DIALOGUE
In this section:
First Person
Mission of the Month: Honduras
Notes from Natsios
FIRST PERSON
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Satya Rani Chadha,
Founder of Shakti Shalini, India
Virginia Foley, USAID |
“Rescuing victims is the aim of my existence. When
I bring in a new woman or help someone escape death, I feel
a fresh lease on life.”
India’s women are frequently harassed and hurt in domestic
violence or dowry disputes. Official Delhi statistics indicate
that about 100 women—often abused—are thrown out
of their homes daily. Most of them are destitute and have
nobody to turn to for help. The unofficial number of such
cases is much higher.
After her daughter was burned to death in a dowry dispute
in the mid-1980s, Satya Rani Chadha decided that abused women
need her help. Along with a friend who also lost a daughter
in a similar way, Chadha started Shakti Shalini in 1987. Since
then, the USAID-funded group has provided shelter, medical
care, counseling, and legal assistance to thousands of victimized
women.
Some stay for a month and then go back home. Others are
offered housing for up to six months, until they can find
a way to provide for themselves.
Shakti Shalini also runs awareness campaigns on violence
against women. The program is one of several funded by USAID’s
South Asia Regional Initiative on Equity for Women and Children
and the State Department’s Global Anti-Trafficking in
Persons program.
MISSION OF THE MONTH
Honduras
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Don Rufino Reyes’ farm is a pilot drip-irrigation
project that pumps water using a solar energy-powered
pump. The water source is a small well, which produces
enough water throughout the year to irrigate only a
.1-acre vegetable plot. With the solar pump, Reyes is
able to use this water more effectively and harvest
crops all year long. This new technology has increased
his income and improved his family’s nutrition.
Before, Reyes grew basic grains only. Now he grows cabbage,
tomatoes, green beans, radishes, celery, and beets.
Gabriela Chinchilla, USAID/Honduras |
THE CHALLENGE
With an average per capita income of about $962 per person,
Honduras is one of the poorest countries in Latin America.
The situation worsened in 1998 with the devastation of Hurricane
Mitch, a storm that killed more than 5,600 people and caused
over $2 billion in damage.
INNOVATIVE USAID RESPONSE
USAID has carried out health, education, community development,
and economic growth programs, as well as provided food aid,
in Honduran communities for decades. In the late 1990s, the
mission redesigned its Food for Peace (FFP) program toward
a food security approach, tapping into all of these programs.
The first stage of the project, working with numerous communities
in the south and west of Honduras from 1996–2000, provided
health education, built roads, and helped farmers acquire
tools and learn new farming techniques. An evaluation found
that the greatest impact was in communities where all three
interventions were carried out together. So for the second
stage, which runs through the end of 2005, the project is
working in fewer municipalities, but in all the areas.
In the area of health, for example, the first stage involved
promoting maternal and child health. The project soon branched
out into training community health volunteers. It also helped
each community to set up a local community health center,
which is linked to the Ministry of Health.
In agriculture, the program—among other things—helped
farmers learn about irrigation and accessing markets. It also
provided technology such as solar energy panels and water
pumps for microirrigation.
What makes this program different from other FFP projects
is that it involves the communities it works with, giving
them a sense of ownership, said Marta Perez, project manager.
“Everyone participated,” she said. “We had
them thinking, ‘What is food security? Even if the food
stops, nobody can take away what we’ve learned.’
We invested in human capital, and it’s paid off.”
The $44.6 million program has also built roads, helping
farmers reach markets more easily. It has also benefited education,
since teachers from nearby communities now travel on more
reliable roads, resulting in fewer class cancellations.
USAID/Honduras has also worked with municipal governments,
providing technology and training so they can better serve
their citizens. Many municipalities are now collecting taxes
for the first time, and citizen groups have a greater voice
in the use of those resources.
RESULTS
“The success of the program has been that it makes
extensive use of one of its most valuable resources—the
beneficiaries,” said Garrett Grigsby, deputy assistant
administrator for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance,
who visited program sites in January.
He said: “The program empowers the people it serves,
so that after a while it becomes their program. This way,
the activities have a great chance of being sustainable.”
Since the FFP program began in Honduras, malnutrition among
children has dropped from 30 to 20 percent in targeted areas.
People’s diets are more balanced, and many more mothers
are breastfeeding their babies.
Meanwhile, average household monthly income rose by some
80 percent, as farmers use new, recommended farming practices.
Some 100 kilometers of roads have been repaired, and nearly
60,000 new trees planted.
In the past four years, the project also increased the number
of municipalities with tax collection systems from zero to
14 out of 15. Municipalities that learned about better tax
collection techniques also saw their incomes rise by 35 percent
in the past year.
NOTES FROM NATSIOS
To make our role in development effective, good management
practices are necessary. One area of our work that needs strengthening
has to do with program evaluation.
Evaluation is at the heart of three of the nine principles
of development that guide Agency operations: the principle
of accountability, the principle of assessment, and the principle
of results. This is the reason why I have put forward a new
initiative that focuses on reinvigorating the evaluation function
in the Agency.
Having objective, regular evaluations of our critical programs
is central to understanding the extent to which we are achieving
results and where we need to make course corrections. It is
particularly important to have honest evaluations to enhance
our credibility with the outside world, Congress, and the
American people.
I have instructed the Center for Development Information
and Evaluation (CDIE) to implement a four-part initiative:
policy reform, new standard setting and guidance, training,
and a more tightly focused Agency evaluation agenda.
Over the course of the coming weeks, the Bureau for Policy
and Program Coordination (PPC) will revise the Automated Directives
System to require timely and strategic evaluations of major
programs.
Staff training in evaluation methods, based on the courses
offered in the Africa and Europe and Eurasia bureaus, will
be expanded to all regions.
The CDIE TIPS series on monitoring and evaluation, the most
requested publications in the Development Experience Clearinghouse,
will be updated, and new topics added to the series. A new
practitioner’s guide is also planned.
Just knowing that we are doing more evaluations, however,
will not be enough for me to believe that we have improved
the state of assessment. This reform is not about reversing
the trend in the number of evaluations conducted.
I want to hear about how evaluation results are being used
to improve our programs. I want to know about not just what
we are learning, but how we are refining our program strategies
and approaches, based on the evidence that evaluations produce.
Getting information is good. But it does not count for anything
if that information isn’t used.
Lastly, I will be inviting evaluation teams to come meet
with me to share what they have learned, and I want to hear
about both the negative and the positive findings.
All the developing news about the initiative will be featured
on Evalweb, the Agency’s public face on evaluation.
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