The Embassy signed an agreement in December 2021 with the Power of Nutrition (PoN) to implement phase 1 of the new nutrition programme at the Embassy.
Phase 1 has Give Directly (GD) as implementing partner and is implemented in Minova, South Kivu. The original budget of phase 1 was around 6 MUSD, however in May 2022 GD decided to add an additional 3 MUSD to cover more households (doubling the amount of households). The new budget is now around 9.3MUSD.
The focus of the first year has largely been to set up the programme and office in Minova. The first year of implementation has been interesting with several results but also several challenges and lessons learned.
GD was able to use the first 6 months of the programme to establish an office in Minova with a team of 4 people and successfully registering 5,191 households (exceeding their target of 5000). The main criteria for household selection were to have a pregnant/lactating women or children under 5 yrs. Out of all the recipients only 3 had mobile money accounts. The programme has thus at initial stages diversified households means of money transactions and increased mobile literacy in the selected villages.More than half of the recipients had limited cell phone literacy and 10% were unable to use a cell phone at inception phase, and had to be taught. Only 21 recipients had a phone, the rest of the recipients were provided with a phone by GD which cost 18 USD an amount that is subtracted from the initial lumpsum of $410.
In Quarter 3 and 4 of 2022, GD was able to disburse their first three payments (lumpsum, second and third tranche payments) across 23 villages, across 6 health areas in the health zone of Minova. By November 2022, they had disbursed $2,225,857.
They were able to develop targeted nutrition messages (IVR messages) which are transmitted to the recipient, with disaggregated/adapted messages for pregnant women (at different stages of pregnancy), lactating women, and households with children under 5. These messages inform or advice on topics related to vitamin rich foods, breast-feeding etc. From the messages that went out in October (3,568 people received messages), 1,459 people listened to 75% of the message which gave a participation rate of 94% and 89.9% listened to the full message. The IVR messaging is an important BCC component to the programme.
A preliminary survey was done in Q4 of the programme that showed a preliminary positive trend on the households eating patterns and quality of meals, with a large part of the households eating more frequent and healthier meals than before. From the testimonies collected majority had used their initial transfers to buy more diverse foods and invest in live-stock or crops.
The programme successfully set up a hotline in September which allowed recipients to call in for support, information, clear any misunderstandings, report issues etc. The hotline received 13 complaint cases between Sept and November.
Some of the challenges noted during the first year of implementation include:
Theft: there were some incidences of theft that were picked up by the internal audit team of GD. By November 2022 this only amounted to $675 and thus not having a major impact on the programme. There were also other reported incidents of neighbors having sold their phone or sim cards. GD has addressed this by improving their explanations on how the cash transfers work and the consequences that selling a phone or sim card has on the households long-term income.
ID requirement: to open a mobile money account the recipient had to be in possession of an ID card which not all had and thus could not be enrolled.
Safety among recipients: It was reported that some households were at more risk after it had become known that they were receiving monthly installments of money. GD is now working on how to better safeguard recipients with one suggesting being to do 2-3 lumpsums per year instead of monthly installments. Another suggestion is to experiment with different transfer sizes based on household wishes/needs, thus giving recipients choice on timing and transfer size.
Safety among GD staff: During November and December, Give Directly's field officers were targeted. The field staff have become known in the villages and associated with cash (even if they do not physically carry cash as the disbursements are mobile money), which has put them at risk. Give Directly wishes to close their Minova office and have their field officers operating from Goma, with them spending a week at a time in Minova.
With the staff moving out of Goma and closure of their office, there will be budget implications. The Embassy asked GD to go through this and include any changes in their annual budget for 2023, for the Embassy to assess.
Financial literacy: Some recipients lack an understanding of the value of the transfer amount. Give Directly will work on this in the coming quarter.
