Reacting to the RERA: How Rapid Education Risk Analyses Informed Practical Implementation in Literacy Projects in Mali, Liberia, and Afghanistan

Group Submission Type: Panel Session

Proposal

In 2015, the USAID Education in Crisis and Conflict Network (ECCN) released their draft Rapid Education and Risk Analysis (RERA) guide. The RERA is designed to allow NGOs quickly map how education systems, learners, families, and their communities interact with a dynamic, multiple-risk environment, and has been rolled out to many education projects in conflict-affected and post-conflict environments. It can be implemented at various stages of a program, and is designed to take two to three weeks. The RERA integrates key elements of conflict analysis, disaster risk analysis, and resilience analysis to inform project implementation.

This panel will review three different USAID early-grade reading projects that carried out RERAs at different times in different contexts, and whose projects are currently in different stages. The goal of this panel is to reflect upon how the RERA may or may not be able to inform project implementation at different times.

In late 2015, six months after the project launched, the Education Recovery and Support Activity in Mali conducted RERA to analyze the effects of the crisis on the lives of the population, the school system, and the security situation in order to define the project’s implementation strategies for the region. The RERA identified recommendations for implementation around social negotiations, student enrollment and retention, vocational training, curriculum development, peace building, sustainability, and site selection. Now, more than two years later, project leadership will reflect on the benefits and limitations of how the RERA can impact project programming activities, sharing some preliminary findings from studies that have built on the RERA experience.

In June of 2017, the early grade reading project Afghan Children Read conducted a RERA in the middle of its third year of implementation. This exercise was designed to provide USAID/Afghanistan an updated snapshot of risks in the country in relation to education and to better understand mechanisms for resilience among beneficiaries and their communities. This presentation will reflect on the challenges and opportunities of utilizing RERA results in a volatile, quickly-changing conflict environment.

Finally, Accelerated Quality Education for Liberian Children was tasked to complete a RERA in its first 60 days of operations, completing in June 2017. Still in its first year of launching and starting in schools, the Activity has been best served by the RERA’s informing of further data collection activities, including a site mapping exercise to select sites in which to implement accelerated learning and quarterly rolling assessments for the purpose of adaptive management.

Sub Unit

• SIG: Education, Conflict, and Emergencies

Chair

• Sarah Elizabeth Neville, EDC

Individual Presentations

• Informing early program implementation and iterative situation analyses for a Liberian accelerated learning program with the Rapid Education Risk Analysis - Sarah Elizabeth Neville, EDC; Desta Woldemariam Habtemichael, EDC

• Using the Rapid Education and Risk Analysis in a rapidly changing context: Lessons learned from an early-grade reading program in Afghanistan - Zohal Atif, Creative Associates

• Looking back at the Rapid Education Risk Assessment after two years of implementation in Mali - Aude Vescovo, Education Development Center (EDC); Boubacar Bocoum, EDC