Kore Lavi DFAP Final Qualitative Performance Evaluation Webinar Q&A Reponses IMPEL Webinar | May 22, 2020 FOLLOW-UP TO QUESTIONS RAISED IN KORE LAVI EVALUATION WEBINAR This document aims to respond to questions and comments raised during the Kore Lavi DFAP Final Qualitative Performance Evaluation Webinar. Some questions were answered during the webinar. The response to each question or comment indicates whether the response was live or post-event. This webinar was held by the Implementer-Led Evaluation and Learning (IMPEL) award on May 22, 2020. The evaluation was led by Tulane University, and IMPEL Chief of Party, Peter Horjus, presented findings in this webinar, with support from Dr. Nancy Mock and John Berry. Questions and Comments from Webinar Q&A Box with Responses SIMAST is a good tool for targeting beneficiaries. MAST must work for the appropriation of the tool by local authorities and communities. ‣ Live Response: Agreed. Efforts were made by KL to build capacity at MAST to run the program, but they will continue to need support. What was the average length of time that people received vouchers? ‣ Live Response: Recipients were identified at the beginning of the activity and continued to receive them until end of project. In essence from 2013/2014 to 2019. For this definition of graduation, I think that we must take into account socio-economic integration. This graduation does not amount to a program but an entire environment which influences the life of the communities. ‣ Post-event Response: Absolutely. Graduation is not necessarily a simple concept, and it may not be as simple as a basic economic measure. That is why it's important from the start to define what graduation means, and how it will be used programmatically- and if it's an appropriate goal for the project to aim for in all cases. Regarding SIMAST, it will be important to determine how it will recover its costs in the future, especially the human resource costs required to ensure its proper administration, management, maintenance and updating. Also, there has been discussion regarding the potential to integrate ways to track household livelihoods so that it could track graduation. This would definitely require additional investment.
IMPEL | Implementer-Led Evaluation and Learning ‣ Live Response: Agreed. The sustainability of the system will require ongoing investment in developing and maintaining the system. Several donors have expressed interest in supporting the system. Is there clear documentation on the graduation now? If yes, please suggest or share them with us. ‣ Post-event Response: Not that I (Peter) am aware of. The Indicator Performance Tracking Table (IPTT) for the indictor during the first 5 years states "This indicator has been removed based on the approval of the donor (PREP 2016)," and the IPTT for the extension period indicates that "This indicator has been removed from the indicator list through PREP 2019." What are the things you consider before determining the top up value per household (HH), and how do you coordinate with vendors to ensure prices of food items? ‣ Post-event Response: Kore Lavi (KL) used the MFIs and their own monitoring staff to ensure that the prices set by participating vendors matched those of the market in general. This worked well, no reports of price gouging of the voucher recipients. If the asker is referring to inflation/food price increases when saying “top up value per household”, then this could be the local CPI for food (from IHSI), or it could be tied to the cost of the basic food basket in the local market, depending on what data is available. Did the evaluators consider that 50% of Safety net members joined VSLAs due to that monthly transfer? Many of them have undertaken some income-generating activities with the loan from the VSLA groups. ‣ Post-event Response: Absolutely- we present this in the report (from IPTT data), which will be shared with all webinar registrants when published. The 50% of voucher recipients in VSLAs is an important achievement. The result of HHs undertaking improved/additional income-generating activities with loans from VSLAs is unfortunately not well measured. Can you explain why the voucher amount wasn't perceived or considered as transformational? In the context of Haiti, what can be considered as a minimum amount to make a nutrition voucher transformational? What would you consider as features of a transformational nutrition voucher aimed at vulnerable households? ‣ Post-event Response: This was stated by a few KIs and in some of the FGD. The word 'transformational' is of course somewhat subjective. The implication in the discussions was generally that the value of the vouchers was certainly helpful, but it wasn't always sufficient to allow the household to make large, lasting changes in their lives and livelihoods. (As said in the presentation, though, we are not saying here that no households achieved large lasting changes in their lives and livelihoods). The goal of a food voucher program may not necessarily need to be for such a significant transformation. In the context of safety nets, it may be simply to prevent the household from sliding further into poverty and food insecurity. It is also not just about the vouchers alone, but other opportunities that are made available to households and how the vouchers may just allow households to take advantage of those other opportunities (livelihood, agriculture, etc.). Other households may not be readily transformed (elderly, infirmed, for example). The reason for SO3 not getting continued was mainly due to lack of resources - a large cut to the annual budget. ‣ Post-event Response: That was our understanding too. There may be an important small shade of difference here (budget cut vs. activity cut). We will check and be sure we are reflecting that correctly. 2 2 Kore Lavi DFAP Final Qualitative Performance Evaluation | Webinar Q&A Reponses
IMPEL | Implementer-Led Evaluation and Learning At the time, Kore Lavi followed the PM2A methodology that only provided rations for the mother and child pair as promoted by FFP at the time. ‣ Post-event Response: Thank you! This is very helpful information into the reason for the choice of the individual rations vs. family rations. From the start, setting a threshold of inflation that should prompt adjustment to the value of vouchers could be very helpful regarding decision making ‣ Post-event Response: Agreed. And communicated with beneficiaries so they know what to expect. As mentioned above, inflation could be the CPI, local food CPI, the cost of a minimum food basket at the local markets, etc. Additionally, there could be some plans put in place for deflation (say, against the dollar) - I would not think that decreasing the voucher value would be appropriate, since HHs come to rely on the consistency of the voucher each month. However, it could have implications for overall project budget. Is there any plan to link VSLAs with existing financial institutions? ‣ Live Response: Yes, definitely linkages with MFIs. In addition, there was discussion of a federation of VSLAs. Regarding fresh food vouchers' impact on local market, can you point to any specific impact? Quantitative or Qualitative? ‣ Live Response: Vendors described an increase in sales and in new clients. This may not be sustainable after the end of the voucher system. ‣ Post-Event Response: This was qualitative data (very commonly reported). We mention that having quantitative indicators in the M&E for the project to measure the impact on vendors would be a good idea- there are most certainly positive impacts on the vendors, but it's not well quantified. Why have the Evaluation Team listed VSLAs as part of SO4? They were included in SO2. ‣ Post-Event Response: This should have been clarified better during the presentation. A few pieces fell on multiple strategic objectives, at least conceptually. We were thinking of the bigger concept of strengthening Haitian institutional capacity (SO4) and put VSLAs as well as the work with MFIs, etc. under SO4- but agreed, those were really part of SO2. We did not delineate that way in the report. What are the nutrition activities that was conducted and who was responsible in conducting those activities? ‣ Live Response: Nutrition activities were integrated in training on healthy foods, hygiene, etc. Respondents indicated positive behavior change and increased nutrition knowledge. Was the Kore Lavi voucher system strong enough to avoid fraud? For instance, a participant may defeat the system by receiving more coupons than allowed, whether with the help of corrupt project staff or by himself. Or maybe project staff use coupon for his/her own benefit? ‣ Live Response: There were systems in place to avoid fraud and they seemed to be effective. According to respondents there was very little “leakage.” Was there any issue with the vendors providing the local foods? ‣ Post-Event Response: There were one or two exceptional reports of vendors struggling to meet the increased demand for local foods when vouchers were distributed, and having to reach further afield to source local products (neighboring communes/departments). This 3 3 Kore Lavi DFAP Final Qualitative Performance Evaluation | Webinar Q&A Reponses
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