Equity and Inclusion in Sanitation and Hygiene in South Asia: A Regional Synthesis

Today, 2.6 billion people in the world have nowhere safely to defecate on a daily basis or to follow hygienic practices that are important for their health and wellbeing. People are different and require support to overcome the specific impediments that stand in the way of their being able to use services sustainably. There is a greater likelihood of success if we focus on the forgotten millions, first . When pastoralists, ethnic or religious minorities, the disabled, the chronically ill, children, the aged, adolescent girls, women, or anyone without voice or agency are centre stage, their needs are reflected in design and investment decisions, with gains for all, including the larger community. To make this happen for all those without sustainable sanitation and hygiene, we will need to redefine policy and practise so that equity is woven into the fabric of every investment, every supervisory mission, every reward and every audit

Climate risk management and rural poverty reduction

Climate variability is a major source of risk to smallholder farmers and pastoralists, particularly in dryland regions. A growing body of evidence links climate-related risk to the extent and the persistence of rural poverty in these environments. Stochastic shocks erode smallholder farmers’ long-term livelihood potential through loss of productive assets. The resulting uncertainty impedes progress out of poverty by acting as a disincentive to investment in agriculture – by farmers, rural financial services, value chain institutions and governments. We assess evidence published in the last ten years that a set of production technologies and institutional options for managing risk can stabilize production and incomes, protect assets in the face of shocks, enhance uptake of improved technologies and practices, improve farmer welfare, and contribute to poverty reduction in risk-prone smallholder agricultural systems. Production technologies and practices such as stress-adapted crop germplasm, conservation agriculture, and diversified production systems stabilize agricultural production and incomes and, hence, reduce the adverse impacts of climate-related risk under some circumstances. Institutional interventions such as index-based insurance, adaptive safety nets and climate services play a complementary role in enabling farmers to manage risk, overcome risk-related barriers to adoption of improved technologies and practices, and protect their assets against the impacts of extreme climatic events. While some research documents improvements in household welfare indicators, there is limited evidence that the risk-reduction benefits of the interventions reviewed have benefited significant numbers of chronically poor farmers. We discuss the roles that climate-risk management interventions can play in efforts to reduce rural poverty, and the need for further research on identifying and targeting environments and farming populations where improved climate risk management could accelerate efforts to reduce rural poverty

Girls' Education Challenge Data, 2013-2016: Special Licence Access

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner.In 2012, the UK Department for International Development (DFID) launched the £355 million Girls' Education Challenge Fund (GEC) to support up to a million of the world's most marginalised girls to improve their lives through education. GEC projects are providing girls with access to education, materials, safe spaces to learn and a 'voice'. They help to mobilise and build capacity within governments, communities and schools through training and mentoring teachers, governors and community leaders. Baseline data As part of the evaluation of GEC, a substantial amount of primary data was collected at baseline. The GEC baseline research aimed to capture the scale and nature of educational marginalisation in project areas before the start of GEC programme activities. It measured current education outcomes of girls (and boys) with respect to attendance, enrolment, retention and learning outcomes. It also explored the prevalence and importance of potential barriers to girls' education, ranging from poverty and household economics through early marriage and pregnancy, cultural attitudes, and violence. Data were collected from households and schools in GEC intervention and control areas to enable a counterfactual evaluation design. It is planned that the Household Survey will be conducted three times in total, with the aim of tracking a cohort of girls in the respondent households over the course of the GEC's programme lifecycle. Midline data The midline evaluation covers the first two years of the projects' three-year implementation period in the first phase of the GEC. The purpose of the midline evaluation was to provide evidence of the programme's impact on being-in-school and learning outcomes, effectiveness and sustainability. As part of the evaluation of the GEC, a substantial amount of primary data was collected at midline. This included roughly 6,000 household surveys in fourteen GEC project areas across nine countries, and associated learning assessments for randomly selected girls within each respondent household (these girls were followed-up from the baseline sample). In addition, around 6,200 learning assessments were conducted in schools in five project locations across three countries which included boys and girls selected from primary school grades 2 and 4. The GEC midline research aimed to capture the scale and nature of educational marginalisation in project areas before the start of GEC programme activities. Similar to the baseline survey, it measured current education outcomes of girls (and boys) with respect to attendance, enrolment, retention and learning outcomes (literacy and numeracy). It also explored the prevalence and importance of potential barriers to girls' education, ranging from poverty and household economics through early marriage and pregnancy, cultural attitudes, and violence. Data was collected from households and schools in GEC intervention and control areas to enable a counterfactual evaluation design. This was the second of the planned three household survey waves. Further information about the project can be found on the gov.uk Girls' Education Challenge webpage. For the second edition (July 2017) data and documentation from the midline evaluation phase of the project were added to the study, which previously contained materials from the baseline phase only. Main Topics:The data cover a range of information about the selected girls, their households, their experience at school, their achievements and their teachers. Detailed information on the structure of each dataset can be found in the User Guides