Impact assessment of theNext Generation Project

March 2013

Zoe HollidayRhogan Eyre

Issahaku Fatawu GbambeguBen Ives

Toluwanimi Jaiyebo

1. Table of Contents2. Acronyms....................................................................................................................................... 13. Executive summary........................................................................................................................ 34. Introduction.................................................................................................................................... 55. Methodology.................................................................................................................................. 6

5.1 Overview................................................................................................................................ 65.2 Limitations.............................................................................................................................. 7

6. Findings......................................................................................................................................... 86.1 Community Surveillance Teams (CSTs)................................................................................86.2 Micro-credit and Self Help Groups.......................................................................................136.3 National Health Insurance Scheme......................................................................................206.4 Child Community Clubs........................................................................................................236.5 Provision of uniforms and school materials..........................................................................276.6 Vocational training...............................................................................................................30

7. Conclusion................................................................................................................................... 338. Recommendations and opportunities...........................................................................................36

8.1 Key recommendations.........................................................................................................368.2 Opportunities identified........................................................................................................37

9. Appendix I: References................................................................................................................3810. Appendix II: Interviewees.............................................................................................................3811. Appendix III: Questionnaires........................................................................................................39

2. AcronymsCCC - Community Child ClubsCRP - Childhood Regained ProjectCST - Community Surveillance teamsDA - District AssemblyGES - Ghana Education ServiceICS - International citizen serviceIS - International ServiceNGP - Next Generation ProjectNHIS - National Health Insurance SchemeNR – Northern RegionMA – Municipal AuthorityRAINS - Regional Advisory Information and Network SystemsSHG - Self-Help groupsSNM – Savelugu-Nanton MunicipalitySWO – Social Welfare OfficerUK - United KingdomWMD – West Mamprusi District

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3. Executive summary

IntroductionThe Next Generation Project (NGP) was implemented by the Regional Advisory and Information Network Systems (RAINS) in 20 communities across the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi districts in the Northern Region of Ghana from 2007-2010. Funded by Comic Relief, the project had an overarching goal “to contribute towards the progressive elimination of child labour and trafficking in Ghana”

SuccessThe project has had a significant impact on life in the communities that we visited, with most notable successes being:

School attendanceIn most of the communities visited, there has been a significant increase in school attendance, and particularly in the number of fostered children attending school. In Zokuga this increase has been so significant that during our field visit, a new school building was being constructed. The impact of the project on the lives of individual children who would not otherwise have attended school is immeasurable.

This project has helped this community to get the girl child to go to school… some would not have gone to school at all if it hadn’t been for the Next Generation Project. – Chief of Kpalung

Attitudinal changeThe increase in education has been brought about by a number of measures, but most noticeably by attitudinal change. All communities visited mentioned that in the past few years, there had been a change in attitude towards kayaye and particularly towards foster children – there is now an understanding in these communities that it is important for all children, both biological and fostered, to attend school. We were told that parents now giving up their children for fostering will sometimes do so only on the condition that they are given a certain level of treatment and education. In addition, because of the negative aspects of fostering, the practice is becoming less common and nearly all of the children that we spoke to said that they would not give up their children for fostering in the future.

Whether this attitudinal change would have happened without RAINS is difficult to say – the control community that we visited had also seen a change in attitudes in recent years. This could be because of its proximity to an NGP beneficiary community, or it could be because these changes are a sign of the times. But what is certain is that the interventions undertaken by RAINS as part of the NGP project can only have helped this process of change within the 20 communities in which it was implemented

Areas for improvementThere are inevitably areas in which RAINS could improve its offering. In particular, these include:

ObjectivesThere was not consistency between project documents about what the objectives and outputs of the project were. In addition, the objectives and outputs did not reflect the overarching project goal and purpose. For example, the purpose of the project was “to prevent and withdraw 2,800 fostered girls and girls from poor families… from moving to cities in southern Ghana to become kayaye...” but there is no mention of kayaye anywhere in the objectives or outputs. This was reflected in interviews with the Community Surveillance Teams, none of whom spontaneously mentioned either kayaye or fostering when asked about the project’s objectives.

Data collection against the objectives seems to have been somewhat erratic, and one of the communities also mentioned that they had only been asked part-way through the project to collect data on key issues.

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DocumentationRelated to the issues around objectives is the lack of standardised documentation or filing systems. Many files relating to the Next Generation Project were saved on staff members’ personal computers, and for a long time the only copy we had of one of the key reports was a hard copy that we had found by coincidence in one of the desks we were using.

In addition, there was no standard document that monitored progress towards all of the objectives, nor any final report that stated whether or not these had been achieved. This has made it nigh on impossible to undertake quantitative analysis within this report.

Community empowermentWhile many of the elements of the project are commendable, such as the Community Child Clubs, which gave children opportunities for recreation and education on issues relating to the project, the NGP could have placed more focus on empowering the participants – for example, children could have taken a more active role in running these clubs, while women in the self-help groups could have been given more training to empower them to run their own businesses, train other women on key issues, and lobby local government on issues affecting their communities.

Exit strategyRelated to the issue of community empowerment is the need for an exit strategy in any project like NGP. Many elements of the project could have been designed to make them more sustainable and therefore the impacts longer term. For example, the Community Surveillance Teams need very little financial or administrative support, but in most communities that we visited, they had either ceased to exist or meet infrequently. The sustainability of all elements of a project should be considered and maximised where possible, by having a strategic plan to hand over each element of the project to the community to continue to manage when RAINS no longer has the capacity to provide hands-on support.

Future opportunitiesA number of opportunities for RAINS to build and expand upon its work have been identified in this report. These include everything from creating an activity framework for childhood community clubs to expanding the scope of projects to include boys who are being trafficked, orphans and disabled children. However, the key opportunity identified, which would have increased the impact of the Next Generation Project, is in terms of income maximisation. While the project provided micro-credit for this purpose, the scale of the help given means that this has only had a limited effect on household incomes, and it has not always led to long term change.

For two thirds of the year in the Northern Region of Ghana, the climate is too dry for traditional farming. During this time, the majority of the individuals that we interviewed have nothing to fill their time. Providing these individuals with opportunities to make more money during this season, either by extending the farming period (by using irrigation or crops naturally suited to dryer weather), or by identifying other opportunities to maximise income, such as the soap making project that was initiated in only one of the communities, would have a significant long-term impact on the communities and for many families would reduce significantly the need for children to go for kayaye.

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4. Introduction

In 2011 the UK Government’s Department for International Development (DFID) initiated an overseas youth volunteering scheme called International Citizen Service (ICS). Delivered via six partner organisations, ICS gives young people from the UK who are between the ages of18 and 25 the opportunity to participate in 12-week development projects overseas, alongside local volunteers. The authors of this report are all volunteers on this scheme, placed by International Service.

The objective of this document is to provide the Regional Advisory and Information Network Systems (RAINS) with a comprehensive report analysing the successes and failures of the Next Generation Project (NGP), which was run in two districts of Northern Ghana between 2007 and 2010. This work has been done with a view to identifying areas of success that RAINS can build upon whilst also highlighting lessons to be applied when planning and implementing future projects.

Economic opportunities are limited in Northern Ghana; rural communities rely on farming to generate enough income to adequately support their families. However, the climate is inhospitable; there is only one rainy season for four to five months between April and September (compared to two in the south) and for the other eight months of the year, the climate is dry and unsuitable for agriculture.

Fostering is a tradition that is very prevalent in the rural communities of Northern Ghana. It is a traditional practice whereby a child is sent to live with family relatives in the hopes of strengthening the ties between the two families. Given the economic circumstances in the north, however, it is not uncommon for the foster child's aunt to have inadequate resources to care for a new child as well as her own and she will prioritise certain children. In this two tier system the foster child is often the loser as the aunt focuses her minimal resources on her own biological children.

In these circumstances, the foster child can often find him- or herself being engaged in economic activities by the family to raise additional income whilst simultaneously seeing no improvement in their own living conditions. While the other children in the household attend school, the foster child is involved in activities such as collecting firewood, fetching water, cleaning the compound, working on the farm or petty trading. Despite these hardships, fostering is viewed positively in the communities; the foster child's wellbeing can sometimes be a secondary concern to the strengthening of family bonds.

Many children in Northern Ghana face difficulties, but the combination of a scarcity of resources with the cultural tradition of fostering makes foster children particularly at risk from child labour, exploitation and maltreatment, whether that be because they are considered inferior and exploitable by their aunts or whether as the result of a difficult decision aunts reluctantly make because of this particular mix of circumstances.

Another impact of the lack of opportunities in these rural communities is children going south to work, often as kayaye. Kayaye is a local term for head portering – selling small items such as pure water sachets, usually in Ghana's southern cities like Accra and Kumasi. The work that they engage in when they arrive is very basic but offers them an income that is not available in the north. There are, however, many dangers involved with going for kayaye. The children often resort to using traffickers to assist them in reaching their destination and enter into illicit agreements to facilitate their travel. Given their lack of resources, the children often find themselves living in very poor conditions with very little sanitation and poor utilities. Children of both genders travel south for work, but the girls who travel south are at higher risk of rape and sexual exploitation, and in turn of unwanted pregnancies. These are not helped by their lack of sexual health education. Being from a rural background, many children have never experienced city life and lack the resources and the knowledge to avoid many of the dangers inherent in urban areas.

The Next Generation Project set out to target these two at-risk groups by initiating a series of interventions across the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi districts, with a purpose “to prevent and withdraw 2,800 fostered girls and girls from poor families from the Savelugu-Nanton and

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West Mamprusi Districts of the Northern Region from moving to cities in southern Ghana to become kayaye by addressing their childhood needs at the community level.” The objectives for the NGP project were as follows:1

1. Communities in the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi Districts of the Northern Region of Ghana sensitised and mobilised to join in the fight against the ills of fosterage and ensure that fostered girls are sent to school and treated better by their aunties.

2. The general public sensitised to the problems of fostered girls. This will broaden the frontiers for action.

3. 2800 fostered girls prevented and withdrawn from child labour and enrolled into vocational training centres and formal basic schools.

4. Aunties who foster to improve the treatment towards fostered girls. Both fostered children and fostering aunties will be equipped with information to demand their rights for inclusion and lobby local and national authorities to mainstream the needs of these groups in policies and plans.

5. Decisions, policies and bye laws formulated by District Assemblies, chiefs and community elders to improve the situation of fostered girls.

6. Improved income levels of participating aunts and families in the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi Districts (micro-credit).

5. Methodology

5.1 OverviewThe research methodology involved a combination of both desk and field research. Desk-based research included background reading on the NGP to get an understanding of the purpose and working of the project. Among other things, we analysed the baseline surveys, project logs and various evaluation reports carried out during the course of the project. The starting phase of our evaluation was dedicated to desk research; this continued as an on-going process until the end of the report. In addition to this, we had informal conversations with RAINS staff to answer any queries that came up in the course of the research.

It was however integral to carrying out an assessment of the NGP to visit the beneficiary communities to collect actual and authentic accounts of experiences and opinions with regard to the project. The NGP worked in 20 communities across the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi districts. While it would have been ideal to have visited all communities, time and financial constraints limited us to select 7 communities. These were the communities of Zosali, Zokuga and Kpalung in Savelugu-Nanton. In West Mamprusi, we visited Daboya no. 2, Wungu, Nayorku and Sayoo. The communities visited in Savelugu-Nanton were chosen at random in a bid to limit bias. However in West Mamprusi, communities were chosen for us by the Project Officer. While this gave us better access to interact with community stakeholders, potential bias has to be taken into account.

In addition, we visited the community of Tiya in the West Mamprusi district which was not involved in the NGP. This acted as a control community for us to determine whether it was the NGP or another variable that had an effect in achieving the NGP objectives.

1 For consistency, all stated objectives and outputs within this report come from the initial Project Log submitted to Comic Relief.

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Interviews and focus groups were held with Community Surveillance Teams (CSTs), Self Help Groups (SHGs), children, community members, chiefs, District Assembly (DA) members, officers from the GES, vocational trainees, teachers and RAINS staff.

A variety of interview techniques were used for the groups. Semi-structured interview questionnaires were created and used to guide our interactions2. They were tailored to assess both the ‘process and ‘outcome’ elements of the project. Certain questions were unique to each interview group but all had in common questions that sought to find out:

The general understanding of the NGP and its objectives Opinions as to whether the objectives had been met Attitudes on fostering and the treatment of fostered children Accomplishments and downfalls of the NGP Recommendations

Interactions with the DA members, GES officer, chiefs, teachers, RAINS staff and community members usually took the form of the interviewee and 2 members of the research team askingquestions and writing notes. When there was a language barrier, another member was added to act as an interpreter. For the CSTs, SHGs, Children and Vocational trainees, 2 or 3 members of the research team (depending on language barriers) led a focus group interview.

Throughout the course of conducting the field research, we learnt lessons that resulted in more efficient interview techniques being adopted. For example, from interviewing the children in the Savelugu-Nanton communities, we learnt that interviewing a handful of children was intimidating, making them either shy to answer questions or under pressure to answer and sometimes giving us incorrect information. Therefore we changed our interviewing style in West Mamprusi to interviewing a classroom full of children and introducing icebreakers, games and short breaks to put them at ease and get more productive answers.

