HELASIA project : health, education, livelihood in Africa : a sustainable inclusion approach : end review

Abstract

This report presents the findings, lessons learnt, and recommendations of the external and final evaluation of Humanity & Inclusion's project 'Health, Education and Livelihoods in Africa (HELASIA)'. The evaluation contract was launched on 19 December 2022 (date of purchase order). The kick-off meeting was held online on 04 January 2023. Data collection and analysis were completed in April 2023. The evaluation was undertaken by Policy Impact Lab. This evaluation report is based on analysis of project documentation and interviews and focus groups with internal and external stakeholders. Most of the interviews and focus groups were conducted face-to-face during field visits where local field experts were deployed. This was complemented with remote consultations conducted by the core evaluation team members.

The HELASIA project was funded by the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation and implemented by Humanity & Inclusion between October 2019 and June 2023 in partnership with the African Disability Forum (regional level), the Pan-African Network of Persons with Psychosocial Disabilities (regional level), federations of organisations of persons with disabilities (national level) and organisations of persons with disabilities (local level). Benin, Ethiopia and Rwanda were thefirst countries of the project implementation. In January 2021,the project included Madagascar and Mozambique and started working with PANPPD. Botswana and the Gambia were also included at a later stage, albeit to a lesser extent, with activities focusing mainly on the work with ADF.

HELASIA's objective was to contribute to an increased access to inclusive services and improved quality of life of persons with disabilities through building capacities of partner organisations to advocate and participate in the development and implementation of policies and programmes at a local, national and regional level. To this purpose, HELASIA organised a number of activities, including organisational capacity strengthening (all seven countries); lobbying, advocacy, and awareness raising towards disabilities rights (all seven countries) and disability mainstreaming to make services more inclusive (five main countries). Furthermore, each of the five main countries selected a priority and a secondary theme from the three sectors covered by HELASIA, namely livelihoods, education and health.