USAID/Cairo PL-480 Title II; program review

480, Title II food distribution program in Egypt. Evaluation covers the period 11/76-6/81 and is based on document review, site visits, and meetings with staffs of Catholic Relief Service (CRS), CARE, and Egyptian public and private agencies. The CRS School Lunch project serves 1.2 million children in over 3,000 schools in Lower Egypt. Although evaluation data are lacking, the goals of increased enrollment and class attentiveness and reduced drop-out and absentee rates have been achieved. Major issues include the continued use of costly and poor-tasting wheat soy blend; commodity shifts proposed for FY 82 to cut costs; and the continued feeding of children in canal cities in this "rural" project. The CRS Maternal Child Health project provides food supplements and nutrition education to 500,000 children aged 3-36 months and to their mothers. Problems include the continued lack of a uniform children's growth chart and difficulties in instituting growth monitoring in clinics; doubt about the program's suitability given the high rates of diarrhea and infection; design deficiencies in the nutrition education component; and the need to select an optimal commodity mix within cost constraints. The CRS Other Child Feeding project serves 45,000 children under age l4 in 940 public and private institutions (orphanages, day care centers, hospitals). Outstanding issues are the possible need for other inputs and whether the program's size, commodity choice, and logistics enable it to reach needy children. The CARE Family Planning (FP) project, operated by the Egyptian FP Association (EFPA), uses food to increase acceptance of FP and provides soy oil and soy fortified flour to 40,000 FP acceptors. Key issues are how to limit the project to new, younger acceptors (women participants average 35 years of age and half to two-thirds of them accepted prior to the program); the capacity of local EFPA centers to operate the project; and whether to extend the project beyond its 1/82 expiration date. Evaluators recommend postponing until 1983 the external evaluation proposed for fall 1982, because it is not well-timed for gathering information and because other types of assistance would be more beneficial.