Annual Report: Sugira Muryango Family Strengthening Intervention

The intervention is designed to target families living in extreme poverty, namely, Ubudehe 11, the Government of Rwanda's poverty classification system. A four-arm cluster randomized trial will enroll n=1,048 VUP-eligible families with children aged 6-36 months to compare outcomes among children and parents in households receiving Classic VUP public works, Expanded VUP public works, Combined Classic VUP public works with Sugira Muryango, and Combined Expanded VUP public works with Sugira Muryango. The study aims to assess the effectiveness of Sugira Muryango in promoting responsive parenting, reducing violence and harsh punishment towards children, and promoting early child development through the behavior change of caregivers of vulnerable households. The interaction between Sugira Muryango and the VUP public works models will also be assessed, as well as the costs, barriers, and facilitators of integrating the Sugira Muryango intervention into VUP programming. Findings from this operational research will influence the country-wide expansion of evidence-based ECD services linked to the social protection system of Rwanda. During fiscal year 18, Sugira Muryango completed Phase I pilot study activities and completed enrollment and baseline and endline assessments of 1,049 households. 549 households completed the intervention, and 118 Community Based Volunteers were recruited, trained, and supervised. The Expert Seed Team completed Phase I's endline assessments on October 17, 2017, and six-month follow-up assessments in March 2018. Analysis of baseline and post-assessment data was used to refine assessment batteries for the scale-up study, allowing for the drop of measures that were underperforming and assessment of answer options and skip patterns in the data. Phase II activities began in January 2018 with the identification and enrollment of households in Nyanza, Ngoma, and Rubavu. Sugira Muryango's Expert Seed Team completed Community Based Volunteer (CBV) selection and 3-week training of 118 CBVs, 39 CBVs in Nyanza, 36 CBVs in Ngoma, and 43 CBVs in Rubavu. The trainings were held in a centralized location in each district, and the CBVs were provided food and lodging during the training sessions with a transportation stipend to go home on the weekends and return on Sunday for the training. As training and data collection in each district were sequential, once CBV training and data collection were complete, the expert supervisors commenced the introduction to families and start of the intervention for treatment families. The timeline of Phase II activities includes household identification and enrollment from January to March 2018, data collection - baseline from April to May 2018, Community Based Volunteers training from April to June 2018, intervention (13 weeks) from May to September 2018, data collection - midline from August to September 2018, 3-month booster training and visit in November 2018, 6-month booster training and visit in March 2019, and data collection - endline from August to September 2019.