Four new VAC evaluation projects in Tanzania & Uganda

Earlier this year, four projects were selected for funding under the Evaluation Fund’s Call for evaluation proposals to examine the effectiveness of VAC prevention interventions in Tanzania and Uganda.  

Each of these four projects are comprised of a partnership between practitioners implementing a childhood violence prevention program, and researchers who will evaluate various aspects of this program. Each project is also:

• locally led, with research and practitioner leadership based in Tanzania or Uganda;
• very rigorous, with high quality research designs and an eye for implementation science;
• feeds into policy-making and programming at the national level on the prevention of violence against children in these two countries.

Despite obstacles related to the COVID-19 pandemic, all four projects are moving ahead in their data collection efforts.

Project Summaries

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The Good School Toolkit (GST) is an intervention to prevent violence against children in schools through addressing the operational culture, by influencing four categories of relationships within schools. Raising Voices are in the process of developing GST Agile, in preparation for scaling the Toolkit across Uganda. This modular, lighter version of the Toolkit aims to deliver the same effectiveness at lower costs – but the right evidence is needed to make those editing decisions (which activities to eliminate, which to strengthen, which pathways to amplify). This implementation research project seeks to answer these questions via the evaluation question ‘Which aspects of the GST are suggestive of being most important for reducing violence against children in schools?’. Through this project Raising Voices in partnership with IDinsight will answer this, and subsidiary research questions, using a process tracing method in 9 case study schools.

Research questions:

1. Which of the four categories of relationships that the GST focusses on are suggestive of being most important for reducing violence against children?
2. Which of the GST activities are suggestive of being most important for reducing violence against children?
3. What are current enablers and barriers to implementing the GST program?

Project partners:

Raising Voices (practitioners) & IDinsight (researchers)

This project addresses the need to optimize the scale-up of parenting programs to prevent violence against children in low- and middle-income countries. In Tanzania, this project is implemented in 3 regions (Mbeya, Shinyanga and Kagera). It uses a mixed methods approach to evaluate the quality of delivery and impact of an evidence-based parenting program for adolescents, Parenting for Lifelong Health for Adolescents (PLH-Teens, known as Furaha Teens in Tanzania). The study is conducted within the national scale-up of the program by Pact, a non-governmental organization (NGO), and local community service organizations (CSOs) in Tanzania as part of the USAID-funded Kizazi Kipya Project.

Research questions:

1. What is the level of programme implementation of PLH-Teens at scale in Tanzania in terms of quality of delivery and implementation fidelity?
2. What factors are associated with the quality of delivery and implementation fidelity of PLH Teens?
3. How is implementation associated with programme impact on reducing VAC??
4. How does supervision of community volunteer facilitators effect programme delivery and effectiveness?

Project partners:

National Institute for Medical Research (researchers); University of Oxford (researchers); PACT Tanzania (practitioners); Clowns Without Borders South Africa (practitioners)

The three year “empowering communities to protect children” intervention seeks to promote violence-free communities by addressing protection needs of 3,000 children in 2 sub counties, Matidi and Lagoro, in Kitgum District, Northern Uganda. It utilises a community-based approach to preventing violence against children, promoting increased investment in the child protection sector and access to improved child protection services.

This impact evaluation study brings together researchers from the AfriChild Centre and practitioners from ChildFund to assess different aspects of this childhood violence prevention program. The evaluation employs a quasi-experimental design to assess impact of the project in ensuring that children living in project areas are safe and well protected from all forms of violence at family and community levels. In order to establish the impact of the project, the evaluation will conduct research in the neighbouring Pader District for comparison purposes.

Research questions:

1. Does training Child Protection stakeholders result into functional community-based Child Protection systems for prevention of violence against children?
2. Does equipping child protection structures with knowledge, skills, financial and material resources on case management improve access to child protection services?
3. Does legislation and dissemination of relevant child protection laws lead to improved implementation and enforcement for prevention of violence against children?
4. Does equipping children with knowledge and skills in child protection, make them indispensable change agents for addressing violence against children?
5. What evidence exists to show that the project interventions to prevent violence against children at family and community level in post-conflict setting will be sustainable?
6. What are the critical enablers of project success, and what should be avoided for future similar interventions in and out of post-conflict settings?

Project partners:

AfriChild Centre (researchers); ChildFund Uganda (practitioners)

The overall objective of this study is to determine the most optimal method of delivering an innovative and low-cost community-based intervention that targets both the prevention of violence against children and gender-based violence – the Parenting for Respectability (PfR) programme. By testing different modalities of implementation, UPRISE aims to generate evidence to inform the scale-up of the PfR programme as well as other community-based violence prevention initiatives in Uganda and other low-income countries. This project brings together CHDC, SOS Childrens Villages and researchers from the University of Glasgow to test the different components of this home grown-parenting programme and determine how to improve the intervention, estimate its potential for scale-up, and assess impact.

Research questions:

1. How does geographical location affect the implementation of PfR in terms of participation, programme fidelity, quality of delivery, and cost when comparing implementation in urban and peri-urban settings?
2. How does group composition affect the implementation of PfR in terms of participation, programme fidelity, quality of delivery, and cost when comparing implementation to either existing or newly formed community groups?
3. How does the professional experience of facilitators affect the implementation of PfR in terms of participation, programme fidelity, quality of delivery, and cost when comparing implementation by professional or community facilitators?
4. What are the perceptions of coordinating staff, trainers, facilitators, caregivers, government stakeholders, and community leaders regarding the most optimal intervention delivery package to reduce violence against children and intimate partner violence in Uganda?

Project partners:

Child Health & Development Centre (CHDC), Makerere University (researchers); SOS Children’s Villages Uganda (practitioners); University of Glasgow (researchers)