PROJECT BACKGROUND
The Yemen Emergency Social Protection Enhancement and COVID-19 Response Project (ESPECRP) funded by the World bank is providing additional financing to provide cash transfers, temporary employment, and increased access to basic services and economic opportunities to food-insecure populations affected by COVID-19, the conflict, and climate-related shocks, as well as to strengthen the capacity of national institutions in Yemen.
Within the realm of the ESPECRP’s additional financing, an approach called ‘Continuum of Support – Geographically Bundled Activities’, simply referred to as geo-bundling, is being funded. Geo-bundling is “the simultaneous targeting of various interventions for geographically focused areas in Yemen to ensure complementarity and allow for a comprehensive, concurrent approach to tackle the different drivers of food insecurity in Yemen and maximize lasting impact”. Whilst these interventions are already being implemented in Yemen, under the bundling approach, they are to be integrated to focus on certain geographic areas or communities instead of spreading out geographically.
Geo-bundling complements short-term measures of cash assistance, such as the Cash for Nutrition program, with medium to longer term benefits from interventions that increase resilience to future food insecurity and malnutrition, such as Cash for Work program, PWP building community assets and Village Savings and Loan Associations (VSLAs). These projects aim for longer-term impacts to increase resilience in the face of future food insecurity by aiming to restore agricultural land and to develop irrigation systems. Furthermore, bundles would be supporting local food producers and distributors toward increased agricultural production, enhanced nutrition practices, support to livelihoods and relaunch of local economic activities, as well as access to basic services. Overall, the geo-bundling project objective is to eventually allow graduation towards medium and longer-term development benefits.
An impact evaluation will assess the benefits of concentrating interventions in communities and subdistricts rather than spreading interventions out geographically. Accordingly, the proposed survey seeks to answer the following questions, among others:
· What is the impact of geo-bundled social protection, food production and agricultural interventions on short- and medium-term resilience to food insecurity?
· Does the application of the geo-bundling approach achieve sustained improvements in food and nutrition security above and beyond what could be expected from a similar budget allocated to the same interventions in different geographic areas?
METHODOLOGY
The survey firm will be responsible for the implementation of the impact evaluation survey at household, small firm, and village (community) level for the selected treatment and control groups.
in selected governorates in the Southern part of Yemen by administering the questionnaire to the primary male and primary female household member. The data collection will capture both shorter and longer term outcomes of the bundling of projects. The survey firm will coordinate closely with implementing partners SFD, SMEPS, and PWP throughout the project including analysis of results and their documentation and publication. IFPRI will develop the survey questionnaires and analyze the data. A detailed sample size and locations for survey implementation will be developed and provided before commencement of fieldwork.
If the sample size changes substantially from the projected sample here, the budget may be amended with the agreement of the IFPRI and the survey firm.
Questionnaires
The selected survey firm will work with the research team under supervision of IFPRI to finalize the design of the questionnaire to make sure it fits the Yemeni context. There will be two respondents for the survey, in most cases one female and one male respondent per household. The survey length per respondent will be approximately 45 -60 minutes long, with enumerators completing 3-4 questionnaires/households per day.
SPECIFIC TASKS
· Acquire all permissions necessary for conducting the survey, including relevant permissions from national and/or local authorities as needed for conducting in-person surveys.
Adhere to local formalities and obtain any required permits related to the survey implementation, as well as survey team health and accident insurance, salary, taxes, and others as necessary.
The survey firm is expected to use a computerized system for data entry that will enable remote real-time monitoring by the research under supervision of IFPRI.
After developing the questionnaires and receiving approvals, the selected survey firm would be expected to implement a pilot test, designed in consultation with members of the research team under supervision of IFPRI. The pilot will be conducted to provide a final check on the questionnaires’ design and data entry system, as well as length of the interview.
The selected survey firm will recruit teams, from amongst their best personnel, to participate in an associated pilot test data collection training, utilizing both print and tablet questionnaires. Recruits must have previously worked with the survey firm. The training should also be delivered to Supervisors, Interviewers, and Quality Controllers. The pilot will take place in a few areas not covered in the sample of the main data collection. Locations will be divided amongst the teams recruited for the pilot.
The main data collection involves several activities that are described in some details below:
Quantitative interviewers, supervisors and Quality Controllers will be recruited by the selected survey firm to participate in the training. All recruits selected for the survey should have previous experience, and all must be university graduates. At least one half of the interviewers should be women to allow for women respondents to be interviewed in their houses. Selection will be from amongst those who have previously worked closely with the survey firm in similar surveys. Knowledge and experience with the research topic and methodology, performance during in-house training, and field practice will all be considered for selection. Staff selection must also consider the interviewer’s familiarity and fluency in the local dialect of the expected respondents. Interviewers may be recruited from the same district as study communities to avoid long travel and ensure acceptability of females moving without mahrams but must not be recruited from the same subdistrict as study communities.
Different training sessions will be conducted by the selected survey firm for the main data collection:
Supervisor Training
Training sessions for supervisors will take place over 5 days in Cairo together with the research team,
including going over the main modules of the survey questionnaires to ensure that they understand the content of the survey. The training will also focus specifically on a supervisor’s main responsibilities including how to enter a community, how to check the sample in the field, how to deal with non-response cases, how to organize a team’s work, how to use the tablet program, how to review the completed questionnaires before transferring to the designated Dropbox, how to solve duplicates if they occur, how to fill the fieldwork achievement sheet, how to problem-solve, etc. Travel costs for supervisors to Cairo should be included in the financial proposal.
The survey firm is expected to propose an appropriate and well-tested quality control mechanism. One of the main quality control mechanisms is to have a random back-checks component for 10 percent of the sample which will be shared with the research team under supervision of IFPRI to verify acceptable level of confidence that interviews took place according to