Empowering Sri Lanka’s Tea Plantation Communities Final Evaluation
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In May 2017 Chrysalis in partnership with CARE International UK began implementing the Empowering Sri Lanka’s Tea Plantation Communities Project funded by Twinning’s adopting Community Development Forums (CDFs) pioneered by CARE International Sri Lanka. These platforms seek to enhance worker-management relationships so to achieve social and commercial benefits in 7 tea estates in Sri Lanka by May 2019. Since inception the project has reached over 3,500 tea estate workers living in estates operated by three plantation companies with the help of the CDFs, while indirectly providing benefits to over 16,000 worker family members. At its core CDFs seek to transform relationships between management and estate workers, while also providing the estate community with a platform through which to directly influence and shape their development priorities and solutions. Further it serves to help link the community with a host of service providers and socioeconomic opportunities. Undertaken in July and August 2019 the overall objective of the end of project evaluation was to assess the degree to which the project had achieved its intermediate and the final goal and to develop key lessons so to enhance future programming in the sector. The evaluation used a contribution analysis, and a mixed method approach to collect data (e.g. household surveys, focus group discussions, key informant and structured interviews). Data was collected from 7 participating estates operated by 3 companies: Bogawanthalawa Plantations (Bogawana Estate, Kotiyagala Estate, Lethenty Estate and Fetteresso Estate), Malwatte Valley Plantations (Uva Highlands) and Agarapathana (Nayabedde Estate and Dambetenna Estate). Using the proportionate random sampling technique 241 respondents were selected for household surveys, 12 managers were interviewed using structured interviews and 7 focus group discussions were held consisting of 86 representatives from the 7 CDFs. A total of 16 key informants were also consulted [73 pages].