The data that we collected from the field were mainly qualitative due to the framing of our questionnaires and the absence of quantitative data records in the communities. Our emphasis on qualitative data allowed us more depth and detail to analyse how far the NGP had achieved its objectives such as changing attitudes towards fostering and child labour. However, we do recognise that a weakness of this approach is the lack of ability to generalise from the opinions of small segment of NGP beneficiaries.

5.2 Limitations

5.2.1 Language barrierThis proved to be an immense challenge when undergoing field research as only one member of the team had a good grasp of the local language. This meant occasionally not being able to carry out interviews simultaneously if he was occupied, resulting in interviews being delayed and valuable time in the field wasted. In West Mamprusi, where none of the team clearly understood the language, we faced the challenge of having to depend on teachers and RAINS staff to interpret. This could have had an effect on the validity and bias of answers where interviewees may have felt intimidated by their presence. There is also the problem of information getting lost in translation.

5.2.2 Difficulty in getting hold of important stakeholders This was a challenge we faced during our initial phrase of research as only a few members of staff who were present when the NGP was implemented still worked at RAINS. This made it difficult to get first-hand accounts about how the project was carried out. It also meant that we could not adequately address some of our queries about the project. We also encountered a challenge in getting hold of government officials such as those from the Savelugu District Assembly and Ghana Education Service, despite our best attempts at chasing them down.

2 See Appendix III

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5.2.3 Other interventionsIn many of the villages that we visited, there have been other interventions – some from RAINS, such as the Childhood Regained Project (CRP) that succeeded the Next Generation Project, and some from other NGOs. Because of this, there was sometimes some confusion within the communities about where the Next Generation Project ended and other interventions began. For example, in Zosali, when asked what they remembered about the NGP, the women in the community spoke extensively about the farming support that they had received (through the Childhood Regained Project) and also antenatal care. This meant that some of the results that we received in the field had to be verified with RAINS staff who had worked on the project, to ascertain whether the information that we had been given was really about the NGP.

5.2.4 Lack of documentationAs majority of the staff who worked on the Next Generation Project were not available to interview, we had to depend largely on documents during the initial phrase of our research. However, the documentation system during the project was poor - there was no coherent filing system and many documents were only saved on staff members’ personal computers. This meant that we had to depend on whatever information current RAINS staff could get hold of.

There was also an issue in that not all information from the project was actually recorded. For example, it was not clear from documents we read whether the recommendations from the mid-term report had been put in place. The lack of an adequate documentation system meant we missed out on integral information and data that would have been useful in the preparation of this report.

Recommendation: Develop a more coherent documentation system to ensure easy access, management and monitoring.

An additional challenge related to the lack of relevant data that are collated by the district assembly and GES.

Recommendation: For future projects, RAINS should work with the relevant authorities to set up monitoring procedures on relevant data, in order to ensure that progress can be assessed.

6. Findings

6.1 Community Surveillance Teams (CSTs)

Community Surveillance Team, Sayoo

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6.1.1 OverviewDuring the Next Generation Project (NGP) RAINS endeavoured to create a Community Surveillance Team (CST) in each of the participating communities. These CSTs would ideally be made up of various members of the community, including the chief, women’s leader and others with influence on the community’s youths.

6.1.2 ObjectiveAccording to the NGP’s Project Log, which was sent to Comic Relief, there was a variety of tasks that would ideally be achieved to ensure that the CSTs were successful. They were as follows:

Output 2.1 A Community Surveillance Team (CST) in each target community set up and conducting actions, in coordination with local authorities and schools, towards the elimination and prevention of child labour.2.1.1 Identify and establish, in consultation with community leaders and traditional

authorities, a community surveillance team (CST) who will lead anti-child trafficking voluntary work in each community

2.1.2 Organize joint training sessions for CST from all target communities to exchange experiences and difficulties and to document best practices.

2.1.3 Provide support and logistics to strengthen the efforts and work of CSTs in each community

2.1.4 Set up a core team of experts to review RAINS Child Protection Policy (CPP) and subsequently train project staff, CDAs, teachers, child clubs, representatives of women groups and school prefects in the project communities.

These outputs fell under the following objective of the NGP:

2-The general public sensitised to the problems of fostered girls. This will broaden the frontiers for action.

However, the CSTs also addressed other Next Generation Project objectives:

1-Communities in the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi Districts of the Northern Region of Ghana sensitised and mobilised to join in the fight against the ills of fosterage and ensure that fostered girls are sent to school and treated better by their aunties.

3-2800 fostered girls prevented and withdrawn from child labour and enrolled into vocational training Centre’s and formal basic schools.

4-Improved treatment of fostered girls by their fostering aunties. Both fostered children and fostering aunties will be equipped with information to demand their rights for inclusion and lobby local and national authorities to mainstream the needs of these groups in policies and plans.

6.1.3 Success

6.1.3.1 Understanding of objectivesIt is worth noting that not all of the CSTs had the same perception of the objectives of the NGP.

CST perceptions of the objectives of the NGP

“The NGP was launched in 2008 and its objective was to discourage children, especially the girl child, from becoming kayaye. It was also to assist families to support their children’s education.” - Chief of Kpalung, Savelugu.

“They came here to give students books, sandals and bikes to members. All P3-P6 students benefitted. The objectives were achieved – they were asked to increase girl

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child education, which they achieved and are still doing.” Chief of Zokuga, Savelugu, Issah Fuseini“Increase school enrolment and retention, this is for both male and female students.” - Zosali CST, Savelugu

“Increasing child enrolment in school, reducing dropouts and reducing the cases of kayaye and child labour…” Wungu CST, West Mamprusi

However, as can be seen from the box above, one common objective highlighted by the CSTs was that of education, regardless of whether or not it was specific to females. More than one CST also mentioned kayaye.

Not one of the Community Surveillance Teams interviewed spontaneously mentioned the issue of fostering as relating to the NGP’s objectives. Given how many times ‘fostering’ is mentioned in the project objectives (listed above), this suggests that the objectives were not adequately communicated to the communities and their CSTs. Furthermore, it suggests that output 2.1.2, which looked at exchanging experiences and difficulties and documenting best practices, was probably not met. Moreover, a CST member from Zokuga said that they were only told to collect data to track the progress of the project well after the project had begun. For this reason, there was not much recorded hard data from any community from around the beginning of the NGP.

Recommendation: Help all relevant members of the targeted communities to be aware of the project’s objectives, agenda and also their own personal responsibilities within the project, including any data collection requirements. Where CSTs are literate, this could be done by producing a hard copy of a document that the communities can reference regularly.

In addition, when interviewed, CST members did not mention any joint training sessions being held between communities (output 2.1.2) – it was briefly suggested by a CST member during an interview, yet we were told this was never implemented. However, RAINS staff inform us that in fact there was at least one training session in Savelugu-Nanton to which all CSTs were invited.

None of the CSTs mentioned training on RAINS’ Child Protection Policy (CPP) – we are unaware as to whether the training was carried out. This suggests that the work undertaken by RAINS with CSTs focused on the higher level objectives and that some of the more specific outputs were not met.

Recommendation: During the course of any RAINS project, outputs and objectives should be continually monitored in order to ensure that they are being met. Progress towards each output should be recorded in a systematic manner, so that it is clear whether or not they have been met and why.

6.1.3.2 CST roleMost CST members thought that their role was to patrol their community and its surrounding areas to find children that were involved in child labour, travelling south for kayaye or simply not in school. They would then persuade the child to go back to school and also talk to the child’s guardians about why it was important to keep their child in education. CSTs in various communities received bicycles for the purpose of these patrols.

RAINS staff informed us that CSTs also carried out preventative measures to stop children from choosing to run away for kayaye, and held meetings with kayaye returnees to help them to choose between attending school or vocational training.

These actions contributed towards meeting the outputs set out in the Project Log; CST members in each community did carry out “anti-child trafficking voluntary work” in their community. Moreover, community leaders and traditional authorities were involved too. The deliverance of the bicycles provided logistic support.

All of the CST members who mentioned bicycles during the focus groups said that they are no longer functioning due to excessive wear and tear.

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Recommendation: When RAINS hands over items to communities, such as bicycles, they should also consider how those items can be sustained for as long as possible to maximise long term impacts. For instance, basic bicycle maintenance training for the CSTs would have been helpful. This could also have potentially been passed on to others through the CCCs. Bicycles are used widely in Ghana. Therefore, these skills would be useful for anyone to develop.

Not one of the CSTs that we asked was able to provide documentation of their meetings or their achievements. In some cases, we were told that this was because the relevant CST member had now left the community. However, it also suggests that there was a lack of documentation processes undertaken by the CSTs. This is surprising given how crucial their role was in the project, and that as influencers in the community, they would be in the best position to give an overview of the project.

Recommendation: Documentation procedures for CST groups should be standardised, and said documentation collated by RAINS to ensure maximal information collection during any project.

6.1.3.3 FosteringIt was only when the topic of fostering was specifically raised that it was talked about by members of the CSTs. There were differences in opinion on fostering from community to community and even sometimes between individual CST members. Most said that it was a tradition that is meant to strengthen family ties. The majority opinion was that fostering in itself is not bad - but there is a risk that the foster child might be treated badly or unfairly, compared with the biological children. The reason for this unfair treatment is usually poverty; the aunt cannot afford to look after all the children in her home and has to make a choice about how to spend her limited finances. In this situation, the biological children would usually get priority.

Most CST members believed that communities would be better off if fostering was stopped because it would mean that aunts would not be forced to choose between their biological and foster children. Fortunately, according to CST members, attitudes towards the tradition were gradually changing and community members seemed to be starting to understand the importance of all children receiving an education as opposed to being kept back to do household chores or work on the farm.

“RAINS has educated children and parents about negative effects and said that if children are to be fostered, they should be sent to school. The attendance levels of fostered and non-fostered children are more or less equal.” - Zosali CST, Savelugu

This change is encouraging as it suggests that progress has been made toward objective 2, that the ‘general public should be sensitised to the problems of fostered girls,’ as well as to objective 1 and 4, which deal with foster aunts’ treatment of their wards, and ensuring that foster children are educated.

6.1.3.4 KayayeKayaye are not specifically mentioned in the NGP objectives. However, the Purpose of the whole project, which sits above the objectives, is:

To prevent and withdraw 2,800 fostered girls and girls from poor families from the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi Districts of the Northern Region from moving to cities in southern Ghana to become kayaye by addressing their childhood needs at the community level.

Above the Purpose, the Project Log also has a Goal which is:To contribute towards the progressive elimination of child labour and trafficking in Ghana.

It is rather surprising that the ideas that sit at the core of the project’s Goal and Purpose, like trafficking and kayaye, are not reflected in the project objectives. It should be clear from each objective how they will set out to achieve the Goal and Purpose. The most closely related objective, 2800 fostered girls prevented and withdrawn from child labour and enrolled into vocational training centres and formal basic schools, makes no mention of kayaye. This means that it would

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be possible to achieve project objectives (e.g. removing 2800 fostered girls from child labour) without meeting the overall project goal (if it was other labour than kayaye).

Recommendation: For future projects, there should be one ultimate aim/goal followed by the necessary number of objectives required to complete and, therefore, achieve that aim/goal. Objectives should be written carefully to ensure that they align with the overarching goal. Standardising and maintaining the same terminology throughout future projects will achieve enhanced comprehension and less confusion.

Kayaye and child labour issues were also mentioned by CSTs in certain communities when asked what the objectives of the NGP were:

“…to discourage children, especially the girl child, from becoming kayaye…” - Chief of Kpalung, Savelugu

“…and reducing the cases of kayaye and child labour…” Wungu CST, West Mamprusi

However, in most communities, the topic of kayaye was not spontaneously mentioned by the CSTs - it was only when prompted that the subject was discussed. In this way, the discussion of kayaye bore a resemblance to fostering – but on discussion, it seemed that kayaye was seen to be a greater issue than fostering by the CSTs. Furthermore, it seemed that communities saw this to be more of a priority in the eyes of RAINS, as the NGP seemed to focus on kayaye:

“There was more focus on kayaye than fostering in the project. The most driving force of kayaye is finance.” – Zokuga CST

This is surprising considering kayaye is only mentioned briefly in the Project Log in comparison to how many times fostering is mentioned, but is positive in that it shows that communities were aware of the overarching goal of the project, even if the chosen objectives were not altogether clear on this matter.

In general, the reasons CSTs gave for children going for kayaye related to poverty and finance:

“…the main reason children choose kayaye is poverty. Their basic needs are not covered by their parents, so they choose to go down south. Furthermore, the older children face few livelihood options in their community as they get older…” - Wungu CST

“The support that was meant to be given to the parents [micro-credit] ceased when the project ended. As a result, girls are not sent to school and go to kayaye.” - Chief of Kpalung

“Children go kayaye a lot on vacation from school. They would go to earn some money as there were no economic opportunities. Poverty is the main reason why people go kayaye and if children don't go then sometimes they can have no money to attend school.” – Daboya no. 2 CST

“Also there are situations where girls want to be able to get money to purchase things to take to their marital home.” - Zosali CST

As mentioned above, CSTs would often recover children attempting to leave for kayaye and would promptly send them back to school. However, kayaye is one of the few options that many youths are forced to take due to their circumstances. The CST in Daboya no. 2 raised the issue that sometimes raising funds through kayaye is the only means by which children can afford to go to school – for some of the communities, there is somewhat of a paradox at the heart of the NGP project, which sets out to prevent children from going for kayaye and to increase the numbers of children in school. Which of these issues should take priority if the child is going for kayaye so they can afford to go to school?

