Partnership and household livelihood security : final evaluation

Evaluation covers the period 10/96-2/99 against a PACD of 9/99. CARE proposed to use four different approaches in its pilot countries: Bolivia was to work with established, formal NGOs; Peru with sector-based partnerships; Mali with formal, beneficiary-owned organizations; and Tanzania with local organizations and indirect service delivery. Overall progress has been satisfactory, and it is expected that all objectives will be met by the PACD. CARE pilot countries have been most successful in establishing viable partnerships of various kinds, while much slower progress has been made in applying the HLS framework to existing and future interventions. Some weaknesses remain. Monitoring and evaluation of PHLS activities have lagged well behind other accomplishments in all countries except Mali. Implementation has been hampered by donor focus on sector-specific project implementation, the inability to redesign existing projects to conform to the multi-dimensional paradigm of PHLS, the scarcity of new project design opportunities, the need to strengthen partners institutionally, and the difficulty of defining an appropriate mix of development impact indicators in addition to those required by donor agencies. Nevertheless, the pilot countries have all made progress in these areas. The most impressive progress in applying the HLS concept has been made in Peru, while partnership with other implementing organizations has been the focus of the Bolivia country program. CARE/Mali has made considerable progress in establishing monitoring and evaluation baselines and partnerships with beneficiary organizations, and Tanzania appears to have excelled in both local-level partnership and HLS assessment. It is expected, though not assured, that the Monitoring, Evaluating, and Reporting (MER) system will be functional in all pilot countries by the PACD. Partnership has been interpreted differently in pilot countries. In Bolivia and Peru it is applied to relationships with other implementing organizations, whether governmental or nongovernmental, and tends not to include beneficiary organizations, although this is far more true of Bolivia than Peru. CARE/Mali, on the other hand, has taken great care to partner with beneficiary-owned organizations, neglecting partnerships with NGOs. CARE/Tanzania appears to have involved both types of partner organizations in its urban assessment process in Dar Es Salaam. Defining, operationalizing, and, in particular, measuring the concept of household livelihood security has not been easy for CARE. The definition and monitoring of impact has been a preoccupation for many donor agencies for at least two decades, and projects embracing the concept of basic human needs have been in existence since the early 1980s. What is new in PHLS is the packaging of all these elements in an empirically based theoretical framework. Nonetheless, if household livelihood security is to have more meaning, there should be greater understanding of the intra-household dynamics of the population of a given area. The HLS literature devotes little attention to gender relations, local social values, and other aspects of household welfare strategies, although some of the broader economic and political constraints are becoming clearer as CARE works with community-based organizations. The principal contradiction in the conceptual framework of HLS is that most interventions remain sectorally focused and community oriented, and multi-sectoral household focus only becomes a reality in impact measurement. Clustering projects in the same geographic area is not the same as focusing these projects on the same households. Although the difference may appear trivial, it has importance for the meaning of HLS as a development methodology. A 2-year extension, as originally envisaged, is recommended.