Final Evaluation Report: Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People in Rwanda

Stephen Devereux and Ricardo Sabates

ABSTRACT

Since 2011 Concern Worldwide-Rwanda and Services au Développement des Associations (SDA-IRIBA) with financial support from Irish Aid, have implemented a project called ‘Enhancing the Productive Capacity of Extremely Poor People’, also known as the ‘Graduation Programme’, in the Southern Province of Rwanda. The programme targets extremely poor households – defined as those who are unable tomeet their basic needs for food, health care, shelter, and education. The programme delivers a package of support that includes cash transfers to meet basic needs – averaging RwF.18,000 (about €22) per household per month – skills development and resources to improve livelihoods, and improved savings to increase resilience to shocks. In addition, intensive coaching is provided by volunteer Community Development Animators (CDAs) who each visit approximately 15 beneficiaries twice every month. This package is similar but not identical to the support delivered by ‘graduation model’ programmes in Bangladesh and several other countries, and itshares the same objective of enabling sustainable exits from extreme poverty. By the end of the project cycle, beneficiaries are expected to have ‘graduated’ into self-reliant livelihoods. This final report aims to identify trends in participants’ human, social and financial wellbeing over time, to quantify any changes that are attributable to the Graduation Programme, and to identify factors that either enable or constrain sustained improvements in key outcome indicators. Specifically, the evaluation tested several hypotheses around a set of indicators that were monitored before, during and after the programme was implemented. Participants were expected to increase their asset ownership, food security, spending on basic needs, savings, ability to borrow and repay loans, investment in education, investment in health and preventative health care, hygiene practices, empowerment over household decision-making, and engagement in social activities and community institutions, in comparison to controlgroup households. Participating households were also expected to diversify their income sources, and to reduce their levels of deprivation and adoption of damaging coping strategies, thanks to their participation in the Graduation Programme.