Baseline study for McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program

PCI was building on investments and successes from its previous USDA-funded McGovernDole Food for Education (FFE) programs to deliver a high quality, sustainable program designed to improve literacy of school-aged children under FFE phase III. The purpose of this assignment was to conduct baseline study that refined the accuracy of project baseline values and refined targets for project indicators in accordance with the findings, established baseline information for the external midterm and final evaluation activities, identify opportunities and threats to project implementation, developed strategies to maximize strengths and mitigate challenges, assess beneficiaries’ knowledge and skills to refine capacity building and training activities, generate data for comparative analysis across the life of the project to measure change, and validate project strategies and assumptions.
The specific activities performed for this assignment are –
(1) Review and finalization of appropriate evaluation designs – Quasi-experimental design finalized
(2) Review and finalization of sampling methodology & overall study approach
(3) Review of Results Framework indicators; tools for data collection
(4) Development & testing of tools including Early Grade Reading Assessment toolkit
(5) Coordinating multi-stakeholder workshops to verify evaluation approach and methodology
(6) Supervision and oversight to the data collection activities
(7) Developing data analysis modules; Basic and advanced data analysis
(8) Developing detailed and summary reports; infographics & highlight documents
(9) Dissemination of key findings of the study with the stakeholder group