Annual Report & Outcome Assessment 2011 1st of January, 2011 to 31 st of December, 2011 Rose Charities Sri Lanka Swiss Foundation Project Annual Report & Impact Assessment - 2011 Page 1 Rose Charities Srilanka's approach to building sustainable communities: Rose charities entered Kalmunai in 2005 immediately after the Tsunami in December 2004 and has since worked with the community. The intent is to support the under privileged children living in surrounding villages focusing health and safety of the children and later establishing a structured counseling program to address the post trauma distress of the children. The program then evolved into education, starting with preschool and moving on to primary, secondary and supporting university studies as well as vocational training to a considerable number of members, making a real difference in their lives. Since the beginning of 2010, the project was supported by the Swiss Optimus Foundation to expand and to put more emphasis on young women and children. The work of RCSL has evolved into a community based program which integrates education and economic sustainability. This is accomplished in partnership with individual communities. The core education program is enhanced by enrichment activities that include art, music, English, computer skills, sports and other training workshops. This is further reinforced by women's group, girls' group and children's group that were established in the community. Profile of the Project Area Ampara district is located in the south east of Srilanka in the Eastern Province and Batticaloa district is located in the Central Part of Eastern Province. These districts are of the most diverse in Srilanka, both ethnically and religiously. Ampara and Batticaloa are of the less developed districts in the country with its population living below poverty line ( ADB, 2005 ) with areas of poverty are scattered throughout the districts. About 35-40% of households have access to electricity compared to 77% nationally ( CEB ). Less than 10% have access to pipe borne water ( National Water Supply and Drainage Board ). There is extreme food insecurity in Kalmunai where 80% of the population lives below poverty line with income below $2/day. The districts have been affected by the civil war which has killed people, internally displaced persons. A high number of IDP families have been settled here by government resettlement programs. Due to the 2004 tsunami, people died and houses were destroyed or damaged. The hazards prevailing in the districts are; Cyclones, Flood, Drought, Lightening, Epidemics, Elephant Attacks, Industrial related hazard to human and environment and Human made disasters such as Ethnic conflict & War. Gender - Although women in the North-East constitute 64% of the working age population, women’s labour force participation rate is significantly lower than men’s. A large number of women died in the tsunami resulting in children being left without a female caregiver. This has had a serious psycho-social and economic impact on families with young children. A major number of households are headed by women due to death, disability/disappearance of the male head during the conflict times. In various surveys concerns were raised that many widows who were self employed had lost their livelihood due to the conflict and tsunami, and had not been assisted. Children and Youth - Children were the most vulnerable of the disasters, losing two to three years of schooling. Additionally, the compounding effect of the 30 year old civil war forced vulnerable children to drop out of the schools. Rural areas in the districts were isolated from the rest of the country during the war. This resulted in a lack of education facilities and resources, therefore students who were fortunate enough to remain in the school system nevertheless fell behind the rest of the country. According to UNICEF ( 2006 ) over 40%children in the district do not live in a protective and supportive environment with parental and/or family care. Incidents of child labour, abuse, neglect, exploitation are regularly and widely reported. There is also a high number of low weight births and high infant mortality (UNICEF, 2006 ). According to WFP and UNICEF the district also has higher than national average statistics for children of age under five who are underweight and/or suffering from wasting and stunting. Education statistics for Ampara are among the worst for the country: Literacy is one of the lowest in the country at 85.9 % compared to 91.1 % nationally. Activities in 2011 Interruption in the beginning; RCSL has started its activities with heavy rain and flood! From December of 2010, in to January and February of 2011 an intense rain and flooding in almost the entire project area made a halt in almost all of the programs. RCSL had to put most of its activities on hold to embark on flood relief activities within the communities we were working with. For more than a month, the project office has been transformed in to a relief centre. A load of provisions had been bought and stored Annual Report & Impact Assessment - 2011 Page 2 temporarily in RCSL office. The staff put their own time and effort on packing and distributing. More than 1500 members of Rose Community Based Organizations and Rose Children Clubs were provided with relief provisions. We have estimated that our activities have been delayed by at least three months due to the floods. This caused gaps, delays and or in some cases no events in our scheduled programs. Specially all of our preschools were closed for more than two weeks due to flooding and after-flood effects. We have informed our Funders of this situation and have received an extension of delivering on these activities. Staffs resources have been used double time accommodate the missed out programs with the regular programs. Despite the floods RCSL was back on track with Godspeed by March 2011. This enabled to catch up and fulfill all the milestones by the end of 2011. Even though there was some budget variance at the end of 2010 with many programs under spent which was not helped by the floods, due to the immense effort of the Staff, RCSL was able to greatly improve the budget variance in 2011. In 2011, the progress of all the programs was specifically successful. The staffs are especially happy about the successful introduction of the impact assessment program which has proved valuable data as to the effectiveness of the programs. This has enabled to monitor and fine-tune many of the programs and teaching techniques. The training provided to the staff has continued all year, with the volunteer teachers visiting from Canada who provided English and Computer classes for the staff. The challenge for 2012 will be to develop baseline data for the next phase of the project. Annual Report & Impact Assessment - 2011 Page 3 Project Milestone & Non-Milestone Targets, Budgetary Allocation & Utilization and Comments - Review for the covered period – January to December, 2011 Activity Milestones - 2011 Achievement in 2011 Reasons for Variance Management of Resources (according to agreement) (January –December) in case of Variance EARLY CHILDHOOD AND GENERAL EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT PROGRAM ECCE Open 7 preschools with 550 Opened 7 new preschools with 608 • school enrollment is at full • minimal effect on resources children students capacity needed for each school Start 7 village groups and Started 7 new village groups and held No Variance Not Applicable hold weekly activities weekly activities Hold 24 training or planning Held 24 training or planning activities No Variance Not Applicable activities Hold 6 public awareness Held 6 public awareness activities No Variance Not Applicable activities Primary Education 300 children attending 410 primary students of 11primary • Program made available to • Schools provided voluntary classes schools attending classes the children sitting services to make up the scholarship exams from 11 necessary extra resources. schools Hold 6 teacher workshops Held 6 teacher workshops No Variance Not Applicable 20 school drop -outs assisted 21 school drop -outs assisted out of • All the school drop-outs have • a local teacher was employed for 41 school drop-outs identified been identified from an the program- minimal effect on initially for assistance isolated village resources needed for the program Secondary 500 students assisted 492 students assisted • a minimal variance in the • it was unrealistic to identify a Education number of students new school in order to reach the target number of students Hold 2 computer training Held 2 computer training courses No Variance Not Applicable Hold 1drop out support Held 1drop out support No Variance Not Applicable re-integration program re-integration program SPECIAL IMPACT PROGRAMS Empowerment of Start 12 girls clubs Started 12 girls clubs with 372 No Variance Not Applicable Girls in Education members Program Start 7 new sports teams Started 4 girls Basketball teams and 4 • unexpected request and • With minimal effect on girls Volley ball teams interests in starting sports resources, more teams were teams started and given training Hold 36 meetings of clubs/ Held 42 meetings of clubs/teams • Minimal variance in the • With minimal effect on teams number of meetings resources, more meetings were held Annual Report & Impact Assessment - 2011 Page 4 At Risk Children Hold 6 CSW training Held 6 CSW training workshops with • Minimal variance in the • With minimal effect on Program workshops to train 14 CSW 25 CSW participation.