Sustainable Agriculture Investments and Livelihoods (SAIL) Project Baseline Survey

West Noubaria Rural Development Project (WNRDP)

Description

The SAIL project was designed to scale up the successful experience of the WNRDP project in establishing and strengthening rural institutions especially Community Development Associations (CDAs), Agriculture Cooperatives and within them Water User Groups (WUGs) and Farmers Marketing Associations (FMAs). The project put in place participatory and demand driven processes for establishing and strengthening these institutions.

The Project objective was to contribute to the reduction of poverty and increase food and nutrition security for poor rural women and men in Egypt (40,000 households or 280,000 people were targeted). Specifically the project development objective was enabling smallholder farmers to enhance their incomes, increase profitability and diversify their livelihoods. 

The expected outcome of SAIL:

  • Strengthening smallholder institutions;
  • Improved agriculture production and marketing; 
  • Improved capacity for employment and enterprise development;
  • Diversify income generating agricultural production by providing technical assistance;
  • Develop the livestock production in served area;
  • Establish developed marketing system depending on linking marketing associations in different areas.

Baseline Objectives:

The overall objective of the baseline study was to provide solid, valid, detailed and comprehensive data about the status quo of targeted communities and institutions to enable project progress monitoring, as well as mid-term and a long-term evaluation based on a “before and after comparison”. The baseline data will cover the main variables related to the project’s outputs, outcomes, and impact.

The main immediate objectives of the SAIL-Project Baseline Study were:

  • Obtaining solid, valid, detailed and comprehensive data about the status quo of the targeted communities and institutions;
  • Enabling the measurement of implementation performance with a view to PDR intended results;
  • Enabling a “before and after comparison” ;
  • Measuring the main variables related to the project outputs, outcomes and impact;
  • Identifying/confirming project benchmarks.

Services

  • Literature review: reviewed all the project documents and other relevant reports.
  • Developed Conceptual framework and data collection instruments
  • Field team training: Carried out training programme for field research team on the quantitative and qualitative research technique, field survey implementation and management as well as quality control. 
  • Data Collection through:
    • Quantitative survey: implemented through interviewing 2000 households among the population of the three target governorates.
    • Qualitative survey: consisted of 21 focus group discussions and 63 key informant interviews with beneficiaries and stakeholders.
    • Community Mapping: a community mapping exercise was  conducted in the project’s target villages to understand the characteristics and needs of the target communities.
  • Data analysis: which included: data entry and analysis of the quantitative survey through data analysis tool (SPSS); the tabulation of the data collected in the focus group discussions and key informant interviews. 
  • Reporting which includes:
    • Preparing the inception report;
    • Preparing monthly reports;
    • Extensive statistical analysis of the quantitative data results;
    • Tabulation and interpretation of the qualitative data results;
    • Reporting on and presenting the baseline study outcome.