What is done by USDA to improve literacy of school-age children of Cameroon?

The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), Nascent Solutions Inc. (Nascent) is welcoming for Midterm Evaluation of a 5-year McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Project in Cameroon.

This is a five-year project funded under USDA’s McGovern-Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. Implemented by Nascent, the project is designed to improve the literacy of school-age children through improved literacy instruction, student attentiveness, and student attendance.

Secondarily, the project intends to increase the use of positive health and dietary practices. The project runs from October 2018 to September 2023.

While the primary objective is improving literacy, the staple activity is the provision of a daily lunch using food commodities provided by USDA. Nascent seeks to improve:

Quality of literacy instruction, through more consistent teacher attendance, provision of better teaching and materials, and training of teachers and administrators;

Student attentiveness, through the daily lunch program and extracurricular activities;

Student attendance, through school infrastructure improvements, enrollment outreaches, an increased community understanding of education benefits, and reducing health related absences;

Use of positive health and dietary practices, through increased knowledge of hygiene, safe food preparation, and nutrition, as well as increased access to clean water and sanitation and preventative health interventions;

Education systems, through enhancing the capacity of government and civil society, as well as improving local education- and nutrition-related policies.

The midterm evaluation will inform Nascent, USDA, and implementation partners of the project’s impact and progress. They will use its content to:

• assess progress in project implementation;
• provide a signal of the effectiveness of interventions;
• reassess the theory of change;
• make mid-course corrections;
• document lessons learned; and
• emphasize the most viable sustainability paths to stakeholders.

This will continue a quasi experimental evaluation setup at baseline by an external evaluation firm.

For more handful information, visit https://www2.fundsforngos.org/children/usda-seeks-proposals-to-improve-literacy-of-school-age-children-cameroon/