South Sudan: Monitoring and Evaluation Services for the Building Resilience through Asset Creation and Enhancement (BRACE) II Programme

IMC Worldwide led a consortium to provide independent monitoring of BRACE II programme activities, to strengthen the internal monitoring and evaluation systems of the implementing partners, and generate learning to support adaptive programming.

BRACE II is a five-year programme (2015-2020) funded by the UK Department for International Development. It aims to improve food security and resilience in South Sudan, primarily through reducing vulnerability to climate variability and extremes. Another objective is to reduce vulnerability to communal conflict by increasing social solidarity and cohesion.

Food insecure families work to create productive assets at the household level (block farms for crops or vegetable gardens) or community assets (such as access roads, water ponds, or anti-flooding dykes) to bring about a sustained change in the amount of food produced or income generated. Other activities intended to improve local governance, social cohesion or access to markets are intended to deepen and sustain those changes.

In exchange for their work, beneficiaries are provided labour opportunities during the lean season ( before harvest when previous food stocks run low) to help them to meet their short-term food needs.

Within the Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) Services component (January 2017 – July 2019), IMC Worldwide and Forcier Consulting worked closely with DFID South Sudan and BRACE II implementing partners to design and undertake four main M&E activities:

• Third Party Monitoring (TPM) monitored implementation and identified emerging outcomes or impact. Thirteen TPM visits were conducted over five rounds at key programmatic time periods, inclusive of all project co-operating partners and counties.
• Thematic Learning used findings from TPMs and the mid-term evaluation (MTE) once complete, to support and inform learning for DFID and partners.
• Value for Money (VfM): IMC and Forcier generated VfM matrices at implementing partner level and a VfM assessment paper analysing results from the MTE.
• Evaluation: The wider BRACE II programme was reviewed through an MTE. The MTE report, finalised in June 2019, is available at this link.

The compendium is available at this link.