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The Purpose of the project is to prevent and withdraw girls from moving south to become kayaye “by addressing their childhood needs at the community level.” The CST members did prevent children from becoming kayaye by physically preventing them from travelling south. However, when they sent them back to their communities and to school, they sometimes sent them back to the same circumstances they were trying to get away from. A small percentage of children did receive uniforms and equipment to aid them with their studies and some also had the chance to attend CCCs or even vocational training, but it is questionable whether the full breadth of childhood needs, mentioned in the project’s Purpose, was addressed.

Recommendation: To address the issue of kayaye, consideration should be given as to why youths contemplate it in the first place. For example, if their basic needs such as food and water are not satisfactory then study how this can be fixed – possibly in partnership with existing organisations that already undertake school feeding programmes. If older youths have to choose kayaye to fund school equipment or SHS fees, then options around creating livelihoods in the local community (wider than just micro-credit) should be investigated.

6.1.4 How else could the objectives have been met?Overall, the establishment of Community Surveillance Teams seemed to be a very effective way of helping the Next Generation Project to achieve its objectives. For example, simple tasks such as the chief of Kpalung taking responsibility for the education of his community by going ‘door to door’ to encourage families to send their children to school resulted in a large increase in enrolment. This is effective and sustainable if the Chief persists year after year. However, there are a few recommendations in this text about how their understanding of objectives could be enhanced, and how they could function and achieve their objectives in a more effective and sustainable manner. Such issues lie at the heart of any successful project and it will be important for RAINS to definitively implement such recommendations.

If a future project was rolled out, similar to NGP, then RAINS would need to devote more time to CST members. They would need to make sure that roles and responsibilities, as well as the overall objectives, were clear to the teams. In addition, they could give individual CST members personal, clear responsibilities that they are accountable for and could be continuously working to achieve. Standardising documentation procedures would also be helpful to monitor progress.

In principle, Community Surveillance Teams do not require ongoing financial or administrative support in order to keep functioning. However, in most of the communities that we visited, the CSTs are not still functioning as they did during the Next Generation Project, although some, including Daboya no. 2, expressed a desire to still meet to address community issues.

Recommendation: Consideration should be given as to how CSTs can be set up in such a way that they are not reliant on RAINS, and continue to function when the lifetime of any particular project comes to an end.

6.2 Micro-credit and Self Help Groups

6.2.1 OverviewThe micro-credit aspect of the NGP was designed with the intention of relieving the financial burden that parents faced when sending their children to school. By granting them access to additional funds which they could invest in trading or farming, the NGP hoped to improve their economic circumstances. If this could be achieved, it would remove a potential hurdle in children attending school and would thus remove the need for them to be involved in child labour. The micro-credit scheme recipients were enrolled into a community self help group which would become a mechanism for sharing knowledge. Self-help group members would also receive training on business techniques, vocational skills and the importance of education.

The tradition of fostering is deeply rooted in communities in Northern Ghana and many within these communities see it as a positive unifying tool that strengthens family bonds. However, the poor treatment of fostered children by their aunts has also been institutionalised to a certain extent; it had almost become accepted in these communities that foster children would not receive the same treatment as their foster parents’ biological children. As such the self-help group had a dual role: it

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was a mechanism for its members to share and receive knowledge which could benefit them economically, but it was also a mechanism for RAINS to interact with aunts directly and to educate them about child labour and the importance of all children attending school.

Self help group, Daboya no. 2

6.2.2 ObjectivesThe micro-credit and self-help groups were a key intervention in meeting two of the NGP’s objectives:

4. Improved treatment of fostered girls by their fostering aunties. Both fostered children and fostering aunties will be equipped with information to demand their rights for inclusion and lobby local and national authorities to mainstream the needs of these groups in policies and plans.

6. Improved income levels of participating aunts and families in the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi Districts.

The micro-credit was perhaps the most important aspect of the NGP as it was directly linked to parents’ economic circumstances which, if improved, remove major obstacles to child inclusion in school and reduce the need for families to engage their children in economic activities. Improved economic circumstances within the community will also directly address one of the root causes of children going kayaye: poverty. The micro-credit scheme was run through the district's rural bank. Members of this group would then be eligible for loans of one hundred Ghana cedis with an interest rate matching the banks’ commercial loans, with repayments spread over a six month period. Whilst the loans were individual, the liability would lie with the entire self-help group and if one member was unable to make the repayment, the group would have to support that individual.

6.2.3 Success The micro-credit and self help group scheme were initiated in the second year of the NGP project. Outputs 6.1.1 and 6.1.5 in the Project Log stated that 1500 families would benefit from micro-credit. The funding available was limited however, and so only three communities from each district were selected (six in total), on the criteria of their enthusiasm and involvement in earlier stages of the project and information from the baseline survey: poverty levels and number of fostered children. These criteria were used to ensure that only communities that were fully committed to the project received support from this aspect of the project. The three communities from West Mamprusi were: Wungu, Nayorku and Daboya no.2. From Savelugu-Nanton the three communities were: Tarikpaa, Zokuga and Kpalung. According to the year 3 report submitted to Comic Relief, 179 women received microcredit, so the scheme was much smaller than initially anticipated.

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Recommendation: realistic targets should be set out for any project, based on the project budget available. Where targets need to be changed, a record should be made of this.

Community opinion appeared to be very malleable on the issue of fostering - and could perhaps be changeable on other subjects too. All communities visited exhibited a positive reaction when asked if they felt that the “community’s perception of fostering had changed for better or worse.” The aunts appeared to be open to change, despite the more conservative way of life generally found in rural communities. This may partly be due to personal experience; we heard from aunts who had had a negative experience as a child when they themselves were fostered and it had impacted how they treated their own foster child.

“Eventually fostering will end because young people do not like fostering. It will be good for the community if it stopped. You know how your child should be, the responsibility is yours and there are no misunderstandings then between family members. ”- community member, Zosali.

However, the family ties behind the tradition of fostering still stand strong, and there was a unified response across communities in response to questions as to whether a parent would remove their child from fostering if he or she were poorly treated. The consensus across the communities was that such an action would be rare due to the damage caused to family bonds. All communities also continued to view fostering as having the capacity to unite families, despite the potential difficulties involved.

“If the community hears about mistreatment we go and speak to the parents and give them advice. We say the English people will come and tell them off!” – self help group member, Zokuga.

Trying to assess whether aunts treated their foster children differently is very difficult, as it is not possible to observe them in their home environment. It is also worth noting that in a rural environment, children are always going to have to support their families by carrying out chores such as fetching water and firewood, and cleaning. But a project like the Next Generation Project has the capacity to ensure that these chores do not inhibit children’s’ attendance at school, nor fall under the definition of child labour. In particular, it can address where selected groups of children, such as fostered children, are not treated equally to their peers.

The focus groups indicated a change in attitudes towards involvement of foster children in child labour. The improved attitude towards foster children was a consistent theme throughout all focus groups. The micro-credit served as an encouragement to aunts to change their attitude.

“It is now you who honours the child, toils to take better care of her rather than have them do chores.” – self help group member, Wungu.

Recommendation: RAINS should continue to work on community-wide education initiatives which set out to change opinion, as the Next Generation Project has shown that these can be successful.

Self help groups did not include all of the Aunts within a given community and as such could not be relied upon as the sole instrument of change in improving treatment of fostered children within the communities. However, the self help group institutionalised this change in approach to caring for fostered children within its members and provided support for this change through the group dynamic. The Community Surveillance Teams then had a wider role as agents of change within the community.

“The SHG helped us because if anyone within our group had a problem we could come together and support them.” – self help group member, Kpalung.“We did attend the SHG and we learnt to help each other if we had problems by working as a group and we got together to discuss it.”- self help group member, Zokuga.

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Recommendation: support groups should be considered in all projects with an educational element, as they are a good environment in which to bring about change.

Many communities reported that no training had accompanied the micro-credit and those that did receive it said that it was inadequate with only a few workshops on basic skills and no cultural education. This suggests that outputs around training were not met:

4.1.8 Hold training sessions for fostering aunts on child rights and on the Human Trafficking Act (ACT 560).

6.1.6 Hold training sessions on leadership, group dynamics, child care/support, business training and organizational development

The self help groups have the potential to be an example for the community at large to follow and while they receive benefits that other community members do not, that should not prevent them from becoming role models for the rest of the community to follow. A structured training program which includes cultural and social training on issues such as the importance of education, the dangers of child labour and sexual education, as well as more practical business skills, will amplify the impact of the self help groups and ensure children are better treated by their aunts. These training sessions should be open to for wider community participation but run through the self-help group with a facilitator from RAINS overseeing the process to ensure the accuracy and quality of the teaching.

It is worth noting that RAINS staff state that more training was held than we were told about by the aunts. If there was a more structured curriculum in place for the training, this would ensure that all communities received the same support, would help the training to be documented and might also make it more memorable.

Recommendation: the self-help groups should have had a more structured curriculum and a stronger RAINS presence overseeing the aunts’ training and education within the group.

There is significant potential for progress to continue even after RAINS has finished its active involvement. The cultural and social education listed above can then be passed onto the aunts’ children and the wider community, bringing about lasting good. Aunties who are educated on sexual health and family planning are likely to pass those lessons onto their children, who will be better protected against unwanted pregnancy and the significant financial burden of supporting another child. Likewise education on the damaging effects of child labour will pass down through generations.

Recommendation: RAINs should strive to create a positive legacy by focusing on providing not financial support which expires, but skills and lessons which can be passed on.

By giving aunts access to additional funds, the NGP hoped to increase the aunts’ economic circumstances and remove the financial obstacles to a child's attendance at school. As part of the field work for this evaluation, five out of the six communities that received micro-credit were interviewed. The focus groups indicated that the credit had been used to provide for their children and to invest in small income generating projects. The microcredit was intended for the latter purpose, with a view to increasing income so that uniforms and school materials could be provided longer term. Using the loans for outlay on school uniforms would not improve families’ economic circumstances in the long term. Messages should have been clearer around what funds were for, and requirements to provide some sort of explanation of how the microcredit would be used may have been useful.

“ We used it to provide basics materials for our school children and buy food ingredients for home.” – self help group member, Daboya no. 2

“The money was spent on farming and shea butter making. Through farming you get everything you need to support your family.”- self help group member, Wungu.

These findings were verified through discussions with other community members involved with the projects like children's club members or teachers. Whilst the micro-credit is not the only factor to

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influence this with school uniforms, CSTs and CCCs all having a role to play, it is clear that it was successful in helping create an environment that was conducive for children to attend school.

“There was an increase in enrolment after NGP as now kids had materials and parents were encouraged to send children to school. Also, when others saw friends going to school, they also wanted to attend. The micro-credit helped a lot as kids were fed and encouraged to go to school. We used to only get 10-15 fostered children but now 50-60” - teacher, Zokuga.

Recommendation: Recipients of micro-credit should receive clear messages about what the credit can or cannot be used for, and should be asked to provide some evidence of their plans.

When interviewed, all of the Aunts spoken to were grateful for the assistance given through the NGP. It is clear that the NGP- and specifically the micro-credit and self help groups - did have some impact on the circumstances children and their Aunts were facing. There were, however, a number of common themes that suggested that, while these aspects were successful, they were not as effective as interventions as they could have been. Changes to the scheme would be needed to bring about a more sustainable impact. Improved income for aunts and families cannot be short term or simply for the lifetime of the project - it must continue after NGP has ended and for this project, RAINS has failed to achieve this longer term impact.

Most of the feedback predictably centred around the issue of funding. It is difficult to imagine any project where beneficiaries would not ask for more money, and RAINS cannot be held at fault that the limited funding available for the micro-credit meant that it could only be implemented in three communities in each district. Whilst there is no data available to confirm this, it is also likely that no one within those communities would opt for larger loans but fewer recipients given how grateful they were for the small assistance.

“A bag of shea nuts used to cost 45cedis but now it costs 65cedis so a 100cedi loan doesn't give you very good profit.” - self help group member, Nayorku.

However, if microcredit is to be part of a future project, RAINS should consider varying loan sizes, as well as payback times, depending on the recipients’ plans. This is something that should be managed by the rural bank but will allow aunts who show potential to use the funds for more ambitious schemes, or for income generating activities that require higher start-up costs. It could be that this would only be available to those who had already paid back smaller loans.

The maximum size of the loan should be decided in advance with the bank and be within a range that still allows as many aunts as possible to benefit. Self help group members consistently suggested that a loan amount of 300-500 Ghana cedis would be much more useful - but given funding restraints, this is unlikely to be possible. However, rewarding those with greater potential should be explored.

Recommendation: RAINS should consider increases in loan sizes for aunts who show excellent business potential.

This potential could be further tapped by offering more comprehensive business and vocational training to the recipients. The training offered during the NGP was varied, with some communities reporting that none had been received at all, while others only had two short workshop sessions. For aunts to make a permanent change to their income levels, they would need more support than a few workshops. Money is not the sole solution and skills training must be a priority. Loans are short term and must be paid back to the bank but knowledge can be passed on to other community members and children so that the benefits can be reaped for years to come.

Training sessions could also be opened to other community members that have small enterprises, who may benefit from learning basic business skills, even if they have not got access to micro-credit.

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“They had some workshops and just discussions and it was helpful but they were not enough. It’s hard to train the local people and to get them educated well in just 2 sessions.” - RAINS volunteer, Zokuga.

