The UNICEF Nutrition-WASH-Education joint programme focuses on Adolescent malnutrition, through providing the resources, facilities and soft skills required to meet immediate needs surrounding malnutrition and ill-health, while also providing a range of support functions aiming to address some of the underlying issues facing adolescents in Ethiopia.
Itad was commissioned to conduct baseline, midline and endline evaluations for this programme in partnership with Kore Global and MMA Development Consultancy, Ethiopia. Kore Global provided both overall Team Leadership and technical leadership of the qualitative research components of the baseline and midline evaluations. Our theory-based approach offered an overarching design, within which different methods were employed to gather and analyse data. Drawing on the principles of theory-based impact evaluation, we combined a quantitative, quasi-experimental design with in-depth qualitative research to unpack the ‘black box’ between activities and impact and explain how change occurred. The inclusion of a focused process evaluation component at midline facilitated an understanding of whether change can be attributed to the effective implementation of the programme, or in the case of an absence of change, whether this is a result of failure to implement (not delivering activities as planned), or of programme logic (incorrect assumptions on the link between outputs and outcomes).
The aim of this evaluation was thus to understand the extent to which the programme was achieving its objectives and provide measures of attribution for the programme where possible.
