PERFORMANCE EVALUATION: COMPREHENSIVE AND COMPASSIONATE CARE FOR ORPHANS AND VULNERABLECHILDREN (OVC) AND THEIR FAMILIES AND COMMUNITIES IN SOUTH NYANZA, KENYA –WEZESHA
2018
The Wezesha Project was a five year project funded by the United States Presidents Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR) through United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Wezesha offered Comprehensive and Compassionate care for Orphans and vulnerable children (OVC) and their families and communities in South Nyanza, Kenya. The project aimed to empower the communities to be able to respond to the needs of OVC comprehensively and compassionately. The project targeted 20,000 OVC in Migori, Kisii and Homa Bay counties of southern Nyanza through 20 Local Implementing Partners (LIPs) spread across the three counties.Wezesha project was by two civil society organizations led by Lifeskills Promoters (LISP) and St Johns’ Community Center (SJCC).
Realtime Healthcare was contracted to design and implement a performance evaluation to determine i) the effectiveness of the project ii) the impact of the project iii) the sustainability of the project iv) to document the lessons learnt
Realtime was responsible for providing overall leadership in every stage of the evaluation process; Providing technical input in design of the evaluation; ensuring standard operating procedures are adhered to throughout the study period, Leading in quantitative and qualitative data analysis and Report writing.
This was a cross-sectional survey that applied both quantitative and qualitative approaches. A total of 422 OVC households from the three quantitative data were drawn from project database, household vulnerability assessments and caregiver questionnaires. Qualitative data was collected through key informant interviews, focus group discussions and document review. Quantitative data was collected using KoBocollecet data collection software and later exported to SPSS version 22 for analysis.
- Designing evaluation methodology
- Development of data collection tools
- Raining of Research assistants in data collection and ethical considerations
- Coordinating data collection exercise in the field using Kobo collect application software
- Conducting data analysis
- Developing end of project evaluation report
According to the evaluation findings, Wezesha was instrumental in increasing community awareness and participation in responding to OVC needs. The project built the capacity of 20 Local Implementing Partners (LIPs) in improving their governance structures, project management, financial management as well as in technical administration of their programs. The project contributed significantly to reduction of vulnerability at household level with the proportion of highly vulnerable HHs reducing from 46% to 4% by end of project.
