Malawi

Increasing Mitigation, Productivity and Adaptation through Crop-Recovery Techniques (IMPACT) II Project: Endline Summary Report

In the 2015 / 2016 season, Malawi experienced severe floods and droughts that occurred as a result of El Nino weather conditions. The Malawi Vulnerability Assessment Committee (MVAC) -composed of the Government, UN agencies and NGOs- forecasted that a minimum of 6.5 million people, or 39 percent of the country's projected population of 16.8 million, would not be able to meet their annual food requirements during the 2016/2017 consumption period. Nsanje, Phalombe and Mulanje are some of the districts that were hit hardest. CARE Malawi implemented the IMPACT project from August 2016 through July 2017 to help the people from the three districts recover their agricultural-based livelihoods. After closure, USAID’s OFDA provided a new grant of US$1,125,519 for IMPACT to run from August 2017 to July 2018 in a bid to consolidate the gains achieved in the first phase and reach additional households affected by continued dry spells and the Fall Armyworms. CARE subcontracted ADRA (Adventist Development and Relief Agency), an international NGO with experience and presence on the ground, to implement activities of the second phase in Phalombe and Mulanje (as they had in Phase I). This evaluation aimed to assess the design, performance and impact of the second phase. It used mixed methods to collect quantitative and qualitative data from 476 beneficiary households, 14 key persons and 8 fo¬cus group discussions with lead farmers, women and men, local committees and non-beneficiaries. Training of research assistants and pre-testing of study tools were done to ensure quality of the data collected. [48 pages] Read More...

Impact Assessment of Savings Groups

Researchers from IPA, along with CARE staff and their implementing partners, conducted a randomized evaluation of Village Savings and Loans Association (VSLA) programs in Ghana, Malawi, and Uganda to examine two questions: Who joins savings groups? And, what is the impact on households from programs that promote savings groups? The evaluation used a randomized control trial (RCT) design, in which eligible communities were randomly divided into two sets: a set of villages with access to a VSLA program (the treatment group) and a set of villages where the program was not implemented during the study (the control group). The study started in Ghana in 2008 and in Malawi and Uganda in 2009, and the final data collection took place in 2011 in the three countries. Each site included a panel survey in which households were surveyed before the start of the program implementation and again two or three years later. Over 15,000 households in almost 950 communities were surveyed. The surveys covered a large variety of topics, including health, education, income-generating activities, asset holdings, food consumption, non-food expenditure, intra-household decision making and community involvement. At the time of the endline survey, after an average of two years of program implementation in the three sites, one third of respondents had joined a VSLA group. On average, members had been part of a group for 15 months and 61% of members had gone through a full savings cycle, normally lasting between 8 and 12 months. The evaluation should thus be thought of as assessing the relatively short-term impacts of the intervention. [62 pages] Read More...

Southern African Nutrition Initiative (SANI): Baseline Household Evaluation — Malawi

CARE is currently implementing the South Africa Nutrition Initiative (SANI) project in Malawi, Mozambique and Zambia. The goal of SANI is to improve the nutritional status of women of reproductive age and boys and girls under 5 years. This baseline study was conducted to obtain baseline values for the key SANI intervention areas in Dowa and Ntchisi Districts of Malawi. Eleven (11) key PMF indicators were able to be measured in order to set-up baseline values and establish achievable life of project targets for SANI in Malawi. (78 pages) Read More...

Creating spaces for dialogue: a cluster-randomized evaluation of CARE’s Community Score Card on health governance outcomes

Social accountability interventions such as CARE’s Community Score Card© show promise for improving sexual, reproductive, and maternal health outcomes. A key component of the intervention is creation of spaces where community members, healthcare workers, and district officials can safely interact and collaborate to improve health-related outcomes. Here, we evaluate the intervention’s effect on governance constructs such as power sharing and equity that are central to our theory of change. Read More...

Umodzi – Men, Women, Boys and Girls in Alliance to Achieve Gender Equality Final Narrative

Umodzi was a two-year action research project to test the effectiveness and scalability of a gender-synchronized, transformational approach that is integrated into existing school-based life skills (LS) and sexuality education programs for 10- to 19-year-old adolescent boys and girls. The purpose of Umodzi was to enhance the sustained empowerment of adolescent girls in rural communities in Central Malawi to exercise their sexual and reproductive health (SRH) rights and ultimately achieve better life outcomes. The project used a comparative study to demonstrate evidence-based impact and also used a proof-of-concept component to inform process in real time. [20 [pages] Read More...

