Tanzania Food for Education Pamoja Tuwalishe Phase 4
Global Communities began implementing the first phase of the McGovern-Dole Food for Education project in Tanzania in 2010 with funding from United States Department of Agriculture. Now in its fourth phase, Global Communities is focusing on strengthening the capacity of program stakeholders to sustain previous FFE program achievements in 231 schools in the Dodoma and Mara regions.
The program’s goals are to improve student attentiveness; attendance; use of good health, nutrition, and dietary practices; the quality of literacy instruction; the effectiveness of food assistance; clean water and sanitation services; to build local capacity; and to reduce short-term hunger. To achieve these ends, the project activities include:
- Distribution of school supplies and reading materials;
- Training school staff;
- Proving school meals and strengthening school gardens;
- Procuring food locally;
- Forming savings and lending groups;
- Improving school infrastructure; and
- Providing trainings on hygiene, safe food preparation and storage, and school health screenings.
AIR's Project Evaluation
AIR is conducting the project evaluation for the fourth phase of the project (2022-2027). We are using a mixed-methods approach to set performance indicator benchmarks and to measure the progress of the project over time. For the baseline evaluation, we collected quantitative data with surveys from students, parents/caregivers, head teachers, and classroom observations, and qualitative data with interviews and focus group discussions from project participants, local and national stakeholders, and project staff.
The baseline evaluation report led to some important findings and recommendations that Global Communities can use to guide the remaining years of the project. For example, the evaluation found that just 4% of students could read at grade level with comprehension but that this was driven mostly by a lack of fluency and not an inability to comprehend text. This led to a recommendation to focus efforts on comprehension by using supplementary materials and working with parent-teacher partnerships to help increase reading outside of school.
