This summer has been an interesting learning experience as my work has been focused on program evaluation. I've done evaluation work before, but mostly from a desk. In Iraq we had local monitoring and evaluation (M&E) staff who were responsible for site visits and data collection, and hired local consultants for larger-scale evaluations that included lots of surveys and focus group discussions. This time around I'm actually doing it myself - this is mostly nice, as you have control over the data being collected, but also showed me how much work field evaluations are, and how much I probably don't want to go further down the path of being an M&E expert!
Developing surveys and focus group questions in a new cultural context is tough - particularly if you don't speak the language. The resources at our disposal during the development of our evaluation tools was limited - not much support or review from USAID, or assistance from local staff. Having local staff tell you how your questions are likely to be translated and received is a big help. On the whole, I thought this went well, but sometimes found myself lamenting at the lack of opportunity to pilot our tools.
Let me also say that getting ALL THE WAY OUT to the communities we visited - poor rural farmers tend to live out in the middle of nowhere - was exhausting. We traveled 40-100 km down two-lane or gravel roads, over mountain passes with lots of hairpin turns and no guard rails, dodged giant trucks barreling down the opposite lane, and avoided hundreds and hundreds of pedestrians carrying firewood, sheep, goats, cattle, oxen and many, many miniature donkeys - not to mention the odd baboon, Ethiopian fox, hyena or hornbill.
Once you arrive, sit anywhere you can find (rickety chair, on a rock, on a step outside a crumbling building) and become the center of attention for a few hours. Talking with Ethiopians is a pleasant experience - they are direct and effusive and happy to share their stories with you. It's tough to watch an emaciated mother of five with a baby strapped to her back walk away from an interview in mud-covered plastic sandals and threadbare skirts, after having just told you how her family's monthly food supplies only last for a week. Solace comes in knowing that hopefully your presence in her village will yield some additional help for her and her family.
Ethiopians have been receiving humanitarian aid for decades. For many, our visit is not their first meeting with foreign aid workers and many of them are exceptionally savvy to the nature of the aid their communities receive. We've had very specific requests for microfinance projects or agricultural collectives from the beneficiaries we've met. When you enter a community skeptical about certain program elements and are repeatedly told that everything's generally being done as it should be, you wonder how accurate your results are - and whether you, as an outsider, are even capable of getting accurate information. At the end of the day, you trust the people you're speaking with and hope the stories they tell are true.
Now that we've completed our evaluation we will share our stories and go, and maybe hear something about the impact it's made on the program or future ones. The findings are interesting and hopefully not just relegated to email inboxes or computer file folders. I plan to follow the results closely in hopes of learning if our findings have made a difference in the aid that's provided to millions of hungry Ethiopians. I hope they do.
Monday, August 22, 2011
Thursday, August 4, 2011
So what are you doing over there, anyway?
Lest anyone think we are having a sightseeing and rock-climbing vacation over here, I thought I'd share a little bit about the work our team is doing in Ethiopia.
For the past several years, USAID has funded an emergency food assistance program in Ethiopia. Food security is a big issue here - there are millions of people in this country who have been identified as chronically food insecure - meaning they never have enough to eat. With 85% of the country's population of 80+ million people living in rural areas, most people rely on agricultural or pastoralist activities for subsistence and, if they're lucky, moderate income. People in the western part of the country enjoy greater food security due to more stable and productive crops, rainfall and natural resources. In the central and eastern parts of the country, however, the majority of the population outside of (and even within) major cities ekes out a living by whatever means they can - normally farming about one hectare of land and raising small herds of goats, sheep or cattle.
Farming is tough work here - people still use a pair of oxen and a crude wood and metal plow to till the earth. The land is unforgiving - in most parts, rocky and dry and relatively inhospitable. Ethiopia's topography does nothing to help - everywhere we visit is characterized by massive hillsides, challenging to farm and subject to major flooding and erosion. Every year, families struggle with the weather and the degraded quality of small tracts of land they don't even own. Overfarming, poor natural resource management, poor quality and lack of availability of seeds and other vital farming inputs mean that many of Ethiopia's rural farmers struggle to produce sufficient quantities of food to meet their family's food needs for the entire year. As the months from harvest time stretch on - and the shocks of flood or drought compromise yet another harvest - families find themselves without resources to provide for the most basic of needs.
Relying on the Government of Ethiopia's crop and livestock surveillance systems, USAID provides emergency food to acutely food insecure families - those who need some extra help for 3-9 months out of the year. A typical food ration per person per month includes 15 kilos of cereals (wheat or sorghum), 1.5 kilos of pulses (usually yellow split peas), and 0.5 liter of vegetable oil. 35% of beneficiaries also receive 4.5 kilos of corn-soy blend, a fortified food product directed at children under five and pregnant/lactating women, the most nutritionally vulnerable groups.
With this system in mind - providing assistance to more than 1.6 million beneficiaries per year - we are aiming to answer the following questions:
1. What is the system for targeting food aid beneficiaries? How are they selected? Are they getting enough food to meet their needs?