Recommendation: RAINS should aim to develop a business training curriculum for self-help groups, teaching skills such as business and money management, basic marketing and managing profit.

Petty trading can only achieve so much. The community at Wungu received training in soap making, which could be a real business opportunity in the area and has the potential for much larger profits. However, not every community member can be in the soap market. Whilst training should be consistent throughout the communities, there is not a one size fits all economic solution for Northern Ghana. RAINS needs to work to identify community-specific opportunities which will give the aunts a far greater chance of improving their businesses.

The issue of funding also extends into recycling on the loan pot once it has been paid off. With rising costs of fuel, electricity and water, it is increasingly difficult for the small loans to make any sort of difference. A one-off payment will not be able to make a significant change and on-going access to credit beyond the life of the project is necessary. Whilst recycling the loan pot after it has been repaid is an option, it is not a sustainable. As part of its training program RAINS should include training on banking procedures, facilitated via the rural banks. This should include subjects such as money management, opening of current accounts, taking out loans and making interest payments.

Recommendation: RAINS should seek partnerships with local businesses, banks and other NGOs to identify long-term economic opportunities for the Aunts and the community at large.

RAINS cannot be the sole source of credit for a community and should look to create partnerships with local banks to encourage lending after the project has ended. It is important for community members to be able to source their own funds to allow for on-going development even after RAINS’s involvement in a community has ended. Credit is what fuels economic growth and allows expansion of businesses. It must be properly managed to avoid excessive debt further burdening community members, but it is essential for further development and long term change in the communities.

RAINS’s strategy with the NGP was too short term in its vision and leaves community members cut off from further support after the project has ended. If women have proven themselves able to pay back their loans through the course of the project, then loans at a commercial rate should be a viable business prospect for the banks.

“We thought RAINs had abandoned us. We have not heard from them in a very long time” - Chief of Kpalung community.

Recommendation: RAINS should aggressively pursue a strategy that opens up the credit market for community members via partnerships with local banks.

Some of these outcomes may have been more likely if there had been more focus on some of the outputs of the project relating to monitoring and data collection. For example, output 6.2.3 in the project log states that RAINS should “Hold participatory review sessions with beneficiary children and aunts, community structures and public agencies.” However, our focus groups indicated that this failed to happen.

Holding such review sessions would also have allowed RAINS to make any necessary minor changes to how the loans were administered. For example, a CST member in Nayorku noted that loans were sometimes given at a time when recipients were not ready to receive them. Given the short payback periods for the loans and the seasonal nature of life in rural farming communities in Northern Ghana, simple changes such as these could make a big impact on the effectiveness of such a scheme.

Recommendation: More focus should be given to monitoring and data collection processes, and community participation in these, as these will lead to more successful implementation

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and review of projects, as well as providing opportunities for community members to make suggestions to make the future of the projects more sustainable.

6.2.4 How else could the objectives have been met?The purpose of the micro-credit was to see 'improved income levels of participating aunts and families' – however, the micro-credit achieved this in an artificial manner. Whilst the access to credit does ease the burden on the recipients, it does nothing to remove any of the long term problems they face when attempting to support their family. This is partly because of the lack of training and support recipients received alongside the micro-credit but also because the micro-credit is a short term fix to a long term problem. If RAINS wishes to bring about a permanent improvement to families incomes in the communities then it should explore alternative strategies.

One such strategy is being employed by RAINS in the CRP: farming assistance. As part of the redesigned SHG structure RAINS has stated the following two actions in the CRP planning document:

1) Access to a tractor kept by RAINS for all 4 communities for seasonal needs, this will significantly increase production and reduce costs of livelihood related activities thus increasing profits. It will also support the Farm Based Coops run by men, which will in turn ensure a greater sense of shared equity between men and women in the communities as part of the programme

2) Provision of 4 multi-purpose grinding mills (1 per community) to increase profitability and efficiency of local harvesting

We have seen evidence of RAINS learning lessons from the NGP throughout our fieldwork and through discussions with staff. However, there is still work to be done. For example, a tractor, whilst significantly easing the workload during harvest, cannot be used by every community simultaneously and there is a limited window in which it can be used.

RAINS should seek to build on this new focus by working with communities to further improve farming techniques and conditions. One such option is to assist communities in identifying crops with higher yields, better market value or easier production methods. Crop diversification is also an area which RAINs should explore further. Lessons on improved farming techniques which will help community members improve yields and education on storing of produce to improve the shelf life of produce would also be useful tools for individuals to improve their incomes.

A major obstacle to farming is the lack of water during the dry season and it results in a very narrow window for communities to farm. We have heard continually during our fieldwork of the lack of economic activity during the dry season and if this situation could be addressed it would allow communities to earn money all year round. As such, irrigation is an area where we believe RAINS could focus its attention. Irrigation is the artificial application of water to dry land to simulate rain and allow crops to grow. There are many advanced technologies being used around the world to facilitate this which would be unaffordable and impractical for an organisation such as RAINS. However irrigation is a process that has existed since 1800 BCE when Egyptians tapped the Nile to water the surrounding lands, and simple and cost effective irrigation methods could be used in these communities to help extend the faming season.

“Giving money to women is not enough to get them out of poverty – they need skills training in conjunction with credit.” – women’s leader, Kpalung

In most of the communities that we visited, for two thirds of the year during the dry season, the inhabitants have nothing to do. So introducing other activities that could help to generate income could have a massive impact in the area. There was one example of this during NGP, where a soap production process was introduced. Giving other communities such opportunities to raise funds through crafts or production processes that can be undertaken in the dry season could have a significant impact on communities and significantly reduce the risk of children needing to go for kayaye to fund basic school materials.

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Recommendation: further support and training to increase farming yields and/or to open up other income generation opportunities should be provided alongside access to credit, to achieve longer-term impact.

6.3 National Health Insurance Scheme

Interview with the Self Help Group in Kpalung

6.3.1 Overview

Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS) was set out under the National Health Insurance Act 2003 (Act 650). It sets out three types of health insurance schemes that may be established and operated in Ghana, one of which are district mutual health insurance schemes, which are active in every district of the country. The Act states that all residents of Ghana should belong to a health insurance scheme. However, as there are no penalties involved, the scheme is far from universal and as at 2010, actual coverage was around 34%.3

As part of the Next Generation project, foster aunts were registered for the National Health Insurance Scheme. This, in turn, meant that their wards were able to be registered without paying extra premiums, as under the scheme, children under the age of 18 could register for free if their parents or guardians were contributors. (The need for the parent to be registered before dependents could benefit was suspended in 2009).4 Other groups that are exempt from paying the National Health Insurance premiums include those who are 70 and above, pregnant women, and indigents.5

6.3.2 ObjectivesOutput 4.1.5 in the project log deals specifically with the NHIS:

4.1.5 Assist to register parents/aunts and fostered girls with the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS)

This output falls under the fourth project objective:

3 Seddoh, Adjei and Nazzar, Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme: Views on progress, observations and commentary, June 2011.4 Seddoh, Adjei and Nazzar 5 A person is classed as indigent under the NHIS if s/he meets the following criteria:

- No visible source of income- No fixed place of residence- Does not live with a person who is employed and has a fixed place of residence- No constant source of support from another person

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4. Improved treatment of fostered girls by their fostering aunties. Both fostered children and fostering aunties will be equipped with information to demand their rights for inclusion and lobby local and national authorities to mainstream the needs of these groups in policies and plans.The fact that it falls under this objective suggests that the process of registering foster children for health insurance was supposed to be used as a tool to encourage aunts to treat their foster children better, and to acknowledge their rights and need for healthcare, rather than to overcome financial difficulties with registration; if this were the case it would have been more likely to be a subset of objective 6, which relates to improving aunts’ income levels.

6.3.3 SuccessAt the point at which the mid-term evaluation report was carried out, NHIS premiums had been paid for 348 mothers, and 1,740 children had been registered for the scheme. Recent studies show that women who are registered with the NHIS are significantly more likely to utilise health services (76.3% of women enrolled in NHIS had visited a health clinic or hospital during the past 12 months, compared with 50.2% who are not insured), so this is likely to have led to improved health care for fostered children and their families.6

However, the same report noted that:

- No targets had been set for the number of aunts/fostered girls to be registered.

As previously discussed, unless outputs and objectives are properly defined, success is hard to evaluate. It is even harder to evaluate as, apart from within the mid-term evaluation report, there are no statistics available as to how many premiums were paid – data on the second half of the project implementation period are not available.

Recommendation: In future projects, SMART targets should be set for the number of women and children registered under the scheme, and progress towards these targets monitored in all relevant planning documents and project reports.

- The number of aunts being registered under the scheme was having a huge effect on the overall project budget for the Next Generation Project, and this approach was not sustainable. It was suggested that specific criteria should be developed for selecting beneficiaries for the NHIS, to ensure that it was only given to those aunts who were not able to care for their children due to specific economic circumstances. It is not clear from project documentation whether this approach was taken for the second half of the Next Generation Project.

Interestingly, the original output relating to the NHIS does not state anywhere that the costs of NHIS registration should be covered by the Next Generation – just that parents and aunts should be ‘assisted’ with registering. This criterion would have been met if education sessions had been held to highlight the benefits of registering for the scheme, and then assisting with filling in forms and organising a visit to (or from) the district.

Recommendation: in future projects, information sessions should be held outlining the benefits of enrolling for NHIS and providing assistance with the registration process. Financial support towards registration costs should only be met if it is clear that aunts are unable to meet this cost themselves.

- There were long delays in the distribution of NHIS cards – sometimes by up to one yearGiven that registration only lasts for a year, this is a very significant delay and may have prevented beneficiaries from making use of their membership. However, it is worth noting that this wait time was not unique to the RAINS project – average wait time between registration and access to the card was between 6 months to a year in the first two years of the NHIS.7

6 Blanchet, Fin and Osei-Akoto, The Effect of Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme on Health Care Utilisation, Ghana Medical Journal June 20127 Seddoh, Adjei and Nazzar.

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Recommendation: In future, RAINS should work with the district mutual health insurance schemes in order to ensure that the registration process runs smoothly and NHIS cards are distributed in a timely manner.

- If aunts are given benefits like the NHIS registration (and micro-credit), they might be more likely to foster more children in order to access further assistance, and therefore free NHIS registration might exacerbate rather than eradicate some of the problems that the project set out to address.

Whether or not this is an issue depends on whether the objective of this element of the project was to prevent children from being fostered, or to ensure that fostered girls are treated fairly. This is not clearly stated in any of the planning documents. If the former, then it is true that providing such incentives for aunties could be seen to undermine the project, and NHIS registration should only be provided to biological parents. If the latter, then it would not matter if aunties are encouraged to take on more foster children, as long as they understand that these children must be treated fairly.

Recommendation: the purpose of all elements of a project, including registering guardians for NHIS, should be set out more clearly. This would allow for changes in the project where it was felt that they were not being met.

Focus groups undertaken this year suggested that the NHIS was a very popular element of the scheme, for those who had received it, with many aunts citing it as the best part of the scheme.

“The NHIS has helped us and our wards to access health care delivery” – self help group member, Wungu

However, it was not clear how recipients had been chosen – none of the women interviewed in the Savelugu-Nanton district had received NHIS support, whereas all except one member of the Daboya no. 2 self help group had been registered for one year of support.

In addition, no aunts mentioned any pre-requisites for receiving the NHIS support, nor did they link the NHIS support with better treatment of their foster children.

Recommendation: the criteria for NHIS support should be clearly stated and shared with the beneficiary communities. In addition, its purpose should be shared so that recipients are clear that they can only receive support if they meet minimum criteria such as sending foster children to school and treating them fairly.

As mentioned above, there was a significant outlay on registering women and their children for the NHIS under the Next Generation Project. However, it may have had significant longer term effects than just for the one year for which they were registered – in Daboya no. 2, for example, all of those who had been registered for one year under NGP were still paying their insurance premiums now, several years later.

Recommendation: RAINS should work with the National Health Insurance Schemes to collect data on the number of NHIS registrations instigated by RAINS that are renewed.

6.3.4 How else could the objectives have been met?The output relating to NHIS was included under the objective to improve treatment of fostered girls and to equip children and aunts with the information to demand their rights and lobby authorities to meet their needs.

While the provision of basic health care is always commendable, it is questionable as to whether it really helped to achieve the purpose of improving treatment of fostered girls, as the aunts interviewed did not at any point mention a link between the NHIS support and them improving the treatment of their foster children, or understanding how to demand their rights.

Perhaps a more effective way of meeting this objective would have been to focus more effort on improving the skills of the aunts and children in advocacy and lobbying authorities. This is an element of the project that seems to have been somewhat neglected, and would have required significantly fewer financial resources than the NHIS element. Providing women and children with the information

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that they needed to lobby for their rights would naturally have raised awareness of these issues. Giving them the confidence and skills to fight for issues that affect them would have been very empowering and would have likely made larger long-term impacts on the community, both on the issues that NGP set out to address, and also on other local issues that they felt to be important and continued to fight for.

Recommendation: to meet this objective, there should have been more focus on empowering and up-skilling both women and children so that they are able to lobby authorities for both issues relating to the NGP and also other concerns affecting their local community.

6.4 Child Community Clubs

Focus group with Child Community Club, Nayorku

6.4.1 OverviewChild Community Clubs (CCCs) were created as an avenue for child participation, recreation and enhancing civic education in the children beneficiaries8. The CCCs were implemented in all 20 communities benefitting from the NGP with frequency of meetings varying from once a week to three times per week. In the cross-section of communities visited in the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi districts, over 100 CCC members of both genders were interviewed, with ages ranging from 9 to 19.

