Quarterly Report
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Resilience and Economic Growth in the Sahel - Enhanced Resilience REPUBLIC OF NIGER and BURKINA FASO REGIS-ER Quarterly Report OCTOBER 1, 2018 TO DECEMBER 31, 2018 February 2019 Cooperative Agreement No. 625-A-14-00001 Blvd. Mali Béro, Rue IB-73 B.P. 12,909, NIAMEY Tel.: (227) 20.35.16.48 Table of Contents I. Vision and approaches .................................................................................................... 1 II. Programs’ highlights ....................................................................................................... 3 III. Local institutions achievements ...................................................................................... 6 Local Institution 1 - Municipal Councils (CMs) .......................................................................................... 6 Local Institution 2: Citizen Working Group (CWG) and Local Development Committee/Village Development Council (CLD/CVD) .............................................................................................................. 9 Local institution 3 – V. Service Providers Platform: Community-Based Solution Providers (CBSPs) and Local Resource Persons (PRLs) ................................................................................................................ 11 IV. Monitoring, Evaluation, Learning and Capitalization ..................................................... 12 V. Securing land tenure for women ................................................................................... 17 VI. Cross-cutting activities .................................................................................................. 20 Communications ..................................................................................................................................... 20 Implementation of the Environmental Mitigation and Monitoring Plan (EMMP) ................................. 21 VII. Project management .................................................................................................... 21 Program Support ..................................................................................................................................... 21 Grants management ............................................................................................................................... 23 Cost share ………… ................................................................................................................................... 24 VIII. Appendices ................................................................................................................... 24 Annex 1: Table on Indicators of Project Performance ............................................................................ 25 Annex 2: Results of the assessment of the 2018 growing season on fields where Conservation Farming / Farmer-Managed Regeneration (CF/FMNR) were practiced in Niger and Burkina Faso, plus analysis of average yield increase from 2015 to 2018 in the two countries ........................................................ 51 Annex 3: Status of Local Conventions as of December 31, 2018 ........................................................... 53 Annex 4: REGIS-ER Mid-Term Evaluation Highlights ............................................................................... 57 Annex 5: Success story ............................................................................................................................ 62 List of Tables Table 1: Status (at the end of the quarter) of the Commune Resilience Plans that the Municipal Councils in the communes of concentration are developing Table 2: Project staffing situation as of the beginning of the next quarter (January 1, 2019): I. Vision and approaches The first quarter of FY19 was a transition for REGIS-ER from its scaling-up phase, which was based on successful activities in its eight programs, to the upcoming phase of accelerated implementation of the project sustainability strategy which focuses on strengthening three targeted Local Institutions in a more concentrated geographical zone of intervention (ZOI), the 13 communes of concentration. By December 31, the project had transitioned to a correspondingly lighter structure with fewer staff. REGIS-ER’s regional and commune teams will coach the key actors within the three Local Institutions: Municipal Councils (Conseils Municipaux, CM); Citizen Working Groups (CWG), a commune-level entity, and its community-level partners, the Local Development Committees (Niger)/Village Development Councils (BF) (CLD/CVDs); Service Providers’ Platforms, primarily Community-Based Solution Providers (CBSPs) and Local Resource Persons (Personnes Ressources Locales, PRLs). This quarterly report reflects this transition, highlighting both the progress achieved by the eight programs during this, the final quarter of the scaling-up phase and REGIS-ER’s work with the three Local institutions (Institutions Locales, IL). In its FY19 Annual Workplan, REGIS-ER analyzed its sustainability strategy through the prism of the four factors of sustainability identified in the Food for Peace report “Sustaining Development: A Synthesis of Results from a Four-Country Study of Sustainability and Exit Strategies among Development Food Assistance Projects”: Motivation, Resources, Capacity, and Linkages. Here is an overview of REGIS-ER’s work during the reporting period in implementing its sustainability strategy, examined through that same prism: Motivation and Resources: Development of the Commune Resilience Plans During this quarter, the Municipal Councils in the 12 (original) Communes of Concentration, with REGIS- ER’s strong support, adopted an inclusive, participatory process (vis-à-vis internal and external actors) to develop their Commune Resilience Plans (Plan Communal pour la Promotion de la Résilience, PCPR), as described in the "Municipal Council" section of this report. The PCPR is the document of reference that will inform REGIS-ER’s interventions in support of the three ILs targeted in its sustainability strategy. The PCPR is not only the basis for planning in the commune and for REGIS-ER’s coaching support for the three ILs, it is also the tool for mobilizing external resources on behalf of the commune. As the commune's operational document of reference for resilience to food and nutrition insecurity (Résilience à l’Insécurité Alimentaire et Nutritionnelle, RIAN), the PCPR will guide the action plans of the ILs to consolidate and scale-up the resilience gains achieved in the communes through the interventions of all internal and external actors. To ensure the effective and sustainable implementation of the PCPR, the project will assist the ILs in adopting an approach based on the optimal use of their commune- and community-level resources -- human, material, and financial. Depending on the commune, the PCPR will be integrated into the Commune Development Plan (Plan de Développement Communal [Niger]/Plan Communal de Développement ([BF], PDC/PCD). Strengthening the project's internal capacity to provide quality support to the Local Institutions: staff training on the coaching approach Internally, the project focused initially on training staff who will be facilitating the coaching process: USAID|REGIS-ER FY2018 QR1 - page 1 “Project Coaches” (Coaches Projet, CP): The CPs were selected from National and Regional Program Managers, positions that were eliminated on December 31, 2018. The three CPs in each region will coach the commune-level Local Institutions – the Municipal Councils, the Citizens Working Groups, and the commune-level platforms of service providers – as well as oversee and support the work of the project’s commune-based Coaches of Local Resource Persons and of Local Development Committees - Village Development Councils. (See below.) Regional Coordinators (Coordonnateurs Régionaux, CR): The CRs are members of the CPs’ regional team, but also have management duties which are unrelated to coaching. Coaches of Local Resource Persons and Local Development Committees-Village Development Councils (Coaches Personnes Ressources Locales et Comités Locaux de Développement -Conseils Villageoise de Développement), known as CPRL/CLD in Niger and CPRL/CVD in BF, or simply as CPRL: The CPRLs were selected from the project field agents who had successfully completed the project’s internal graduation process. (The field agent position was eliminated on December 31, 2018.) The CPRLs will be based in the communes and will coach two community-level actors: (1) individual CBSPs and PRLs; and (2) CLDs (Niger)/ CVDs (BF), which oversee, monitor and support the work of REGIS-ER’s community-level groups/platforms (Mother-to-Mother, Conservation Farming, Water Users’ Associations, etc.). There are 2-4 CPRLs assigned to each commune of concentration, depending on the number of villages of intervention (“successful villages”) in each commune. To this end, the project organized a workshop in Niger during the period December 9-14, 2018 on teamwork and coaching of the three ILs. The training involved identification of the coaching "clients", setting coaching objectives, contracting and planning with the individual being coached, coaching know- how, soft skills (such as active listening, feedback formulation, identification and resolution of obstacles, etc.), and evaluation. The workshop, which was facilitated by Mr. Pape Sène, focused on the Project Coaches-Regional Coordinator Team (called the CP Team) and on the CPRL Team