Bangladesh

Shouhardo III – BENEFICIARY BASED SAMPLE SURVEY (BBSS) 2018 FINAL REPORT


SHOUHARDO III, implemented by CARE Bangladesh, intends to transform the lives of women and men from 675,000 Poor and Extreme Poor (PEP) households in eight of the poorest and most marginalized districts in Bangladesh. Funded by USAID, the program intervenes in the areas of food security, agriculture, livelihoods, health, water and sanitation, resilience, and women’s empowerment. Supported by a robust Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system, the Beneficiary Based Sample Survey (BBSS) 20181 of CARE SHOUHARDO III was conducted with the PEP households of the Char and Haor regions where the program operates. The BBSS has proved to be a reliable tool to gain insights of the progress and status of the major indicators, which are essential for the overall management of the program.

Given the relative mix of programming activities and the indicators selected to monitor program progress, there were four major sampling frames: i) value chain beneficiaries, ii) other farmers (involved with on- farm IGAs), iii) Comprehensive Homestead Development (CHD), and iv) mothers of under-five (U5) years of age children. These were taken to capture the necessary information to track all annual monitoring indicators for indicators 1-13, and indicators 14-27 were collected from the entire Core Occupational Group (COG) beneficiaries. A total of 1,425 samples were taken this year. Read More...

Tipping Point Phase 2 Baseline Bangladesh

Although the body of evidence on how to prevent child marriage is growing, its rate did not decline at a desirable pace. Previous interventions targeted many of the root causes of child marriage. However, despite wide recognition of the need to change pro-child marriage social norms, attempt to study the impact of social norms change in addressing child marriage was rarely investigated or not investigated well. Lack of understanding of social norms and how to change them effectively impedes development of effective and sustainable child marriage prevention programs. Moreover, for most of the interventions, there were no rigorous evaluations. Furthermore, the interventions that had strong evaluation designs did not necessarily focus on social norms change. It is against this background that the current research employs a cluster randomized controlled trial (CRCT) to evaluate Tipping Point (TP), an integrated social norms intervention designed by CARE to address child marriage in Bangladesh. This report presents findings from the baseline survey. The report focuses on assessing the rates of child marriage in TP study areas and decision making ability of the adolescent girls. Read More...

Private Sector and Market Systems Engagement: Time to Move Beyond Corporate Social Responsibility

A summary of CARE Bangladesh's work on engaging the private sector to transform market systems to end poverty. Read More...

Where the Rain Falls (WtRF) Phase-III Final Evaluation Report

Bangladesh is frequently cited as one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. Considering these scenarios of climate change risks and as an initiative to address the effects of climate change, CARE International in Bangladesh implemented the project “Where the Rain Falls (WtRF)”. Generously funded by the Prince Albert II Foundation, WtRF Phase III aimed at improving the resilience of targeted vulnerable and marginalized communities to the impacts of increasing variability of rainfall patterns by promoting CARE’s SuPER (Sustainable, Profitable, Equitable and Resilient) agriculture approach through community based adaptation. This intervention was designed building on earlier phases of Where the Rain Falls project (Phase I & II).

The main objective of this evaluation is to critically review program performance based on the indicators set out in the logical framework. The project is also keen to know how it is helping communities (especially those who are rain fed farmers) to address climatic vulnerabilities in a gender friendly manner. As the project will come to its end in February 2019, CARE Bangladesh planned to have an independent evaluation to see the results in comparison with the baseline. Read More...

AESA: Effectiveness of the Training to the Beneficiaries by Adopting Improved Technologies Provided by the USAID-AESA Project and their Economic Benefits

Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) has been implementing the USAID Agricultural Extension Support (USAID AESA) project in partnership with CARE Bangladesh and mPower. To materialize this aim, in addition to other approaches, the project created 3,878 village level farmer producer groups (FPGs) around production and marketing of six prioritized value chains – jute, chili, mung bean, beef fattening, dairy and fish. These groups have been working together to demand and receive extension services and training, as well as collectively purchasing inputs at lower prices and aggregating supply to negotiate better prices for their products.

This report assesses the effectiveness of such training with respect to adoption by farmers and impact to farm productivity. [42 pages] Read More...

Mid-term Evaluation of the USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity

The purpose of the USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity (AESA) mid-term evaluation is to 1) review and analyze the effectiveness of AESA project in achieving the program objectives and 2) analyze if the project is contributing to the improved agricultural service provision which in turn will lead to increased productivity of farmers.