The activities carried out in CCCs included games, dramas, planting of trees, environmental clean ups, quizzes, lessons on child rights, child labour and child responsibilities.

6.4.2 ObjectivesThe output under which this was brought about was to

4.1.1 Promote creation of anti-child trafficking clubs, link up to other existing school youth clubs as well as to PTAs and CST processes.

This output was set out to achieve the overarching objective:

4. Improved treatment of fostered girls by their fostering aunties. Both fostered children and fostering aunties will be equipped with information to demand their rights for inclusion and lobby local and national authorities to mainstream the needs of these groups in policies and plans.

8 NGP year 3 Report

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The idea behind the formulation of the CCCs is commended as they gave children a space for social interaction outside of school. Recreational activities carried out in the CCCs such as games and dramas are useful in increasing the children’s social competence and communication skills. Empowerment lessons play a role in fulfilling the aim of the NGP to see children become active participants in development and advocating for their rights and protection.9

The clubs also had a role to play in achieving other objectives and outputs, including:

1.2 An awareness raising campaign on the problems associated with child trafficking especially with respect to the child exploitation and abuse and exclusion from education designed and implemented.

6.4.3 Success2340 Children across the 20 communities involved in the project were mobilised in Community Child Clubs, with young people acting as facilitators and animators to lead the sessions on a variety of subjects, including those outlined in the objectives.

What came out of the focus groups was that children’s knowledge of child rights varied across communities. In the Savelugu-Nanton district, out of the three communities visited, only the children in Zokuga were familiar with the concept of child rights. The children in this community had also been taught about HIV/AIDS and sexual health. This is in strong contrast to the Kpalung community children who said playing football was the main activity that they carried out in the club. It should be borne in mind that Zokuga is also a Childhood Regained Project (CRP) beneficiary, making it difficult to assess whether their knowledge stemmed from the NGP or CRP clubs. However, in West Mamprusi, all children including those not currently benefitting from the CRP project had a good grasp of child rights and child labour.

‘Child rights are basic units of an individual that are supported by the law’ – CCC member, Daboya no.2

Regardless of the disparity in activities, all CCC members seemed to enjoy the club, with a member in Nayorku saying that regular meetings and advice from the animator influenced enrolment in school. Children in communities where club activity had ceased expressed dissatisfaction that they no longer existed. Though none of the CCC members had an understanding of the term ‘child trafficking’ the members in Nayorku spoke of the role they had in sensitising their parents and the community on child rights and labour. They said that this in turn had an effect on reducing the amount of child labour they had previously had to carry out. With regards to sensitisation on the ills of fosterage specifically, responses from the focus groups made it clear that attitudes were changing. In order to gauge this, all the childen were asked whether they would consider giving up their own children to be fostered. In the Savelugu-Nanton district, a handful said they would do so, because it was the tradition. However, in West Mamprusi none of those interviewed said they would consider giving up their children to be fostered. They also said that if they ended up fostering children, they would make sure that the fostered children were treated the same as their biological children. The reasons given for their answers were the lessons learnt on the negative aspects of fostering.

There is still need for more work to be done to achieve the objective of sensitisation on the subject of child rights. The children in Wungu said that this should be targeted at their parents, who needed to be told of the importance of education and their responsibilities in providing for the school needs of the children. This would avoid them having to go kayaye to get money for these materials, they said.

Recommendation: More education should be given to the parents of children in the community on child rights, labour and trafficking. If this is successful, it is likely to lead to both improved treatment for children and a cultural change.

9 NGP year 2 Report

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In a previous evaluation report on the NGP10 it was reported that children going kayaye were more prevalent in the West Mamprusi district than in the Savelugu-Nanton district and this was supported by our observations in the field. None of the children interviewed in the Savelugu-Nanton district had ever gone kayaye, while in West Mamprusi the majority had gone down south from a period ranging between 2 and 7 months. However, in both districts, most had siblings who had gone kayaye at some point. When asked why the children in West Mamprusi had gone kayaye, the overwhelming response was due to poverty and the need to get money to afford school materials.

With the practice of kayaye being so widespread and for some seen as necessary in order to continue education, short term measures need to be taken to address it. While the NGP and the current Childhood Regained Project try to address the problem by providing school materials and micro-credit to sustain families, this may not be enough. Until the issues of poverty are dealt with in the communities, a recommendation is that the children participating in CCCs should be taught about the dangers facing kayayes in a bid to prepare them for what they will face if they unfortunately have to go kayaye. This might include teaching them about sexual health and family planning so as to prevent the common consequences of kayaye such as STDs, unwanted pregnancies and unsafe abortions. It could also take the role of getting returned kayayes to share their experiences. This will in turn play a role in sensitising the community and other potential kayayes that are not involved in the CCCs.

Recommendation: both children and parents should be taught about the dangers and consequences of running away for kayaye. Potential kayaye should be equipped with the tools to mitigate these consequences.

Case study: NayorkuWe talked to a young CCC member in Nayorku who is now in Form 3 at the JHS. She went kayaye when she was 12 years old and in primary 6. She worked as a head porter in Kumasi and the reason for her going down was to get money for school materials. She said that the provision of uniforms, bags, books and stationery by RAINS has now stopped her from having to go back to kayaye.

Part of the objective under which the CCCs were brought about is to promote the participation of the child in decision making processes. This is consistent with both national and international laws safeguarding the right of the child which emphasise that all children are capable of expressing their views and that these should be taken seriously11. The CCCs provide an excellent forum to develop this ability to express opinions and participate in decision making. This does not only apply to incorporating more drama and quizzes which some of the kids interviewed say they asked for; it should also extend to issues of child rights, labour and trafficking. In a bid to broaden their thinking and creativity, the children should be involved with coming up with ways to tackle issues that affect them in the community and lobbying local government members to deal with them.

CCC members should also be encouraged to take what they have learnt back to their schools and the community in a bid to increase sensitisation. This could be through putting on plays or presentations to their other classmates which also allows for students not in the CCCs to have a good grasp of child rights, labour and trafficking. Work could also be done with teachers to integrate these issues into the school curriculum.

This would demonstrate to the children that their opinions and views are recognised and valued. It also means that the children would take greater ownership of the club, allowing for sustainability after the programme has ended.

It is certainly recognised and commended that participatory approaches have already been used in the CRP communities. It is our recommendation that these be built upon and emphasised in all beneficiary communities as developing civic engagement in children allows for individuals that are better able to demand their rights.

10 Salma evaluation report 11 CRC article 12, Childrens Act 1998, s.11

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Recommendation: A more participatory approach should be taken to the management and running of the CCCs.

Participatory children’s clubs also have the potential to empower children in other vulnerable groups. The Director of the GES in West Mamprusi suggested that if a project like the Next Generation were to be extended, he would be keen to see other vulnerable groups like orphans and disabled children included in the project. This was backed up by the Social Welfare Director at the West Mamprusi District Assembly, who said that there was a significant number of orphanages in the district.

Recommendation: RAINS could consider whether there is the potential to do a similar intervention to NGP that encompasses orphans and disabled children.

A big problem plaguing development projects is sustainability. Our observations showed that after the end of the NGP, only one community out of the seven interviewed still had an active CCC. Ensuring that this much treasured aspect of the project is sustainable is a challenge and our recommendation is the compilation of an activity framework booklet.

The booklet could be compiled by asking CCC animators to detail the types of activities that they carry out in their clubs, asking the members what new activities they would like to see, and identifying new issues that need to be addressed. It would by no means be a strict lesson plan, as certain issues would arise that are unique to individual communities, but it would be a useful guide for facilitators.

A booklet like this could go a long way towards ensuring consistency across the communities as there were large disparities between what was learnt in, for example, Kpalung and Wungu. It will also ensure that if the animator is absent, the booklet can still be used to guide another community member or the club members in activities that can be carried out. This would have eased the problem that caused the closure of the CCC when animators left the community.

The activity framework should be driven by the following: Active participation: A participatory approach should have the children playing an active role

in planning, delivery, evaluation and management, Knowledge and skills development: human rights and sexual health education, personal

hygiene, basic sewing and other life skills Creating role models: Getting role models in the community to give talks. This could range

from a farmer, a teacher or a doctor to a hard working SHS student, to provide a range of people for participating children to look up to and hear how they achieved their success.

Challenging gender stereotypes: Our observations showed that a lot of the girls wanted to be nurses and that in general, professions aspired to by the children conformed to traditional gender stereotypes. In order to challenge this, it would be worth giving examples of people in non-traditional gender roles. This will also play a part in broadening their horizons and making them more accepting of others.

Recommendation: An activity framework booklet should be compiled to guide the work of the CCCs - ensuring consistency and sustainability. This framework could then also be distributed to other interested communities, thus extending the reach of the project.

The community child clubs were the only element of the project that directly benefitted boys as well as girls. This is because the focus of the project was on girls, but it is worth noting that the NGP baseline report suggests that in fact more boys drop out of school to pursue paid work:

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Causes of dropout by gender in Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi districts (source: baseline report)

The baseline report also suggests that a significant proportion of girls who drop out of school do so because of early marriage or pregnancy – so education on, for example, family planning and contraception could go a long way towards meeting the objectives of the project.

The fact that these factors were not taken into account suggests that the baseline report was not used to adapt the project.

Recommendation – where baseline data is available for a project, the results should be used to adapt the project to meet areas of greatest need. RAINS could also revisit data held on its files to identify areas where there are opportunities for future projects, such as targeting boys who leave school to do paid work, and family planning to prevent girls from dropping out of education due to pregnancy.

6.5 Provision of uniforms and school materials

Focus group with Child Community Club, Kpalung

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6.5.1 OverviewA major part of the NGP was the provision of school uniforms and basic school materials to its beneficiaries. These were given to motivate the children to enrol and stay in school and also to help to ease the burden on parents to provide these materials for their children. The school materials across the communities were uniforms, stationery, books, sandals and footballs.

6.5.2 ObjectivesThe distribution of uniforms and school materials is in line with outputs 3.1.5 and 3.1.6:

3.1.5 Conduct size measurements of beneficiary children for uniforms and sandals in each community3.1.6 Provide school stipend in kind to action project beneficiary children (books, uniforms, sandals, etc.).

These fall under the following output:

3.1 1600 vulnerable children excluded from formal school enrolled and supported through school

6.5.3 Success1,600 children in the Savelugu-Nanton and West Mamprusi districts received school uniforms and learning materials to facilitate school attendance and student retention.12 Our observations in the field showed that the provision of uniforms specifically did not always go smoothly. In Zosali, a fostered girl said that despite being on the list to receive a uniform, she missed out due to being ill on the day it was distributed. Also, in some communities in Savelugu-Nanton there were reports of some uniforms not being the correct size, which shows that output 3.1.5, which related to taking measurements of all children who were to receive uniform, was not met. In West Mamprusi, there were cases of children being missed out and in Nayorku it was said that only one person per family benefited. The boys in Nayorku also expressed dissatisfaction that they did not receive uniforms as they were only provided for the girls who were direct beneficiaries of the project.

However, most of those who received the school materials said that it played a part in increasing their motivation to go to school, thus helping to fulfil the objective. In West Mamprusi, many of the girls who had gone kayaye said that it was to get money to afford school materials; the provision of these materials played a significant part in preventing them going kayaye which was a major objective of the NGP. It also particularly helped foster children, most of whom expressed that they were seen as low priority in comparison to biological children when it came to providing school materials.

The problem with the provision of uniforms was that as many had last received the uniforms in 2007 and 2008, they had become worn out and damaged. It brings up the difficulty of making the distribution of school uniforms sustainable as they are susceptible to damage, being outgrown and natural wear and tear. However measures can be put in place to mitigate damage and increase longevity.

A recommendation in the evaluation report13 suggested that schools should be provided with sewing kits that could be used to repair damaged uniforms. The effect of this would be maximised if children were equipped with basic sewing skills to enable them mend their uniforms and those of others. The CCCs provide an excellent forum for this training to take place. Basic sewing lessons could be incorporated into the activities of the clubs, with the option of getting vocational training beneficiaries to teach these basic skills to the children.

Recommendation: Basic sewing materials such as needles and thread should be provided to the school and children should be taught basic sewing in the CCCs.

12 Year 3 report13 Evaluation report 1, Salma

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Second-hand uniform schemes are carried out in many schools in the UK and could be adapted and incorporated in beneficiary schools. Such schemes involve uniforms in relatively good shape that have been outgrown by pupils being given back to the school so they can be given to other pupils. This is a sustainable option that could be run by the schools themselves. It could also include giving incentives to parents that donate the outgrown uniforms and collecting a very small fee from parents that buy the recycled uniforms (a regular uniform sale could be an option). Any excess money from the sale of uniforms could be reinvested in the school and the benefit of its students.

Another option might be a partnership between a richer school, perhaps in one of the major towns nearby, and a smaller rural school – outgrown uniforms in good condition from the former could be distributed to the latter.

Recommendation: Initiating a uniform recycling project in schools which will allow for outgrown uniforms be used by other pupils.