2. How are families and communities utilizing the food they receive? Are they sharing it? Selling it?
3. How are selected individuals targeted for corn-soy blend?
4. What do individuals and communities know about what corn-soy blend is, who it's for, and how it should be used? How are they using it? Are they sharing it? Selling it? Do they need more information about it?
5. Are people being required to work in exchange for the food rations they receive? What is the system?
To answer these questions, we're visiting 6 different areas throughout the country - two communities in each area. There, we conduct interviews and hold focus group discussions to learn about local attitudes and practices, as well as meeting with local government officials to get their impressions of the situation. We're meeting with about 120 people every week to talk about the above issues. At the end, we've been told by our USAID supervisor, we'll be "the US government's best informed people on food aid in Ethiopia."
We're finding a lot. Due to some sensitivities around food security issues in the country I'll wait to share those until I get back to the US. Ultimately, the food USAID distributes is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Initiatives like the US government Feed The Future program - which focuses on increasing the capacity of local agricultural systems to provide local solutions to food insecurity - have incredible promise for long-term solutions to these problems. As we can see in the current crisis in this region, ensuring that local systems are in place to deal with natural disasters and shocks like droughts and floods, and to provide emergency food aid when needed, help to keep people alive. The Ethiopian Government has a pretty strong system in place to meet these needs when they arise - keeping them more resilient to the country's famines of the 1980s and 90s and the current crisis in Somalia, now bleeding over into Kenya and Ethiopia. They have done a lot to avoid these situations and learned from past tragedies. Hopefully the international community can help to strengthen these mechanisms in Ethiopia's neighbors.
For the past several years, USAID has funded an emergency food assistance program in Ethiopia. Food security is a big issue here - there are millions of people in this country who have been identified as chronically food insecure - meaning they never have enough to eat. With 85% of the country's population of 80+ million people living in rural areas, most people rely on agricultural or pastoralist activities for subsistence and, if they're lucky, moderate income. People in the western part of the country enjoy greater food security due to more stable and productive crops, rainfall and natural resources. In the central and eastern parts of the country, however, the majority of the population outside of (and even within) major cities ekes out a living by whatever means they can - normally farming about one hectare of land and raising small herds of goats, sheep or cattle.
Farming is tough work here - people still use a pair of oxen and a crude wood and metal plow to till the earth. The land is unforgiving - in most parts, rocky and dry and relatively inhospitable. Ethiopia's topography does nothing to help - everywhere we visit is characterized by massive hillsides, challenging to farm and subject to major flooding and erosion. Every year, families struggle with the weather and the degraded quality of small tracts of land they don't even own. Overfarming, poor natural resource management, poor quality and lack of availability of seeds and other vital farming inputs mean that many of Ethiopia's rural farmers struggle to produce sufficient quantities of food to meet their family's food needs for the entire year. As the months from harvest time stretch on - and the shocks of flood or drought compromise yet another harvest - families find themselves without resources to provide for the most basic of needs.
Relying on the Government of Ethiopia's crop and livestock surveillance systems, USAID provides emergency food to acutely food insecure families - those who need some extra help for 3-9 months out of the year. A typical food ration per person per month includes 15 kilos of cereals (wheat or sorghum), 1.5 kilos of pulses (usually yellow split peas), and 0.5 liter of vegetable oil. 35% of beneficiaries also receive 4.5 kilos of corn-soy blend, a fortified food product directed at children under five and pregnant/lactating women, the most nutritionally vulnerable groups.
With this system in mind - providing assistance to more than 1.6 million beneficiaries per year - we are aiming to answer the following questions:
1. What is the system for targeting food aid beneficiaries? How are they selected? Are they getting enough food to meet their needs?
2. How are families and communities utilizing the food they receive? Are they sharing it? Selling it?
3. How are selected individuals targeted for corn-soy blend?
4. What do individuals and communities know about what corn-soy blend is, who it's for, and how it should be used? How are they using it? Are they sharing it? Selling it? Do they need more information about it?
5. Are people being required to work in exchange for the food rations they receive? What is the system?
To answer these questions, we're visiting 6 different areas throughout the country - two communities in each area. There, we conduct interviews and hold focus group discussions to learn about local attitudes and practices, as well as meeting with local government officials to get their impressions of the situation. We're meeting with about 120 people every week to talk about the above issues. At the end, we've been told by our USAID supervisor, we'll be "the US government's best informed people on food aid in Ethiopia."
We're finding a lot. Due to some sensitivities around food security issues in the country I'll wait to share those until I get back to the US. Ultimately, the food USAID distributes is doing a lot of good for a lot of people. Initiatives like the US government Feed The Future program - which focuses on increasing the capacity of local agricultural systems to provide local solutions to food insecurity - have incredible promise for long-term solutions to these problems. As we can see in the current crisis in this region, ensuring that local systems are in place to deal with natural disasters and shocks like droughts and floods, and to provide emergency food aid when needed, help to keep people alive. The Ethiopian Government has a pretty strong system in place to meet these needs when they arise - keeping them more resilient to the country's famines of the 1980s and 90s and the current crisis in Somalia, now bleeding over into Kenya and Ethiopia. They have done a lot to avoid these situations and learned from past tragedies. Hopefully the international community can help to strengthen these mechanisms in Ethiopia's neighbors.
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