Graduating to Resilience in Uganda
The USAID/BHA-funded Graduating to Resilience Activity’s goal is to graduate 13,200 extremely poor refugee and Ugandan households in Kamwenge district from conditions of food insecurity and fragile livelihoods to self-reliance and resilience. With impact evaluator Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the Activity consortium consisting of AVSI Foundation, AIR, and Trickle UP, is testing variations of a comprehensive approach to improving vulnerable household resilience over two implementation cohorts, employing group and individual coaching; asset transfer; referrals to local services; and psychosocial support.
I think the coaching sessions have caused positive behavioral change in the household; currently there is joint decision making, which has greatly reduced gender-based violence cases in the households.
– Youth male focus group participant from the host community
AIR’s role on the consortium is focused on learning. The Activity has fueled learning with formative research assessments, scenario planning, performance and context monitoring data, and two refinement periods for reflection. This learning has enabled flexible, evidence-driven adaptations to aspects of operations like the allocation of participants to coaches and to the length of cohort implementation, and to aspects of the Activity theory of change and design such as the inclusion of psychosocial support in Cohort 2.
AIR has developed technical learning briefs covering the topics of gender, coaching, nutrition, and the graduation approach to present during a Learning Summit taking place in June 2022. The Summit provided an opportunity for AIR and the Activity team to share and contextualize results from implementation Cohort One, synthesize learning, and consider stakeholder input for the learning agenda we will pursue in Cohort Two.