6.5.4 How else could the objectives have been met?

As much as the provision of school uniforms and materials play an integral part in increasing attendance, retention and the motivation of children in school, we observed some limiting factors that could potentially reverse the progress made by this aspect of the project. For example, during our time in the field, almost all the school children mentioned the lack of IT facilities as a problem in the school. Even though the teaching of computer sciences is mandatory in the national curriculum, most schools visited do not have the capacity to teach this adequately due to lack of practical equipment. For these children, the provision of this equipment for the schools will go a long way in increasing the motivation to stay in school.

In many of the schools we visited, IT is taught from textbooks

Aside from the lack of IT equipment, there are other issues that pose a serious limitation to the NGP objectives of retaining children in schools. The first is the lack of a school feeding programme in some of the beneficiary communities. This was highlighted in Daboya No.2 and Zokuga where they said that a big problem was children having to go back to their homes for food during lunch break and then return for afternoon classes. In circumstances where the houses of children are far away from the school, some may return late or choose not to return, while others will choose to avoid the long journey and stay in school hungry.

Another limitation was raised by the GES director in West Mamprusi who said the lack of sanitary facilities for females influenced the retention in school. Girls who undergo their menstrual cycle are left without adequate facilities to freshen up and this results in embarrassing situations that discourage their attendance during their menstrual cycles or even altogether.

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These factors mentioned play a big role in the retention of students in schools. The lack of school feeding means certain students go hungry which leads to diminished cognitive skills and attention span, resulting in poor academic records and poor health which in turn leads to dropouts. It is therefore important that these issues are taken into consideration in the design and implementation of future projects.

It is acknowledged that one project or even one organisation cannot effectively everything. However, other measures could be taken. For example, RAINS should actively look into partnering with other organisations and government initiatives. Projects that work to provide sanitary facilities, IT equipment, teachers’ quarters, school dinners and other key resources should be approached and collaborated with. This will allow for a holistic approach to development in these communities.

Recommendation: RAINS should build partnerships with other organisations and government initiatives, allowing for a holistic approach to development in the communities.

6.6 Vocational training

Trainee seamstresses from the Mandela Development Centre

6.6.1 OverviewAs part of the Next Generation Project, vocational training was given to young women who had either dropped out of school, returned from kayaye or were seen to be potential kayayes. The main reason for the training was to equip the girls with vocational skills that would enable them integrate back into their communities and earn a decent living. The training took place at three designated centres:

Mandela Development Centre in Tamale Savelugu Vocational School Walewale Vocational School.

The training programme started in September 2008 with the trainees undergoing training in sewing and other skills that would equip them to become seamstresses. They were also given brief training on tie dying and a one week training programme in business planning. Other training included health, hygiene and moral lessons.

Focus groups were held with 10 of the seamstresses who had trained at Mandela Development Centre, as well as their trainer.

6.6.2 Objectives

The vocational training set out to meet the following objective of the Next Generation Project:

3. 2800 fostered girls prevented and withdrawn from child labour and enrolled into vocational training centres and formal basic schools.

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Relevant outputs under this objective included:

Output 3.2 1200 working children withdrawn from child labour and provided with vocational training to improve livelihoods options

as well as a whole host of different objectives relating to the selection, training and integration of the recipients of this support.

6.6.3 SuccessIn all, 40 people were brought to the Mandela Development Centre to undertake training on dress-making, while 341 trainees made up of 285 identified kayaye, 31 foster children and 25 orphans were trained at the Savelugu vocational centre on varied skills like tie dying, catering, dress making and electrical. Besides these groups, the programme also sponsored the training of other vulnerable groups made up of 353 people at the Savelugu Vocational Centre. We were not able to obtain statistics on the number of trainees at the West Mamprusi Vocational Centre.

Our interviews may have showed a somewhat one-sided picture of the training, as the seamstresses interviewed were those who the trainer had kept in contact with – naturally, these were the girls who had remained in the business. One of the ways in which the project could improve is to keep the list and contact numbers or workplaces of those who were trained so as to be able to follow up and see how they are doing after the training. In this way, RAINS would know who is doing well and who is not doing well, and be able to offer support.

Similarly, more contact should have been kept with the two vocational schools in Savelugu and Walewale. Because these were not run by RAINS, less data was collected on the success of these schemes.

Recommendation: Contact should be kept with vocational trainees after they have graduated, to monitor progress.

Those who participated in the training at the Mandela Development Centre received an extremely low subsistence and no accommodation. This meant that they found it a struggle to support themselves during the training.

The trainer suggested that there were opportunities to work with local businesses such as hotels, which might need repairs made to bed sheets. This would provide practice for the trainees, and they could charge small fees to wash the sheets, in order to support their subsistence.

Recommendation: Given that many of the trainees were vulnerable and lacked financial support from home, subsistence should be given at a rate that allows the trainees to live without additional support, or other opportunities for them to make money should be investigated.

The project has impacted a lot on the beneficiaries, their foster aunts, and the community at large. Before they were brought to the Mandela Development Centre for training, only two of those who were interviewed engaged in petty trading to earn a living, though not all that decent. The rest were just in the house idling with very high tendencies of going for kayaye (although none of those who were interviewed admitted to having been for kayaye).

At the Mandela Development Centre, they learnt basic sewing and seamstress skills, and almost all of them can now sew for themselves, their family and their clients with no supervision at all. Having said this, during the focus group it was mentioned that the skills learnt at the Mandela Development Centre did not equip them for work as local methods of sewing are different. Training schools should always be linked with local businesses to ensure that the skills learnt are applicable.

One of the trainees opined that even though most of them are still learning the skills they require for the job, they do make reasonable income from the skills they learnt from the program, which they use to support themselves and their dependents as most of them are fostered.

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Another trainee who said she stays with her grandmother had this to say regarding the impact of the project on her life:

“I am with my helpless grandmother whose survival largely depends on me. If had not obtained these skills from the training I don’t know how I would have catered for her because I would have been left with no option to fend for her than to go for kayaye or give out myself to guys for money” –vocational trainee, Mandela Development Centre

Despite these success stories, it’s worth noting that a number of those who graduated from the Mandela Development Centre are no longer seamstresses (the focus group suggested around 50%). This is because there are costs involved in setting up after the course, such as purchasing a sewing machine, and not all of the girls had family members who could provide support with this. Extending the microcredit element of the NGP to graduates of the vocational training could be a resolution to this problem.

Those that we spoke to who were still in the business all continue to live in Tamale, despite being from a variety of villages. This suggests that output 3.2.11, offer post training support and integrate rehabilitated young women into their communities, was not achieved.

Recommendation: post training support and rehabilitation should be given priority, to ensure that the project is sustainable and that smaller villages benefit from having individuals with key skills.

Another impact that the project has made on their lives is the fact that they are now equipped more on varying business techniques. Though two of them were previously engaged in petty trading, they did not have any prior training in business planning. They believed that given the resources, they could now run their own business effectively and efficiently by attracting and retaining the right clients. They also said that they now know where to go for start-up capital to run their own business. The skills they learnt in business management would subsequently help them when they set up their shops after they have graduated this year from their placements.

The training has also equipped the trainees with basic health and hygiene skills. Health experts were brought to the Mandela Development Centre during the time of the apprenticeship to teach them on issues affecting their health and health of communities. They were trained in family planning methods and techniques and taught about AIDS and HIV and how to prevent these. The trainees feel that they are now aware of various methods of family planning and the benefits associated with these. They are now also aware of health impacts of unhygienic surroundings. However, as many of them had not completed schooling, it would have made sense to include basic numeracy and literacy in the training, as these are useful skills for any businesswoman.

Recommendation: Basic numeracy and literacy could be added to the training program so as to equip vocational trainees with basic literacy and numeracy skills.

The project has also impacted positively on the way that the trainees perceive each other as they were brought from different homes with different social backgrounds. Whilst at the Mandela Development Centre, they were taught to interact effectively with their colleagues and share ideas on areas of common interest. They said that most of them ended up making new friends at the Mandela Development Centre and also had the opportunity to meet people they had never met before.

However, it is notable that none of the trainees interviewed were from the villages in which the NGP took place, and community members never mentioned the vocational training as being part of the Next Generation Project. Following all of our field visits, RAINS staff informed us that in fact some kayaye returnees in NGP communities had the opportunity to choose between returning to school and enrolling on vocational training at the Savelugu or Walewale training centres.

Apart from these cases, this element of the project ran independently of the other elements, which is a shame as it could have been integrated in many ways, for example by trainee seamstresses creating

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school uniforms or teaching children to do basic sewing repairs, and through apprentices visiting CCCs to give them career aspirations.

Recommendation: all elements of a project should be integrated, to maximise the impact of the programme.

Before the NGP vocational training, five of the ten girls interviewed had considered becoming kayayes in the south. The project persuaded them not to as the skills they would learn were worthwhile. These girls are now master tailors who are making a decent living and a meaningful contribution to their family incomes through sewing. The training has also changed their perception about kayaye as the trainees believed kayaye is not a safe route and would never advise anybody to embark upon the trip.

The training has also changed the trainees’ perception about fostering and fosterage. Even though most of them were fostered, they believed that the community will be better off without fostering and fosterage. They all said that they will not allow their children to be fostered and they will never foster, because foster children are not treated same as non-fostered children.

6.6.4 How else could the objectives have been met?The programme focussed on certain skills areas, like sewing. But it would be more sustainable if would- be trainees could select from a list of skills they want to learn. Many of those who had abandoned sewing since training had done so because they would have preferred other skills like hairdressing.

The vocational training could also be used to overturn gender stereotypes by giving young women the opportunity to train in fields that are traditionally dominated by men, such as masonry. RAINS could work in partnership with organisations such as Engineers without Borders to develop such courses.

Recommendation: a wider range of vocational apprenticeships should be offered, perhaps in conjunction with local businesses and craftsmen, and opportunity should be provided for beneficiaries to decide what they want to learn.

7. Conclusion

The Next Generation Project was a relevant and effective project which has had a significant impact in the beneficiary communities that were visited in the process of writing this report. However, as is inevitable in any project with this scale and scope, there are lessons to be learnt from both the successes and the failures of the project. These include:

7.1 Community Surveillance Teams (CSTs)

Community Surveillance Teams (CSTs) had a role in overseeing the different elements of the project and, as such, had a role to play in meeting many of the objectives. For example, they were involved in finding children that were involved in child labour or attempting to travel south for kayaye, and persuading them and their parents that it was important for them to go back to school.

According to CST members, attitudes towards fostering are changing and community members are starting to understand the importance of all children receiving an education. This is one of the greatest achievements of the project, as it suggests that attitudinal change has taken place.

It is worth noting that not all CSTs had the same perception of the objectives of the NGP. Most highlighted the issue of education, but few spontaneously mentioned fostering or kayaye. This suggests that objectives were not communicated adequately. This should be a priority for all future projects, as should monitoring progress towards these objectives. Documentation procedures should also be standardized.

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Having said this, the CSTs seemed to be a very effective way of helping the Next Generation Project to achieve its objectives, and they require very little ongoing or administrative support. However, it is worth noting that now very few CSTs continue to meet. An exit strategy should be developed for all projects to ensure that the local community has ownership of the project and that elements can continue to be sustained long after RAINS has ceased to be involved.

7.2 Micro-credit and Self Help GroupsThe micro-credit element of the project was one of the most popular elements of NGP, in the view of the beneficiary communities. It was significantly scaled down from the original project objectives, which stated that 1500 families would benefit from microcredit. In the end, only 179 women across 6 communities received micro-credit. It is not clear at which point the targets for this part of the project changed, and it is important that on-going changes to any project are recorded, with explanations.

The amount of micro-credit distributed was generally seen as being too small. While there is a risk in increasing the limit for all women, there is an argument for providing higher loans to those who develop better business plans. Other women would no doubt be motivated to improve their own business plans on seeing those who do so being rewarded with higher amounts of cash. In addition, RAINS could look to identify further long-term opportunities for communities to maximise income, either through production processes (especially those that can be undertaken during the dry season) such as the soap-making process that was instigated in Wungu, or through working with communities to increase farming yields.

Those who received micro-credit received very little or no training and this should be a key recommendation for future projects – more training on everything from basic business skills to information on child rights, sexual health and other topical issues, could have a lasting impact on the wider community.

The aunts involved in the self help groups consistently stated that attitudes had changed towards the use of foster children for child labour. The group dynamic of the self help groups was a conducive environment for attitudinal change, and the instigation of support groups should be encouraged in any project that involves an educational element.

7.3 National Health Insurance Scheme

At the point at which the mid-term evaluation report was carried out, NHIS premiums had been paid for 348 mothers, and 1,740 children had been registered for the scheme. However, there were no targets for this element of the scheme, nor is it clear how long this element of the project went on for – so it is very difficult to evaluate the success of this element of the NGP.

Paying NHIS contributions for aunts has proven to have long term benefits in certain communities such as Daboya no. 2, where all of the aunts who had been registered under the NGP were still paying their NHIS contributions now, three years after the scheme had ended.

However, payment of NHIS contributions never featured in the original project plan and it would be worth investigating whether similar results could be achieved simply by providing information on the benefits of enrolling for the NHIS and helping with the registration process.

It is also questionable as to whether the NHIS support helped to achieve the purpose of improving treatment of fostered girls. A more effective way of meeting this objective would have been to focus more effort on improving the skills of the aunts and children in advocacy and lobbying authorities. This would have been very empowering and would have likely made larger long-term impacts on the community.

7.4 Child Community Clubs

Child Community Clubs (CCCs) were created as an avenue for child participation, recreation and enhancing civic education in the children beneficiaries14. 2,340 children in total across the 20 communities participated in Community Child Clubs.

