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Every year, as part of the CSN small grant competition, we offer CSAs the chance to win a grant in order to foster and stimulate innovation and learning within the network. These MEAL & SUS grants are designed to focus on monitoring, evaluation and learning in order to create sustainable and long lasting work. This year’s recipients are Feed the Children in collaboration with SUN Civil Society Alliance Kenya and Youth lead 4 Nutrition Kenya,Disaster and Environmental Management Trust and Civil Society Organizations Scaling Up Nutrition Alliance (ZCSOSUNA), Nutres in El Salvador, Civil Society Scaling Up Nutrition in Nigeria (CS-SUNN) and Alliance SUN Côte d’Ivoire.

• Country: Kenya
• Led by: Feed the Children in collaboration with SUN Civil Society Alliance Kenya and Youth lead 4 Nutrition Kenya
• For more info contact: https://www.feedthechildren.org/our-work/around-the-world/kenya/
• Project focus and innovations: evaluation of youth behaviour change campaign

Project goals

FEED the Children have been running adolescent nutrition activities in Kajiado county in Kenya for a while now. They have focussed on adolescents in school and out of school with nutrition messages and life skills lessons. These have been implemented through Care Groups and School Health and Nutrition Clubs in 30 schools in the district. Now it is time to see the impact these lessons have had on adolescents in Kajiado and how their skills and knowledge have influenced nutrition in the community.

This monitoring, evaluating and sustainability project will reflect on the working, learnable and implementable, adolescent nutrition sensitive and specific strategies. They will look to assess the impact of the Nutrition Campaign and how affective it has been to target the priority group of adolescents in and out of school. The evaluation is intended to further inform programming on how imparted skills and knowledge on adolescent nutrition is changing and influencing perceptions. 

The outcome of this evaluation project should give the Adolescent Nutrition Campaign tangible, measurable and sustainable outcomes for success in the future and to build resilience and self-reliance into future campaigns.

Project Outline

The respondents (adolescents) will be asked to talk about the main changes in their lives over a pre-defined recall period and prompted to share what they perceive to be the main drivers of these changes, and to whom or what they attribute any change.

The campaign evaluates lifestyles and behavioural changes of adolescents emanating from adolescent sensitive nutrition programs. It shall inform players and actors on possible doable approaches towards nutrition and how best adolescents’ programs can navigate on advocacy and mobilization.

The project will involve key stakeholders of the campaign, including high profile figures such as Kajiado County First Lady, Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health, Kajiado County department of social services, youths, Community Leaders, and teachers. 

How will they go about this?

The project will adopt 2 approaches to evaluate the success of the campaign that will inform fundraising intervention

1.QuIP (Qualitative Impact Assessment protocol) and

2. Success Case Method (SCM)

The project will have evaluation sessions with adolescents in schools and out of schools that have not benefited from the campaign as a control group. The campaign, dating back to 2019, targeted a total of 30 schools (639 adolescents) out of which 4 schools were visited, making a total of 229 adolescents reached. The campaign also targeted a total of 215 adolescents out of school and 120 were reached through care groups.

1.         The Quip (Quality Impact Assessment Protocol)

This approach will aim to gather evidence of the project’s impact through narrative collected directly from adolescents in school and out of school as beneficiaries in Kajiado County. Using well-structured open-ended questionnaires to maximize on all qualitative feedback. The questionnaires will contain a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions.

2.         Success Case Method.

This will involve identifying the most and least successful cases in the adolescent nutrition campaign and examining them in detail. This approach will assess the impact of organizational interventions which includes Adolescents Focus Group Discussions Teaching Materials, reference Materials, practical demonstration methodologies and interviews with Adolescent Nutrition Champions to evaluate their level of involvement and interaction with the adolescents in the scheduled sessions.

Fundraising

Through this project, monitoring and evaluation will enhance the development of new adolescent sensitive nutrition programs. Besides this grant, the campaign looks forward to source additional funding from the local government by approaching the public service finance department, liaising with the county government through the county first lady who is also doubling as the campaign patron. Other well-wishers and stakeholders like FEED (supporting organisation) are also on board.

Ask, Thank, Report and Repeat formula will be applied to source additional donor funding going forward and ensure the sustainability of this campaign.

Disseminating results and innovation

The results for the project for adolescents in and out school will be shared as abstract paper and “learning curve” documents to all stakeholders. 

The project will develop a set of MEAL and Sustainability tools/techniques that may be utilized by CSA/CSN members to assess in a participatory manner effectiveness of behaviour change campaign with youth. Tools and activities will be developed with and for youths.

Looking to the future

Besides this grant, the campaign looks forward to source additional funding from the local government by approaching the public service finance department, liaising with the county government through the county first lady who is also doubling as the campaign patron. Other well-wishers and stakeholders like FEED (supporting organisation) are also on board.