: Chimanimani and Muzarabani Districts

Background  
The project was implemented as an emergency project in the districts of Muzarabani and Chimanimani. The aim was to mitigate the effects of food insecurity so that children’s education is not unduly disrupted on account of hunger and lack of resources. The main objective of the emergency project was to improve the 2010/2011 primary school attendance rates for 32,000 primary school children in grade 0-3 and food security situation for households with orphans and other vulnerable children in the two target districts.              

Purpose/objective                
In this regards, end of project evaluation meant to assess the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability of the school feeding and cash transfer project and make recommendations thereof. It also aimed at identifying lessons leant and advocacy issues that Save the Children can pursue in future programming.                      

Methodology            
The evaluation was a cross sectional study, employing mostly participatory research techniques. Data collection was mainly through consultative meetings, desk review, focus group discussions, key informant interviews, direct observations and questionnaire survey. A team of consultants from Innovative Minds conducted the evaluation exercise, supported by Save the Children Field Monitors who were trained as enumerators and assisted in the collection of household data. Random sampling was used to select a representative sample of both schools and households that participated in the evaluation. Approximately 19% of total households that benefited from the cash transfer and 16% of schools that participated in the school feeding were reached during the evaluation.                       

Key findings             
SF and CT project was to a greater extent able to achieve its intended objectives. At an output level the project achieved most of its planned outputs except for the cash transfer programme which failed to reach 550 households in the first three months of the project. At an impact level more impact was achieved through the cash transfer programme, especially in terms of improving household income, increasing food security, making sure that vulnerable households are able to pay school fees for OVC. The school feeding programme also managed to significantly reduce school dropouts in the two districts and had a positive impact on school attendance. However, school enrolment for ECD and Grade 1-3 did not change that much and was in fact lower in 2011 than in September 2010. The evaluation also revealed that after the end of the project there will likely be an emergency situation that warrants further support. The positive impact described above is largely short-term as there is greater possibility of supported households and children returning back to their vulnerable situation or even worse after the end of the project. In most schools, OVC supported under the SC project were excluded from the current BEAM programme, whilst there is general food insecurity among vulnerable households in both districts due to the poor 2010/2011 season. This also affected the Zunde raMambo programme. However, the Zunde raMambo concept is evidently an effective strategy for enhancing food security of vulnerable and child headed households. Findings also show that the success of such a programme is determined by the scale of implementation and the environment under which it is implemented, factors that SC should consider if it is to support the implementation of Zundes in the future. There was extensive involvement and participation of stakeholders at all levels in the project from planning to implementation, which proved an effective strategy in ensuring ownership of the project. However, the failure of the cash transfer intervention to take off in Muzarabani district shows that all stakeholders are important. Disgruntlement of one stakeholder has the potential of delaying or completely stopping the implementation of a project.          

Recommendations               

a) It is important to conduct beneficiary verification process at the onset of the project even in an emergency situation, since it will affect the cash transfer output for the first three month. The project did not manage to replace beneficiaries that had been removed from the list.

b) Resources should be allocated to permit the school feeding programme to continue until the next harvest, and extended to all grades. SC should also mobilize resources and find ways of supporting child headed households and those headed by the elderly who are incapacitated and can no longer support themselves. •

c) In future, for similar sensitive emergency programmes, SC should engage the government at all levels and ensure that the necessary approval and documentation is available which will guarantee smooth flowing of the project activities and make certain that intended beneficiaries are not robbed of their benefits. •

d) If Zunde raMambo is to be implemented as a main programme, it is important to conduct a situational analysis in each community to determine especially people’s perceptions, opportunities and threats for such a programme and suggestions of improving community participation. This will ensure that the design of the programme take into consideration the different dynamic situations possible thereby increasing its chances of success. •

e) SC should consider decentralizing the Zunde raMambo to headman or village level as part of scaling up of the Zunde raMambo programme. This will ensure micro management of the Zunde whilst achieving a fairly extensive reach of vulnerable households and OVC that benefit. This strategy has the potential of greatly reducing food insecurity among vulnerable households in both districts.

The evaluation also makes the following recommendations on advocacy issues that SC should consider: •
f) Most parents and SDCs fail to pay for ECD education and ECD para-professional teachers respectively.  SC should lobby the MoESAC to consider paying for ECD para-professional staff, the same way it supports temporary teachers.

g)The rolling out of ECD trained teachers should be expedited so that each school should at least have one ECD trained professional. Currently all visited schools have no ECD trained professionals. •

h) There are gaps and or contradictions in the government policy especially as it relates to ECD education. As much as ECD education is a prerequisite for a child to be accepted into Grade One, children in ECD are not considered for support under the BEAM programme. SC should advocate for ECD education to be treated the same way as the mainline education, i.e., ECD should be considered under BEAM and support in terms of trained professionals and materials resources should be availed to schools.