Monitoring and evaluation is critical to the success of any intervention. It helps improve evidence-based decision-making, improved performance, better resource allocation, quality assurance, real-time learning, and long-term sustainability.
Understanding this need, South Saharan Social Development Organization, in partnership with ActionAid Nigeria, conducted monitoring and evaluation visits to various project sites under the Local Rights Programme to ascertain the level of progress made on the project. The monitoring evaluated the progress of the women’s peer education groups, GBV response teams, agroecology training, and the impact of child message collection in the target communities.
The GBV response teams have solved over five cases since their inception. This includes cases of child abuse, land disputes, and gender-based violence cases. The child message collection activities have empowered kids with water bottles, food flasks, writing materials, and desks. This improved the kids’ learning environment and outcome.
A teacher told the team, “The children are excited about the writing materials and desks. They come to school earlier. Those who don’t come often now come regularly.” The team also held a community stakeholder meeting to finalize on the construction of more desks in Ihenyi community.
The impact of the women peer education group was analyzed using the women’s peer resource checklist. The women have adopted new sanitation practices, they are more aware of the effects of child marriage, and more women are now included in decision-making processes at the community level.
On the agroecology front, the team visited the model farms. The seedlings are flourishing. and farmers have started applying the learned knowledge to their farms. They have transitioned to organic manure from their livestock, reallocating funds initially earmarked for chemical fertilizers to procure additional seedlings for planting, intending to maximize output at the end of the farming season.
