Child survival

The evaluation covered the period 9/87-9/90. The project encountered a series of obstacles. Save the Children Federation (SCF), the primary implementing agency, had difficulty placing and retaining staff. The MOH was unable to disburse local currencies and did not participate fully in service delivery, and NGO activities were not funded until well into the project. Nor did the NGO"s have sufficient resources or experience to make up for the MOH"s lack of participation and be able to immediately extend coverage to the large numbers of children and mothers in need. As the result of these and other problems, the project failed to achieve anticipated service delivery coverage and project outputs lagged even further behind. In 7/90, USAID/DR terminated the agreement with SCF and decided to redesign the project. The task was assigned to the evaluation team, which incorporated its recommendations into the evaluation. The major lesson learned is that A.I.D. project designers should provide guidance to the contractor on how to phase and prioritize activities. It is not appropriate for a contractor to make such decisions. In addition, a statement of deliverables should be issued which outlines A.I.D. expectations in the clearest terms and provides task-oriented goals and benchmarks that facilitate project management.