AVANCE, Asociacion de Promocion y Desarrollo Socio-Economico, cooperative agreement no. 522-0273-A-00-7128-00 : mid-term evaluation, final report

Evaluation covers the period 1987-11/89. AVANCE lacks unity and a sense of direction and the project has been constrained by management problems. In part, these problems are due to A.I.D.'s assumption that a minor weekly newspaper operation could be expanded into a complex, multi-activity organization with little or no management TA. Other shortfalls are attributed to poor working relationships among AVANCE's Board of Directors, its top management, and A.I.D. staff. Despite these constraints, the project has some accomplishments to its credit. AVANCE has created Sistema de Educacion Interactivo (SEI), which has produced a good-quality interactive radio math program for grades 1 and 2 which has been used in about 2,500 classrooms. However, SEI's productivity has been low, and no work has been done on planned efforts to provide primary-level radio instruction in Spanish. AVANCE also took over Sani Radio in Puerto Lempira, which provides cultural and educational programming to the Miskito population in eastern Honduras. AVANCE's agricultural newspaper, El Agricultor, needs to be improved in both content and targeting. Currently, the content is not focused on any particular audience. Marketing is directed at students in grades 6 to 8 in urban and semi-urban areas, but only because this group is more likely to attract advertising revenues than either younger children or rural farmers. AVANCE has failed to develop new, income-generating publications; it did develop a social marketing division, but this was disbanded in 1988. AVANCE expects an operating deficit in 1989 of about 1.7 million Lempiras, though this is expected to decrease to less than 1 million by 1992. It is recommended that AVANCE continue to be funded by A.I.D., but that it operate at a lower level than called for in the original design. Several lessons were learned. (1) Project design should be tailored closely to the capacity of the implementing agency. (2) The tradition of local voluntary service to agencies like AVANCE is not well established. (3) Requiring financial self- sufficiency is very difficult for agencies delivering a "social good." (4) Difficulties in distributing AVANCE's products in remote rural Honduras were underestimated.