Evaluation of CBHA early recovery program in response to 2010 floods in Pakistan

Detailed description of the mission
The flooding caused by heavy monsoon rains beginning in late July 2010 caused widespread destruction and displacement from northern Pakistan down through Punjab and Sindh Provinces. Across huge swathes of the country homes were destroyed, agricultural land covered, livestock and other assets lost, and local infrastructure damaged. Over 20 million people were affected.

The Consortium of British Humanitarian Agencies (CBHA) is a 15 member organisation, forged to strengthen the coordination and capacity of NGOs to deliver appropriate, high quality, rapid humanitarian assistance. In October 2010 the CBHA was approached by DFID in Pakistan about managing a £20 million early recovery programme for flood affected populations. Although outside the agreed scope and statutes of the CBHA's activities, the opportunity to demonstrate NGOs' capacity to work collaboratively to deliver effective and efficient distater response was seen as in line with the CBHA's ambition to forma significant new funding mechanism to improve the impact of aid and respond to people in crisis. As such, a sub-group of six CBHA members formed a local, ad-hoc consortium to undertake the DFID funded early recovery programme - these six NGOs were those with the most experience and appropriate expertise of livelihoods interventions in Pakistan. A full governance and coordination structure was formed to oversee the programme and ensure full accountability.

Targeting 138,000 households (approximately 1,000,000 people), the CBHA Early Recovery Programme seeks to provide income support or income generation opportunities to households affected by the floods, helping them cover basic immediate needs or restore their livelihoods, avoid negative coping measures and reduce dependency on aid.

Type of services provided
The purpose of the evaluation was to assess the CBHA Early Recovery Programme in Pakistan, both in terms of the implementation and result of activities, and the use of a consortium model of collaborative working to deliver the programme. This was in order to:
- Determine if the programme was implemented effectively
- Increase the CBHA's knowledge of early recovery programmes
- Contribute to the humanitarian system's learning about local-level consortia
- Inform strategic thinking within both the CBHA and DFID

As such the evaluation consisted of two parts and was implemented in 6 steps:
Part 1 - An evaluation of the effectiveness, efficiency and impact of project activities
Part 2 - An evaluation of the consortium model used for programme delivery
1) Desk review of project documentation and literature
2) Preparation of evaluation tools and approach for field level data collection by Pakistani consultancy partner
3) Data collection and consultation with key informants and facilitation of review workshop
4) Supervision and backstopping of field data collection partner
5) Analysis of household and community level information for targeting and outcome assessment
6) Preparation of evaluation report.

Name of client: British Humanitarian NGOs / DFID.

Origine of funding: Non Governmental Organization.