14 NGP year 3 Report

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Children’s knowledge of child rights varied across communities. It is therefore suggested that an activity framework booklet could be compiled to guide the work of CCCs, ensuring consistency and sustainability.

In addition, children should be given more of a role in managing the CCCs. Such a participatory approach would demonstrate to them that their opinions and views are recognised and valued. It also means that the children would take greater ownership of the club, allowing for sustainability after the programme has ended.

With the practice of kayaye being so widespread and for some seen as necessary in order to continue education, short term measures need to be taken to address it. Until the issues of poverty are dealt with in the communities, children participating in CCCs should be taught about the dangers facing kayayes in a bid to prepare them for what they will face if they unfortunately have to go kayaye. For example, they should be given lessons in sexual health and family planning.

7.5 Provision of uniforms and school materialsUniforms and school equipment were given as a way of motivating children to enrol and stay in school and also to help ease the burden on parents to provide these materials for their children. 1,600 children in total received such materials.

There were some issues around the distribution of uniforms, such as incorrectly sized uniforms being provided. However, most of those who had received the uniform said that it had increased their motivation to go to school, and given that many children cite the need to buy school materials as their reason for going for kayaye, the distribution of these resources could have had a significant role in meeting the project targets.

School uniforms inevitably have a lifespan because children grow out of them. However, the longevity could be extended by providing sewing kits to schools and basic sewing lessons to children (perhaps through CCCs), and/or by initiating a uniform recycling project to allow parents to pass on uniforms to other pupils who need them.

There are other factors which could also help to encourage children to go to school – ICT equipment was often cited by the children as being something that would encourage them, while in certain communities, it was suggested that serving school food would prevent children who live far from the school from missing lessons or working through them hungry. RAINS should therefore consider partnerships with other relevant organisations to allow for a holistic approach to tackling problems in the communities.

7.6 Vocational trainingAs part of the Next Generation Project, vocational training was given to young women who had either dropped out of school, returned from kayaye or were seen to be potential kayayes. The project has impacted a lot on the beneficiaries. Before the training, two of those who were interviewed engaged in petty trading to earn a living, while the others were just in the house idling, with very high tendencies of going for kayaye

Even though most of them are still learning the skills they require for the job, those who are still in the trade do make reasonable income from the skills they learnt from the programme, which they use to support themselves and their dependents. However, around half of the trainees from the Mandela Development Centre are no longer seamstresses, possibly because of the costs involved in setting up after the course, which many will not have had due to lack of family support. Post-training support and rehabilitation should therefore be given priority in any future project of this kind.

It is notable that none of the trainees interviewed were from the villages in which the NGP took place, and community members never mentioned the vocational training as being part of the Next Generation Project (although RAINS staff inform us that some kayaye returnees were given the opportunity to choose between returning to school and enrolling for vocational training). In effect, this eof the project ran completely independently of the other elements, which is a shame as it could have been integrated, for example by trainee seamstresses creating school uniforms or teaching children to do basic sewing repairs, and through apprentices visiting CCCs to give them career aspirations.

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8. Recommendations and opportunities

8.1 Key recommendations

A number of suggestions are made in this report as to how RAINS could build on the lessons learnt from the Next Generation Project in order to improve the efficacy and impact of future programmes. The most significant of these are:

1. To set out project objectives and outputs that reflect, and help to achieve, one overarching project goal. Individual outputs should include realistic SMART targets and progress towards these should be continuously monitored in a systematic manner. The purpose of each output should be set out clearly, to allow for changes in the project if targets are not being met.

2. A more coherent documentation system should be introduced to ensure easy access, management and monitoring. Standard documents and procedures should be shared with beneficiary communities. One overarching document should be used to monitor progress towards all objectives, and RAINS should work with relevant authorities (such as the GES) to set up monitoring procedures on relevant data, both during the project and after its completion. Where targets have to be changed, the reason for this should also be recorded.

3. All elements of a project should be clearly communicated to the community – there should be a clear understanding of the objectives of the project, criteria for eligibility for support under each element of the programme and awareness of any individual or group responsibilities, including recording meetings or collecting data.

4. RAINS should continue to work on community-wide education initiatives that set out to change opinion, as the Next Generation Project has shown that these can be successful. Support groups should be considered in all projects with an educational element, as they are a good environment in which to bring about change.

5. Where training is provided, a structured curriculum should be set out to ensure that all groups receive the same level of support.

6. A more participatory approach should be taken to children’s clubs to demonstrate to the children that their opinions and views are recognised and valued, and to allow them to take greater ownership of the club, increasing the chances of the clubs being sustained.

7. Financial support should only be given where necessary; with elements such as NHIS (or even micro-credit), providing support with registration documents and other paperwork may have almost as significant an effect in terms of uptake.

8. Partnerships should be developed to maximise the impact of any programme. It is recognized that one NGO like RAINS cannot do everything. But working with other organisations will allow for a more holistic approach to tackling problems, and prevent other factors, such as a lack of feeding programme, toilets, IT facilities or teachers’ accommodation from impeding progress toward project goals.

9. An exit strategy should be included in the plans for all elements of a project to ensure that the programme is sustainable and has longer term impacts. For example:

a. Where bicycles are distributed, bicycle maintenance training could be given.b. Basic sewing materials and sewing lessons could be provided to keep uniforms in

optimum condition.c. For vocational trainees, there should be a focus on post-training support and

rehabilitation within their communities.d. With micro-credit schemes, RAINS could work with banks to ensure that women can

continue to access credit (in the form of commercial loans) after the project ends.e. Support groups and CSTs should be set up in such a way that they are not reliant on

RAINS and can continue to function after the project has finished.Where possible, contact should be kept with project beneficiaries, to monitor long-term impacts of programmes.

10. All elements of a project should be integrated, to maximize the impact of the programme.

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8.2 Opportunities identifiedIn the process of undertaking this impact assessment for RAINS, a number of opportunities for future work have been highlighted. These include:

1. Introducing a programme to train communities to lobby for improvements themselves. Up-skilling members of the community in this way could be very empowering and lead to long-term impacts, not only on issues that the NGP set out to address, but also on other local concerns affecting communities.

2. Creating an activity framework booklet for children’s clubs. This would ensure consistency across groups and could help the clubs to be more sustainable – when one animator leaves the community, another motivated individual could take their place, using the booklet for guidance. Such a resource could also be distributed to other interested communities.

3. A uniform recycling project could be introduced in schools to allow for outgrown uniforms to be used by other pupils. Setting up partnerships between richer urban schools and poorer rural schools on such schemes could also have potential.

4. A wider range of vocational training opportunities could be offered, in partnership with local businesses and craftsmen. These could also be used to overturn gender stereotypes by offering young women the opportunity to train in areas traditionally dominated by men.

5. Building on the farming assistance that is already being offered by RAINS under the Childhood Regained Project (CRP) – this could include assistance which helps to increase yield (such as the use of tractors), diversifies crops grown, or extends the farming season through the use of irrigation or plants suited to arid climates.

6. Further income generation opportunities that can be undertaken during the dry season, such as to the soap-making project instigated in Wungu, could be identified and provided alongside access to credit, to achieve longer-term impact.

7. Projects like the NGP could be extended to cover other vulnerable groups of children, such as:

a. Orphans – this was identified as a major concern in the West Mamprusi District by both the GES and Social Work department.

b. Children with disabilities – this is a current area of interest for the GES in West Mamprusi.

c. Boys who are being trafficked or dropping out of school for paid labour – the baseline survey showed that this is a significant area of concern.

d. Girls who drop out of school due to pregnancy or early marriage – again, this issue was highlighted in the baseline survey.

RAINS could also revisit data held in its files to identify other areas where there are further opportunities for future work.

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9. Appendix I: References Child Protection Policy for RAINS Childhood Regained Planning Document Comic_Relief_Project_log_Frame_work_Matrix[1] Evaluation Report 2, by Salma Maoulidi Mid-term Evaluation Report NGP Baseline report NGP PROPOSAL NGP project annual report Dec 2007 NGP Year 2 Report NGP Year 3 Report

Childrens Act 1998 National Health Insurance Act 2003 Seddoh, Adjei and Nazzar. Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme: Views on

progress, observations and commentary. June 2011 http://www.ch-ghana.org/documents/Publication/Report%20on%20observations%20and%20commentary%20on%20NHIS.pdf

Blanchet, Fin and Osei-Akoto “The Effect of Ghana’s National Health Insurance Scheme on Health Care Utilisation” Ghana Medical Journal June 2012 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3426378/

10. Appendix II: IntervieweesA series of focus groups were held in beneficiary communities, including:

CCC: Zokuga, Zosali, Kpalung, Nayorku, Wungu, SayooCST: Zosali, Wungu, Zokuga, Daboya no. 2, Sayoo, NayorkuSHG: Wungu, Zokuga, Kpalung, Daboya no. 2, NayorkuTeachers: Zokuga, Zosali, KpalungChief: Kpalung, ZokugaControl community: TiyaVocational Trainees: Mandela Development Centre

Individual interviews were held with:

GES Director, West MamprusiSocial Work Director, West Mamprusi District AuthorityStaff at Bangmarigu Community Bank Ltd, WalewaleRAINS I.T OfficerRAINS M&E OfficerRAINS Savelugu/Nanton Programme ManagerRAINS West Mamprusi Project Officer

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11. Appendix III: Questionnaires11.1 Animator questionnaire

Name of District:

Name of Community:

NGP Questions:

1) What can you tell me about the NGP?

2) What were the objectives of the NGP?

3) Do you think all the NGP objectives were achieved? Do you believe they have been sustained?

4) If the NGP objectives were not achieved or sustained, then why do you think this is?

5) Who do you think has benefited from the NGP project? Are they still feeling the benefit now?

6) How many children in this community have benefited from the NGP project?

7) Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly non-beneficial or could have been improved?

Animator Questions:

1) What where your responsibilities as an animator? Do they still apply now? Have they changed?

2) As an animator, who did you collaborate with?

3) Has the way animators work changed at all? Is there any new or replacement Animators?

4) Are there any particular challenges for you as a CCC animator?

5) Who appointed you as animator? Do you know how it was decided?

6) When you accepted the position, was any training given to you for the role, if so by whom?

7) What activities/exercises do you organise for the CCC’s?

8) Would you be willing to learn new skills that you could teach the children in the CCC’s? (Give examples)

9) Do animators ever seek the opinion of children on any issues?

10) How much contact do you have with animators from other communities?

Kayaye Questions:

1) Can you describe the process when children are sent to be kayayes?

2) In your opinion what factors lead to children becoming kayayes?

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3) Do many women choose kayaye to support their baby?

4) Do boys ever choose kayaye, if so, for what reasons?

5) Are there any good or bad things about kayaye?

6) What is the general current attitude towards kayaye in the community? Would you say attitudes have changed since the NGP?

7) Has kayaye increased, decreased or stayed roughly the same since the NGP came about?

8) Do you think any parents would choose to take back their child back from kayaye? What do you think the reasons for this would be? Has this changed from before the NGP?

9) What opportunities are there for kayayes who return to their communities?

10) If kayaye was ended, do you believe communities would be better or worse off?

Foster Questions:

1) Can you describe the process when children are sent to foster parents?

2) In your opinion, what is the main reason why children are fostered?

3) Have you fostered/been fostered?

4) Are there any good or bad things about fostering?

5) What is the general current attitude towards child fosterage in the community? Would you say attitudes have changed since the NGP?

6) Has child fostering increased, decreased or stayed roughly the same since the NGP came about?

7) Do you think any parents would choose to take back their child after fostering? What do you think the reasons for this would be? Has this changed from before the NGP?

8) What level of fostered children enrolled in school before the NGP? Is it more or less now?

9) Do foster children have similar levels of attendance now as non-fostered children?

10) If child fostering was ended, do you believe communities would be better or worse off?

CCC Questions:

1) Was a CCC set up here?

2) Is it still functioning?

3) How often is the CCC held?

4) What activities have taken place since the CCC began?

5) Who decides what activities take place in the CCC’s?

6) What do you think is the most beneficial thing about the CCC?

7) Is there anything you would like to see improved or added at the CCC?

CRP Questions:

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1) Have you heard of the CRP?

2) How similar is the CRP to the NGP? Have issues that arose during the NGP been addressed in the CRP? How much do the projects relate to each other?

3) Do you think poverty or lack of education is an issue in this community?

4) Which issue do you think needs to be addressed first?

5) Is there anything else you would like to add?

11.2 CCC questionnaire

Name of District:

Name of Community:

Gender:

Age:

Children’s questions

1. Do you know anything about the Next Generation Project?

2. Can you tell me what you remember about the project?

3. Were you or a member of your family a beneficiary of any aspect of NGP?

4. If uniforms and equipment were received, how were the children chosen to benefit? Did they have any say in the benefits that they received?

5. If they attended CCCs, what did they do at the clubs, how often did they attend? Does the CCC still exist? If yes, do you still go to it? How often?

6. Did you have any say in what activities happened in the CCCs? If not, what activities would you have liked to see?

7. Do you continue to receive support from NGP? If no, when did it stop?

8. Are you currently, or have you previously lived with foster parents? If yes how long for? When did you move? Do you see your biological parents? Do you like living in a fostered home?

9. Are any of your siblings fostered children?

10. What are the reasons for fostering?

11. In your opinion do fostered children get treated the same as other children? If no, how are fostered children treated in your opinion?

