SHOUHARDO II is one of the largest non-emergency food security programs of care in the world. The Program operates in four major regions of Bangladesh – the North Char, the Mid Char, the Haor area, and the Coastal belt of Cox’s Bazaar. The overall goal of the program is to transform the lives of 370,000 Poor and Extreme Poor (PEP) households (HH) in 11 of the poorest and marginalized districts in Bangladesh by reducing their vulnerability to food insecurity.

Project Description: SHOUHARDO II’s integrated and complex design aims to address not only the availability, access, utilization, and stability issues that lead to food insecurity, but also the underlying social issues that contribute to vulnerabilities such as a lack of participation, injustice, and discrimination that prevent poor and extremely poor households from realizing their full potential in leading healthy and productive lives. The mid-term evaluation has four primary objectives. They were to:

• Assess the progress of the SHOUHARDO II Program towards its objectives;
• Assess the effectiveness of strategies and implementation of interventions and provide recommendations to further improve the program;
• Project, given current momentum, the extent to which SHOUHARDO II will reach its performance targets and objectives by the end of the Program; and
• Assess the quality of the partnership with both “implementing” and “technical” partners.

Tasks carried out by Mitra and Associates:

Methodology (sample design & tools), data collection, quality control: Sample was drawn in terms of selected households where 25 villages (clusters) were selected from each of MCHN and PM2A program areas of 4 regions. Total 200 villages had been selected using PPS sampling procedure. CARE had provided list of HHs by village, union, upazila, district and region. It had been decided to follow the same procedure that was used during baseline survey of selecting 45 HHs from a sampled village. HHs were selected randomly from the sampling frame (list of HHs by village) provided by CARE. TANGO had completed PPS sample for 200 villages. TANGO selected 45 HHs randomly from each of 200 villages, which constituted a sample of 9,000 HHs. 

Quantitative and qualitative data collection, data quality control by checking questionnaires, observed interviews and verified that the sample units were interviewed. Twelve quality control officers and senior professionals of Mitra and Associates visited the interviewers in the field and re-interviewed almost 10 percent of households on random basis to ensure the quality of the data. And quality control officers including professional staff were employed to oversee the qualitative data collection.

Data processing& Data Analysis: Data entry, cleaning, preparation of tabulation sheet and transcription, compile in theme, translation of qualitative data.

Client Reference: The survey was awarded by TANGO International, Donor: USAID. Contact Address: TANGO International, 406 S. Fourth Ave., Tucson AZ  85701 USA, Richard Caldwell, Executive Director, Tel:  520-617-0977 ext. 103; Cell:  520-331-8907; Fax:  520-617-0980, www.tangointernational.com