Evaluation list

The Unwrapped Project is a livelihoods promotion initiative focusing on fourcomponents thus; provision of veterinary Services, restocking of vulnerable women headed households with goats, promotion of ox-plough farming technology through partnership arrangements with indigenous institutions,and promotion of honey production by traditionally beekeeping communities. The project started in May 2005 and was designed to build the community livelihoods financial and human capital. By the time of the evaluation in April 2007 the project had accomplished the following key achievements.

• Managed to implement many of the planned activities and achieved the desired outputs with variances (plus or minus) in the set performance targets.(For details see the section on findings)
• The veterinary services component has managed to internalise the concept of services cost recovery with so much success that no herder expects free animal drug or vaccines; they are always ready to pay what it costs to treat their livestock and indeed are affording to pay drugs at cost.
• Lack of drugs and prevalence of animal diseases which ranked as top problems to herders three years ago are no longer considered as problems by the same herders after Oxfam perfected the delivery of veterinary services through community based structures namely RULIDO and CULIDO. (See List of Acronyms)
• There exists a crop of reasonably competent animal health workers committed to providing veterinary services in association with the project yet they are not on anybody’s regular employment including the Government or the NGOs; they have been trained to provide services for irregular and unpredictable commissions on service fees that are paid by livestock keepers.
• The project has contained livestock diseases to a manageable level that compares well with the neighbouring countries. Suspected livestock disease outbreaks are usually reported by the network of community-based animal health workers and preliminary investigations conducted within 12-36 hours against a set target of between 24-48 hours.
• The project has also developed beneficial collaboration relationships with the Government, the like-minded NGOs in livestock sector and community level herders’ institutions.

Key Project Results

1. All the four project components were ranked as high priority by community respondents during the evaluation and are viewed by Government officials as addressing livelihood issues that are core to the people of the Lakes State.

2. The community has fully accepted the cost recovery concept in the treatment and vaccination of the livestock, which is seen by the collaborating development agencies as the route to sustainability of the service.

3. The project has contributed heavily in assuring existence of healthy livestock in the Lakes State through its veterinary services component.

4. However, the project gender empowerment initiative through the goats re-stocking component did not achieve the intended results key in introducing equity concerns to the mainly patriarchal community of the Lakes State.

The Main Project Weakness

The project formulation and implementation is heavy on the veterinary component and consequently the achievements of the other project components, which are equally important in achieving the project goal of improving community livelihood bases, have not matched the veterinary component.

This has not made the other project components irrelevant though, but the next project formulation process need to analyse a lot deeper project quality aspects such as the value of KTB hives vis-à-vis the difficulties that will be faced by the community importing the basic raw material until such a time that it will be possible to produce soft wood locally, the attendant costs, and sustainability; and also the provision of ox-ploughs which can easily be provided by the emerging private sector.