Shelter Project Performance Report

Between May and December 2016 (phase I), CARE and UNHCR provided safe, durable shelter to 531 families (1,917 people of concern) who had fled conflict in Mozambique. After starting with a transitional model using tarpaulins and blue gum poles, CARE worked with local skilled and unskilled labourers to upgrade the transitional models or create new semi-permanent shelters with mud brick walls and roofing comprised of iron sheets. The project also established kitchen gardens to support the nutrition and provide limited income generation for interested households. [12 pages] Read More...

Increasing Mitigation Productivity and Adaptation through Climate-smart Techniques

This report covers the cumulative achievements of the Increasing Mitigation Productivity and Adaptation through Climate-smart Techniques (IMPACT) project, from August 2016 to 31st July 2017 from the three targeted districts of Mulanje, Nsanje and Phalombe. Activities under the Agriculture and Food Security Sector focused on two subsectors: Improving household food security and Irrigation. [23 pages] Read More...

Emergency cash transfers, nutrition and livelihood assistance for chronically food insecure households in Malawi (2016-17)

In May 2016, the Government of Malawi (GoM), assessed 6.5 million people out of total population of 16.8M (39 percent) would not be able to meet their annual food requirements during the 2016/17 consumption period. Additionally, over 1.8 million people were in need of agricultural inputs to restore their livelihoods. About 31 per cent of the cultivated land was affected by the drought, of which 13 per cent was severely affected. Poor nutrition and increased mortality rates were of particular concern in 24 out of a total of 28 districts. Approximately 975,000 children aged 6-23 months and pregnant and lactating women were particularly at risk of food insecurity and malnutrition and requiring nutritional treatment.

The high level of food insecurity was due to two consecutive years of below average production of all key agricultural crops. In 2014/15 Malawi had the worst growing season for seven years, and this was followed by the worst floods in history in January 2015 and then widespread prolonged dry spells. Malawi was then severely impacted by one of the strongest El Niño events in 35 years. This climactic phenomenon has brought below average rainfall in the central and southern regions, and higher than normal rainfall in the north of the country. In response the food insecurity, the President of Malawi declared a state of disaster on 12 April 2016.

In order to address the significant challenges posed by El Niño in Malawi, CARE proposed a comprehensive cash transfer, nutrition and livelihoods response to reduce the vulnerability crisis-affected people, especially women, girls and boys in Salima. The project focuses on three immediate outcomes. First, the project will improve capacity of at-risk populations to meet basic needs and reduce negative coping strategies through cash transfers. Second, the project will focus on improving the nutritional status of women and children through awareness raising, demonstrations of best practices related to food preparing and provision of kitchen garden inputs. Finally, the project will increase the self-reliance of at risk population through the provision of seeds and tools as well as training on post-distribution harvest and storage techniques. [19 pages]
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Vertical Expansion of Social Protection Program

For the last nine years, Malawi has been supporting on average 1.73 million people each year with emergency food assistance, i.e. about 10% of its population. With widespread chronic poverty and high vulnerabilities, even predictable, recurrent lean seasons and minor weather variations develop into emergencies. Humanitarian actors including UN agencies and NGOs, repeatedly step-in to cover needs.

Poor households are often some of the most vulnerable to disasters. Poor people are among the groups most exposed to and suffering from shocks, including drought or floods: Limited livelihood options, resources, and access to services, mean that these households are often the least able to withstand shocks, and therefore prone to food insecurity, especially without resorting to negative coping mechanisms.

New and more sustainable ways of preventing and addressing recurrent food crises have to be found. An international humanitarian system, which is under strain by ever longer lasting crises, affecting more people, cannot sustainably respond to needs that largely result from chronic poverty. It is designed to support countries overwhelmed by a shock, to save lives, alleviate suffering and maintain human dignity during and in the aftermath of disasters. It also aims at preventing and supporting preparedness for the occurrence of such situations, through Disaster Risk Reduction measures.[24 page case study] Read More...

Pathways- Global Baseline Report

CARE’s Pathways program focuses on improving poor women farmers’ productivity by empowering them to more fully engage in equitable agriculture systems. The program is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and implemented in Bangladesh, Ghana, India, Malawi, Mali, and Tanzania. Aligned with other CARE initiatives, such as CARE Australia’s WE-RISE program, Pathways is designed to overcome the constraints to women’s productive and equitable engagement in agriculture. Utilizing a strong gender focus, the program’s Theory of Change posits that marginalized, poor women farmers will be more productive, and their families more food secure when:
 women have increased capacity (skills, knowledge, resources), capabilities (confidence, bargaining power, collective voice), and support
 local governance and institutions have/implement gender-sensitive policies and programming that are responsive to the rights and needs of poor women farmers
 agricultural service, value chain, and market environments of relevance to women are more competitive, gender-inclusive, and environmentally sustainable. [104 pages] Read More...

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