Are we still Learning Together? An Impact Assessment of the mother-daughter intergenerational program, Sang Sangai in Nepal, in a post-COVID environment

• In Event: Learning in and Out of Formal Schooling

Proposal

Project Description
From the year 2016 to 2019, a large-scale intergenerational program, Sang Sangai - Learning Together - was implemented by World Education. The core idea of the project was focused on nonformal classes for girls, literacy classes for mothers, and intergenerational spaces and activities for sharing learnings and providing opportunities. The project objectives were to improve basic literacy and numeracy skills, improve health knowledge, and reduce out of school populations and support retention in the formal education system. The project reached over 23,000 out-of-school girls and 8000 mothers from the most marginalized Muslim and Dalit populations in four districts from the Terai region of Nepal, which have the worst gender parity indicators in the country.
Through intense negotiations across community members, the interventions were targeted to the most vulnerable. During the program, the project team collaborated with the provincial and local governments to successfully enrol girls in formal education and provide in-kind support and training in 30 government learning centers. Child protection committees were developed to monitor the nonformal classes.
After attending the 9 month non formal education girls were bridged back to school and shared their learnings during and after the non-formal classes with their mothers. After enrolment in formal schools, the project supported the capacity development of school management committees and parent teacher associations across 300 schools. Another project component was the provision of ICT projects in 14 schools to provide digital libraries and e-learning. By the end of the four year project, 17,000 girls continued in formal schooling and 3,000 girls attended economic education vocational classes after their nonformal classes ended.
The proposed study
This study will assess the medium term impacts of the intervention four year after the project closure in 2019. Since 2019, Nepal has also experienced the devastating impacts of the COVID crisis, which has resulted in job loss and household income loss especially for the most vulnerable populations (Joshi et al., 2021).
The research questions of interest are:
• Did the project beneficiary girls continue with their formal education? If not, what were there life choices post receiving the intervention? How did COVID affect their life choices?
• How did the mothers utilize the literacy and numeracy skills and life skills learned during the program? Did it influence their coping mechanisms when faced with any disruptions or challenges? How did COVID affect their utilization of their skills?
• How did the intergenerational learning component influence mothers’ views of education continuity for girls and boys?
The study will take place in two districts (Mahottari and Rautahat) of the four districts that the project was implemented.
The evaluation study aims to be a qualitative impact assessment. In-depth interviews will be conducted with at least 20 girls (10 dalit girls and 10 muslim girls) and 20 mothers from the program beneficiaries. Prior to the in-depth interviews, four focus groups will be conducted.
The objective is to collect narrative causal statements directly from the beneficiaries. The respondents will be asked about the main changes that happened over the past 5 to 10 years, and prompted to share about what they perceive to be the main drivers of these changes and what they attribute these changes to. The narrative data will be triangulated with other data, such as questionnaires. The questionnaires will cover various types of outcomes of the respondent’s lives, designed to reflect the areas of people’s lives assumed to be affected from the project’s theory of change.
Given the precarious period during which the analysis took place, it is expected that mothers may have used their literacy skills to cope with COVID challenges to follow health protocols. However, the major financial losses incurred during this period will have made it difficult for girls to maintain their formal education, and for mothers to provide similar opportunities to their younger children.


Joshi, T., Mainali, R. P., Marasini, S., Acharya, K. P., & Adhikari, S. (2021). Nepal at the edge of sword with two edges: The COVID-19 pandemics and sustainable development goals. Journal of Agriculture and Food Research, 4, 100138. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jafr.2021.100138

Author

• Roopshree Joshi, World Education