Bangladesh

The NGO Health Service Delivery Project 2012 – 2018

Bangladesh is the tenth most densely populated country in the world.3 Despite its growing economy—it is expect- ed to become a middle-income country by 2020—the Government of Bangladesh (GOB) has not been able to invest sufficient resources in its health system. To close the gap, the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare (MOHFW) has formally integrated the non-governmen- tal organization (NGO) sector into the national health system. A significant proportion of this plan has included the Surjer Hashi (SH), or Smiling Sun, network, a group of NGOs supported by the United States Agency for In- ternational Development (USAID) and its implementing partners since 1997.
From 2012 to 2017, USAID supported the SH network through the NGO Health Service Delivery Project (NHSDP). The UK Department for International Devel- opment (DfID) provided additional funding beginning in the second project year. Led by Pathfinder International, NHSDP provided material and technical support to 25 NGOs, who served a catchment area of 26.3 million peo- ple through a network of 399 static and 10,872 satellite clinics and 11,842 community service providers.

This is the final report for this project and outlines the results from the project. Read More...

The NGO Health Service Delivery Project 2012 – 2018 – Final Report

From 2012 to 2017, USAID supported the Surjer Hashi (SH), or Smiling Sun, network through the NGO Health Service Delivery Project (NHSDP). The UK Department for International Development (DfID) provided additional funding beginning in the second project year. A consortium led by Pathfinder International, NHSDP provided material and technical support to 25 NGOs, who served a catchment area of 26.3 million people through a network of 399 static and 10,872 satellite clinics and 11,842 community service providers (CSPs). In its five years of implementation, the SH network made 251,490,942 services contacts, 8,237,567 of which were for antenatal care (ANC) and 42,577,833 were adolescents or youth. More than three million visits to SH clinics for children under five years of age integrated activities to monitor children’s growth and promote healthy nutrition. By providing 7,839,430 Couple Years' Protection, the SH network averted 2,000 maternal and 10,000 child deaths and 1.9 million unwanted pregnancies. Read More...

Mid-Term Evaluation (MTE) of the SHOUHARDO III Program

ARE commissioned a Mid-Term Evaluation (MTE) of the SHOUHARDO III Program to formulate recommendations for the remaining life of the program to increase effectiveness in achieving sustainable impact and increase efficiency in use of resources. The MTE was planned and implemented over the period from late October 2017, through mid-June, 2018, with information gathering and preliminary analysis undertaken in Bangladesh from February 12 through March 12. Read More...

SHOUHARDO III Longitudinal Study (RMS) Report

The overarching program goal is to improve gender equitable food and nutrition security and resilience of the vulnerable people living in the Char and Haor regions in Bangladesh by 2020. To achieve its goal, SHOUHARDO III focuses on three principal purposes and two cross- cutting purposes: 1) Increased equitable access to income for both women and men, and nutritious food for men, women, boys, and girls; 2); Improved nutritional status of children under five years-of-age, pregnant and lactating women, and adolescent girls; 3) Strengthened gender equitable ability of people, households, communities and systems to mitigate, adapt to and recover from man-made and natural shocks; 4) Increased women’s empowerment and gender equity at both the family and community levels; and 5) Increased provision and utilization of public services (e.g., local elected bodies and nation building departments) for communities, especially for poor and extremely poor women. Within its program areas of agriculture and livelihoods; health, hygiene, and nutrition; and disaster and climate risk management, the project delivers an integrated set of services – a holistic framework with an emphasis on women’s empowerment, gender issues, and good governance.

This report is a longitudinal study of Shouhardo III and identifies key impact areas. It reports on survey rounds of project participants, collected every six months throughout the project. Read More...

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...

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