Can skills training help break the cycle of deprivation for the poor? Lessons from Northern Ghana

This article presents a summary of preliminary findings from a first round of fieldwork with vocational training institutes in Northern Ghana. The research seeks to better understand the pathways from skill to work among the poor

External Impact Evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project, Northern Ghana: Report of the Qualitative Participatory Rural Appraisal Midterm Study

The independent Participatory Rural Appraisal (PRA) midterm evaluation aims to interrogate the Millennium Villages programme theory using available evidence about outcomes emerging from the first three years of the project’s implementation. This qualitative report will help to qualify, elaborate and illustrate the findings of the survey-based analysis. Its findings are based on the perspectives and analyses of villagers in 20 communities. The villagers were constituted into some 80 “standard” focus groups and interviewed by researchers from Participatory Development Associates Ltd

Can Immersion Research Add Value in Understanding Integrated Programme Interventions?

In the external evaluation of development interventions, beneficiaries are often involved to define priorities, and provide feedback and evaluation. This generally uses ‘invited spaces’ such as facilitated community meetings, focus groups, mobile phone-enabled feedback, and social audits. Where external evaluation must be both independent and separate from the project’s own learning and adaptation processes, this can pose challenges. This article asks whether informal immersion in beneficiaries’ ‘own space’ can provide insights beyond ‘invited spaces’ to enhance our understanding of how people experience development interventions, particularly where these interventions are integrated and complex. The article describes the inclusion of one type of immersion research, the Reality Check Approach (RCA) within the suite of qualitative and quantitative methods used in the longitudinal (external) impact evaluation of the Ghana site under the Millennium Villages Project (MVP). The RCA in this evaluation provided a means to spend concentrated time in beneficiaries’ ‘own space’ without a project (theory-based) evaluation lens.Department for International Development (DFID

Millennium Villages Impact Evaluation, Baseline Summary Report

This report presents the baseline findings from the Department for International Development (DFID)-commissioned impact evaluation of the Millennium Village Project (MVP) in Northern Ghana.1 The project will run from 2012 until 2016, with interventions targeting a cluster of communities with a total population of approximately 27,000 people. The MVP has been designed to demonstrate how an integrated approach to community-led development can translate the international Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into results. It is an approach that has been previously piloted in Kenya and Ethiopia and in 2006 launched at scale to reach nearly half a million people across 10 countries throughout Sub-Saharan Africa. The new Millennium Village (MV) in Northern Ghana is the first to be accompanied by an independent impact evaluation. Details of the conceptual approach and methodology for the evaluation are presented in the Initial Design Document (IDD), with appendices containing the tools used for data collection.2DFI

Millennium Villages Evaluation: Midterm Summary Report

This report presents the midterm findings from an impact evaluation of the Millennium Villages Project (MVP) in northern Ghana. The MVP has been designed to demonstrate how an integrated approach to community-led development can translate the international Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) into results. The project in northern Ghana is one of several instigated over the past 10 years, and is set to reach nearly half a million people across 10 countries in Africa. Central to the MVP approach is the synergistic value of integrated community-based investments, focused on scientifically proven interventions, delivered simultaneously rather than as one-off investments. The premise is that a critical platform of basic needs must be reached before economic development can really take off. The project in northern Ghana has been running in three districts since May 2012, investing over £11 million on health, education, agriculture and infrastructure interventions in 35 communities, and reaching around 30,000 people

Impact Evaluation of the SADA Millennium Villages Project in Northern Ghana: Endline Summary Report

The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) aims to demonstrate how the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) could be achieved locally through an integrated approach to development. While the MDGs have now been superseded by the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs, 2016–30), there remains a consistent thread to the MDGs around issues such as eradicating poverty, preventing avoidable deaths and improving education. Furthermore, the interconnected nature of the SDGs means the MVP model also has relevance for those seeking to address extreme poverty by taking an integrated approach to sustainable development. This report summarises the findings from what we believe to be the first independent impact evaluation of the MVP approach. It is hoped that the evidence and analysis will be of relevance to a wide range of actors in international development.Department for International Development (DFID