The AESA project is organized into three components that together contribute to the AESA goal: "a strengthened agricultural extension system in southwest and central Bangladesh." Component 1 is premised on the empowerment of smallholder farmers (with an emphasis on women farmers), through development of farmer producer groups (FPGs) around six non-cereal value chains in central and southwest Bangladesh: jute, chili, mung bean, fish farming, beef-fattening and dairy. Component 2 enhances networking, linkages and access to information for farmers and extension agents through development and introduction of new information communication technology (ICT) capacity. Component 3 addresses transformational change within the public and private extension services, so they not only have the capacity to provide the most relevant and up-to-date technical information, but smallholder farmers have equal access to all government and non- government infrastructure and services in their area. Read More...

5 Game Changing Initiatives for Transformative Agricultural Extension

The USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity (AESA) project is a key part of Bangladesh-centered Feed the Future (FtF) initiative addresses this challenge. Implemented by the Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM) with technical partners CARE Bangladesh and mPower Social Enterprises Ltd., the goal of the project which started at late 2012 is to strengthen the existing extension system in southwest and central Bangladesh to sustainably improve food security and nutrition for smallholder farmers. This translates to the enhancement of access to and utilization of agricultural extension services by smallholder farmers – both women and men. Key interventions under this project works to build capacities and creating support to a demand-driven extension system, synergized by the use of ICT. Geographically distributed in the central and southwest Bangladesh, the project operates in 12 districts, covering 26 upazilas, under Jessore, Khulna and Barisal regions as primary intervention areas.

This report identifies 5 game changing initiatives for transformative agricultural extension. Read More...

Public and Private Extension Agents’ in USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity (AESA) Project

The USAID Agricultural Extension Support Activity (AESA) has been implanted since October 2012 with the primary objective of increasing farmers' access to improved agricultural extension services leading to increased household income, nutritional status and food security for 112,000 participating farmers.

The project has attempted to strengthen the public and private extension service provision in the project areas. This report is an assessment of the capacity and performance of the public and private service providers, the quality of services they are providing and whether the linkages between service providers and beneficiaries were functioning properly. Read More...

A-Card Preliminary Assessment Report

For smallholder farmers (SHFs) with limited savings and assets, agricultural spending is largely facilitated through two credit models, the micro-finance and bank models. The banking system while enabling access to credit at low interest rates of 9-10% average, has failed to reach 80% of SHFs; as SHFs lack collateral and have limited understanding of various procedural complexities. Micro-credit Programs (MCPs) due to high interest rates of between 25-31%, smaller loan sizes and inflexible and short repayment periods have also failed to address needs of SHFs. Furthermore, since both formal (bank) and informal (MCP) credit is extensively cash-based, there is a tendency for its use in nonfarming activities, negatively impacting agricultural productivity and profitability.

To address these challenges, A-Card was designed to digitalize and re-engineer Micro-Finance to enable formal financial Inclusion of smallholder farmers (SHFs). A-Card model was designed by Mr. Bidyuth Mahalder, Chief of Party of the AESA Project and USAID reserves its IP rights. It was piloted in three USAID’s Feed the Future districts of Bangladesh by three implementing partners-Dhaka Ahsania Mission, Care and mPower. A-Card is a debit card specially designed for SHFs, which facilitates financial access to credit for digital purchase of farm inputs at low interest rate (10%), no collateral requirement and flexible payback period (6 month tenure).

This evaluation was conducted in October-November 2017 on A-Card holders who took and repaid their loans before May 2017 in order to assess the product’s impact on productivity and profitability. The evaluation also involved one to one interviews with 200 SHFs, key informant interviews with 5 input retailers and 2 MFI agents who were all part of A-Card to assess the overall impact beyond productivity and profitability and recommendations for A-Card. Read More...

Assessing the Impact of Digitally-Enabled Microcredit for Smallholder Farmers

mSTAR/Bangladesh, working with the Agriculture Extension Support Activity (AESA) led by Dhaka Ahsania Mission (DAM), conducted pre and post assessments in Faridpur district to understand the impact that a micro-credit product (called A-Card) delivered to smallholder farmers through Bank Asia’s agent banking had on participating farmers, associated ag-input retailers, and other relevant stakeholders, as well as to understand what further action can be taken to improve uptake of these services.

This report includes findings from the pre and post assessment surveys, beginning with farmers and retailers’ demographic information, including age, sex and education; as well as their mobile phone ownership, access and usage patterns. It also examines the knowledge and perceptions that stakeholders have of digital financial services (DFS), in addition to their perceived benefits from A-Card, associated challenges, and opportunities to scale up. In addition, this report includes some findings from a separate survey conducted solely by AESA. It concludes with recommendations based on the findings and feedback from stakeholders. Read More...

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