Impact Evaluation of a Cash Plus model on a bundled Youth Livelihoods Intervention

PROJECT OVERVIEW

Public policies oriented to youth are crucial to a country’s future development. During the transition to adulthood, there is a high risk of adverse events such as school drop-out, early pregnancy, early marriage, violence and HIV, which have long-term impacts on an individual’s future health, well-being and productivity. The resulting decisions will impact the individual and their future children.

In Tanzania, youth policies are part of the National Five Year Development Plan (2016-2020)[1]. The development of a national government-led cash transfer program oriented to youth is promising as it has the objective to break the cycle of poverty, vulnerability and empower youth to reach their full potential.

UNICEF and its partners aim to implement a cash plus intervention focused on youth livelihood enhancement, complemented with basic messaging on sexual reproductive health and rights (SRHR), violence prevention and gender equity with linkages to youth friendly sexual reproductive health (SRH) and violence response services.

The specific aim of this survey is to assess a Productive Social Safety Net (PSSN) targeted to youth complemented by programs on SRHR and violence prevention.

EDI conducted the baseline survey in May – June 2017.  The midline survey will be conducted in May – June 2018 and endline in May – June 2019.

The survey consists of:

• Household quantitative survey with the head of the household and all youths aged 14-19 from each household;
• In-depth semi-structured interviews (qualitative survey);
• Community surveys;
• Health centre data collection with health facility staff (conducted on a quarterly basis in April, July and November).

The household survey collected data to measure key outcomes such as:

• Household economic productivity, related knowledge and business plans;
• Knowledge of and access to SRH services;
• Knowledge of and access to violence response services;
• Sexual debut and sexual behaviours;
• Marriage and pregnancy;
• Violence, victimisation and perpetration;
• School attendance, hope, future aspirations;
• Mental health;
• Risk preferences.

The survey with community leaders covered topics such as access to markets, health facilities, schools; prices of food and other necessities; villages customs surrounding marriage and caregiving; and types of shocks.

Data collection in health facilities included information around use of family planning and SRH services by youth.

PROJECT UPDATE

The total sample includes approximately 2,800 youths aged 14-19 yrs. across 150 villages in the Mufindi and Mbeya regions along with a community and health facility survey.  The baseline survey was successfully implemented in May and June 2017.   Feedback from the client has been extremely positive:

“I want to tell you how impressed we are with the high quality data and thorough documentation. You and the teams should be very proud of yourselves. Seriously great work.”

Projects that target youth are often a challenge for field teams as young people tend to relocate frequently, for example to pursue education or job opportunities. This means the reference lists used to find individuals eligible for the study could be outdated as soon as the day they are issued.  In this case, the lists were two years old. Meaning, many of the youth on the lists had moved away, while others had moved in. The field teams had to work hard to track individuals, and coordinate well so that youth not on the reference list were located and interviewed.  EDI’s coordination and data processing team played a crucial role in overseeing this to ensure that all eligible youth were interviewed.

This youth survey included some questions that were of a sensitive nature.  EDI has developed tools and specific procedures for sensitive questions in surveys in order to maximise the quality of the data collected in field.  Care was taken to train the interviewers to handle these questions. More information on how EDI approach surveys on sensitive topics can be found here.

[1] Ministry of Finance and Planning, The United Republic of Tanzania (2016), National Five Year Development Plan 2016/17-2020/21.  Available at: http://www.mof.go.tz/mofdocs/msemaji/Five%202016_17_2020_21.pdf

Resources

The project brief can be accessed here.

A Cash Plus Model for Safe Transitions to a Healthy and Productive Adulthood Baseline Report. Available here.

Ujana Salama “Safe Youth”: Cash Plus Model on Youth Well-Being and Safe, Healthy Transitions – Study Design Overview and Baseline Findings. Available here in English and here in Swahili.