12. Will you foster? Will you allow your children to be fostered? Why?

13. Do you think that the general public/those in your community are aware of the positive and negative aspects of fostering?

14. Are you familiar with the terms child labour and child's rights? If yes what is your understanding and where did you learn it? If no, give specific examples of activities and rights.

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15. Have you previously been required to carry out any activities that fall into a definition of child labour? If yes what activities, how long for, who asked you to carry them out?

16. If yes, did you carry out these activities more before the help from NGP? Did anything change when they received help from the NGP? What about now?

17. Is there public awareness of child rights, trafficking?

18. Before the NGP, did you used to go to school a lot or not a lot? Did this change when you received help from the NGP? What about now? Was it the NGP that increased motivation to go to school?

19. Are you or have you even been a kayaye? What about siblings? Would you ever consider becoming kayaye?

20. Why do people go kayaye? How can it be stopped?

21. BREAK QUESTION: What do you want to do when you finish school?

Outcome Questions

1. In your opinion since NGP do you feel you now get better treatment from your (foster) parents?

2. Did your mum/aunt receive micro credit? Did it impact or make a difference to your family life?

3. Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were good/ helped you?

4. Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were not so good?

5. Are there any particular issues in the community that need to be tackled?

11.3 CST questionnaire

Name of District:

Name of Community:

NGP Questions:

1) What can you tell me about the NGP?

2) What were the objectives of the NGP?

3) Do you think all the NGP objectives were achieved? Do you believe they have been sustained?

4) If the NGP objectives were not achieved or sustained, then why do you think this is?

5) Who do you think has benefited from the NGP project? Are they still feeling the benefit now?

6) How many children in this community have benefited from the NGP project?

7) Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly non-beneficial or could have been improved?

CST Question:

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1) What were your responsibilities as a CST member? Do you think they still apply now? Have they changed?

2) Was/are there any particular challenges for yourself or the rest of the CST members?

3) As a CST member, who did you and the rest of the CST’s collaborate with?

4) Has the way the CST works changed at all? Are there any new or replacement team members?

5) Do you keep any records of your meetings such as minutes?

6) Did the CST ever seek the opinion of children on any issues?

Kayaye Questions:

1) Can you describe the process when children are sent to be kayayes?

2) In your opinion what factors lead to children becoming kayayes?

3) Do many women choose kayaye to support their baby?

4) Do boys ever choose kayaye, if so, for what reasons?

5) Are there any good or bad things about kayaye?

6) What is the general current attitude towards kayaye in the community? Would you say attitudes have changed since the NGP?

7) Has kayaye increased, decreased or stayed roughly the same since the NGP came about?

8) Do you think any parents would choose to take back their child back from kayaye? What do you think the reasons for this would be? Has this changed from before the NGP?

9) Do people report kayaye issues to CST members? How many reports was there during the NGP and how many have there been since the NGP finished?

10) What opportunities are there for kayayes who return to their communities?

11) If kayaye was ended, do you believe communities would be better or worse off?

Foster Questions:

1) Can you describe the process when children are sent to foster parents?

2) In your opinion, what is the main reason why children are fostered?

3) Have you fostered/been fostered?

4) Are there any good or bad things about fostering?

5) What is the general current attitude towards child fosterage in the community? Would you say attitudes have changed since the NGP?

6) Has child fosterage increased, decreased or stayed roughly the same since the NGP came about?

7) Do you think any parents would choose to take back their child after fostering? What do you think the reasons for this would be? Has this changed from before the NGP?

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8) What level of fostered children enrolled in school before the NGP? Is it more or less now?

9) Do foster children have similar levels of attendance now as non-fostered children?

10) If child fostering was ended, do you believe communities would be better or worse off?

CCC Questions:

1) Was a CCC set up here?

2) Is it still functioning?

3) How often is the CCC held?

4) What activities have taken place since the CCC began?

5) Who decides what activities take place in the CCCs?

6) What do you think is the most beneficial thing about the CCC?

7) Is there anything you would like to see improved or added at the CCC?

CRP Questions:

1) Have you heard of the CRP?

2) How similar is the CRP to the NGP? Have issues that arose during the NGP been addressed in the CRP. How much do the projects relate to each other?

3) Do you think poverty or lack of education is an issue in this community?

4) Which issue do you think needs to be addressed first?

5) Is there anything else you would like to add?

11.4 SHG questionnaireName of District:Name of Community:

What do you remember about the NGP?

Can you describe how child fostering works?

Are you currently or have you previously fostered a child?

Is it very prevalent within the community?

What sort of activities, both economic and non-economic, did the fostered child carry out while in your care? Were these different to the activities that your biological child carried out?

In your opinion what factors both economic and non-economic lead to child labour and kayaye?

NGP Questions:

Were you a beneficiary of any aspect of NGP schemes? i.e. micro-credit, uniform purchases,

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SHG etc. If yes please specify help received.

What is your opinion of the micro-credit? Did it help?

What did you use the money for? Was it invested in business or material purchases?

Was it enough? How much more would you have needed?

Were you able to pay off the micro-credit loan? Was it made clear it needed to be paid back? (How many in focus group?)

What training were you provided to allow you to make the most of the micro-credit? If not what would you have liked?

Did you attend the SHG? Did you find it supportive? If not what would you have liked?

What was the structure of the SHG? Who was in charge, were notes taken of meetings?

How often did the SHG meet?

What did you learn at the SHG?

What changes would you make to the SHG?

Does the SHG still exist and do you still attend it?

Did the school uniform and other purchases encourage you to send your child to school?

Have you been able to afford to buy new uniforms/equipment since?

Did you receive NHIS support?

Do you continue to pay for the NHIS now?

Outcome questions

Have you witnessed any circumstances in which parents have withdrawn their children from fostering?

What do you think were the reasons for the withdrawal?

If you came across an incident of a child you felt was being mistreated in foster care would you report it?

Do you feel there has been any change -for better or worse- in the perception of fostering and child labour as a result of the NGP in your community?

If child fostering was ended, do you believe that communities would be better or worse off?

Has NGP changed the way you view and treat your foster child?

Has there been an increase/decrease in the amount that your biological or foster children have to work?

Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly beneficial?

Is there any way in which you would change NGP if it were to run again?

Are there any other vulnerable groups that you think such a project should focus on?

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11.5 Teacher questionnaireName of District:Name of Community:

Baseline Questions:

1. What is your understanding of the NGP?

2. What was your role with the project?

3. What do you feel are the positives/negatives of fostering

4. Did foster children have a similar level of attendance as non-fostered children?

5. In your opinion what factors prevent children from both groups attending school?

6. In your opinion what factors both economic and non-economic lead to child labour and kayaye?

Questions about NGP

1. Considering the children targeted by NGP – did you see an increase in attendance following the project’s intervention?

2. Could any other factors have effected this change i.e. better school management procedures?

3. So far, what proportion of children targeted by NGP complete their schooling? What factors affect this?

4. How many dropped out?

5. What did the children do after they finished school/dropped out?

6. Do the schools run any of their own programmes/initiatives to raise awareness of fostering abuse, child labour and children's rights?

7. Do you keep any statistics on school enrolment, attendance and drop outs?

8. Are there still issues around children attending school without books/uniform/equipment? Why do you think this is?

9. If a child arrived at school without the right uniform/equipment would they be sent home?

10. Does the school maintain links with the CST?

11. Is there any support available to children who have not been to school to help them transition back into formal education?

Outcome questions

Have any of your views on fostering, or those of the community, changed since the NGP?

Do you feel there has been any change -for better or worse- in the perception of fostering and child labour as a result of the NGP both personally and communally?

Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly beneficial?

Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly non-beneficial?

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Do you think fostered children are more likely to attend school now than before?

Do you think their attendance levels are the same as non-fostered children?

Are there any other areas/issues in the community that you think need to be tackled to improved child education and reduce child labour and kayaye?

If child fostering was ended, do you believe that communities would be better or worse off?

11.6 Rural bank questionnaireBaseline Questions:

1) Are you familiar with the NGP? If Yes explain understanding.

2) What was your role?

3) In your opinion what factors both economic and non-economic lead to child labour and trafficking?

NGP Questions:1) What was the purpose of the loans that were handed out?

2) How many loans were given out? How many and in what communities?

3) What were the criteria for receiving a loan?

4) Did you provide any guidance to the recipients on how to benefit most from this money?

5) Were you involved in any way with the SHG? If so what did you do?

6) What proportions of the loans were paid back?

7) Were there any circumstances under which the loan was written off?

8) How much of the loan pot has been recycled (Paid back and then repaid onto someone else)?

9) Is the amount of money that people receive always the same?

10) Why was this decision made? Why was that size decided? If not what criteria is decision of loan size made upon?

11) Are there any individuals to whom the loans cannot be paid? Means testing?

12) What feedback has been received about the scheme?

13) How many individuals have gone onto take out another loan after paying back their NG micro-credit?

14) How has the loan scheme changed since its introduction and why?

15) Any previous reports on the schemes?

16) If the scheme were to run again, is there anything that you would change?

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17) Do you think that the target group was the right group to focus on? Are there any other groups that you think would benefit from a scheme of this kind?

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11.7 GES questionnaireNGP Questions

1) Are you familiar with the NGP? If Yes explain understanding and ask following questions. If No, move to school attendance.

2) What was your role within the project?

3) Were you (or your colleagues) involved in selecting the areas in which NGP took place? If so what criteria were used?

4) What, if any, ongoing support did you provide to the project?

5) Do you think that the project’s objectives were met?

6) Is there any evidence that giving assistance to selected children will have disadvantaged others within the same schools?

7) Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly beneficial either for GES or for the communities?

8) Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were not beneficial either for GES or for the communities?

School attendance1. In your opinion what factors prevent children from attending school?

2. Do you have statistics for levels of enrolment in schools in NGP areas and the whole district?

3. Do you have statistics for drop-outs (and reasons for dropping out) in NGP areas and the whole

district?

4. If a child attends school without a uniform or schoolbooks, what happens?

5. Do the GES monitor what children go on to do after the completion of school?

Fostering1) Can you tell us more about the tradition of fostering in Ghana?

2) Why are kids fostered? Prevalence within the community?

3) What is the primary reason for fostering children now? Has NGP changed this? Tradition, financial etc

4) Can you describe the general perception of child fostering?

5) Do you think the general perception of fostering has changed since the NGP?

6) What do you think are seen as the benefits and/or the potential risks of fostering?

7) Are there circumstances in which parents would withdraw their children from fostering? Has NGP changed their perspective on this?

8) Do you think fostered children are treated differently from non-fostered?

9) Prior to NGP (2007-2010) what were the numbers of fostered children enrolled in school?

10) Did foster children have a similar level of attendance as non-fostered children?

11) Did girls have a similar level of attendance as boys?

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12) Do you think that there is more enrolment of girls/foster children in schools (in NGP and in other areas now than in 2007?

13) Has there been a change in the number of people reporting mistreated children? Why do you think this is?

14) If child fostering was ended, do you believe that communities would be better or worse off?

Kayaye1) Can you tell me more about the tradition of kayaye? What is the main motivation for doing it? What

factors make a child more likely to go to kayaye? Has there been a change in the number of children going to kayaye?

2) Do you think there is an increased awareness of child rights/child trafficking amongst NGP and/or other communities? What evidence do you have for the above?

3) Do you think there has been any change in the perception of child labour as a result of the NGP?

4) Do you think the NGP was right to focus on foster children/kayaye/female education? Why/why not?

5) What other issues do you think face children in this district? How do you think these should be tackled?

6) Are there other issues/areas/vulnerable groups that you think should have been tackled by this project, or could be tackled by future projects?

11.8 Vocational trainee questionnaireBaseline Questions:

1) Can you tell me what you remember of the Next Generation Project?

2) Were you or a member of your family a beneficiary of any aspect of NGPs schemes? i.e. uniform purchases etc. If yes, please explain help received?

3) Are you currently, or have you previously lived with foster parents? If yes how long for? Details etc

4) Are any of your siblings fostered children?

5) In your opinion do fostered children get treated the same as other children?

6) What sort of work did you carry out in your foster home? Did the non-fostered children carry out the same work?

7) Do you have any children of your own, fostered or not? Would you consider fostering or letting your children be fostered?

8) Why did you decide to become kayaye? What would have stopped you?

9) Were you able to attend school while you were kayaye?

10) When and why did you stop being a kayaye? Was NGP a factor in this happening?

Questions about NGP1) How long were you attending vocational training for?

2) What skills did you learn? Vocational and other training provided?

3) Did you find them helpful once you'd left?

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4) Did they provide you with any support or follow up on what you were doing once you'd finished your training?

5) Can you tell me what you have done since graduating? i.e. work, unemployed, back to kayaye

6) Do you think this training has made it more or less likely that you will have to carry out activities like kayaye again?

7) In your opinion since NGP do you feel you now get better treatment from your (foster) parents?

8) What do you know about children's rights? Where did you learn this? Can they detail any of their rights?

Outcome Questions:1) What are your hopes for the future? Have these changed as a result of your participation in

NGP?

2) Did your family receive micro-credit? Did it make an impact or difference to your family life? If yes, how? If no, why?

3) If you came across an incident of a child you felt was being mistreated would you report it? Has NGP changed your perspective on this?

4) Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly beneficial?

5) Are there any aspects of the NGP that you felt were particularly non-beneficial?

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