THE CURRENT STATE OF TOSTAN’S COMMUNITY EMPOWERMENT PROGRAM (CEP) AND DIFFUSION COMMUNITIES FINAL REPORT 30 June 2020 Authors Philile Shongwe: No longer with IDinsight - contact information available on request Mallika Sobti: [email protected] Felicia Belostecinic: No longer with IDinsight - contact information available on request Zack Devlin-Foltz: [email protected] Heather Lanthorn: [email protected] Cassandre Pignon : [email protected] About IDinsight IDinsight uses data and evidence to help leaders combat poverty worldwide. Our collaborations deploy a large analytical toolkit to help clients design better policies, rigorously test what works, and use evidence to implement effectively at scale. We place special emphasis on using the right tool for the right question, and tailor our rigorous methods to the real-world constraints of decision-makers. IDinsight works with governments, foundations, NGOs, multilaterals and businesses across Africa and Asia. We work in all major sectors including health, education, agriculture, governance, financial access, and sanitation. We have offices in Dakar, Johannesburg, Lusaka, Manila, Nairobi, New Delhi, San Francisco, and Washington, DC. Visit www.IDinsight.org and follow on Twitter @IDinsight to learn more. Acknowledgements IDinsight would like to thank first of all our study respondents who shared their time and experiences with us; and ultimately made this work possible. This study would also not have been possible without the support of various partners across our study countries. IDinsight would like to thank in particular all Tostan in-country staff -- including members of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning (MERL) team and Programs team in Senegal, National Coordinators in all five study countries, and supervisors for their support of our work and teams. We are also grateful to our in-country partners, namely Dr. Alexandre Delamou from Gamal University of Conakry in Guinea and partners at Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisa (INEP) in Guinea-Bissau, for their help with survey logistics and general in-country support. We would also like to express our gratitude to the study Steering Committee: Mady Cissé, Francesca Monetti, Dr. Cheikh Mbacké, Gannon Gillespie, and Elena Bonometti for their thought partnership and guidance in the design and overall execution of this study. We would also like to recognize Diane Gillespie and Molly Melching for their thoughtful advice and input to this work. Finally, we would like to thank our field teams for their hard work and diligence in conducting and transcribing interviews and focus groups, ensuring we had good data to conduct our analysis. We are especially grateful to our Field Managers – Hamadou Dia, Iannick Vieira, Khardiata Dia, Marie Guèye, Nafissatou Dioubate, Tahirou Diakité, and Tamba Mina Millimouno – for their thoughtful leadership in the field. Picture 1: Fatoumata Troaré (right), a member of IDinsight's field team, interviews a respondent in Koulikouro region, Mali. TABLE OF CONTENTS Abbreviations and definitions 4 Executive Summary 5 1. Introduction: overview of the community empowerment program (CEP) 12 2. Study methodology 14 3. Mitigating biases 39 4. Findings 41 Social Dynamics 37 Human Rights Alignment 60 FGC Abandonment 72 5. Conclusions 92 6. References 94 7. Appendices 95 Descriptive Study Final Report 03 ABBREVIATIONS AND DEFINITIONS CEP Tostan’s Community Empowerment Program CITI Collaborative Institutional Training Initiative - online human subject’s ethics training CMC Community Management Committee - a component of the CEP comprised of a group of 17 elected community members who are responsible for implementing their community’s vision that emerges from Tostan’s courses, in collaboration with the whole community CNERS Comité National d’Ethique pour la Recherche en Santé - as this research deals with human subjects, the IDinsight research team required ethics approval from this committee in Senegal and Guinea before conducting interviews and focus groups FGC Female Genital Cutting GC3Y Generational Change in Three Years project - a campaign implemented through the CEP from October 2013 - December 2016 in 150 communities located in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mali, and Mauritania INRSP Comité d'Éthique de l’Institut National de Recherche en Santé Publique - as this research deals with human subjects, the IDinsight research team required ethics approval from this committee in Mali before conducting interviews and focus groups MERL Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning - Tostan’s internal monitoring and evaluation department NGO Non-governmental organization SNAP CARE’s Social Norms Analysis Plot framework - this framework is used to guide the development and analysis of vignettes when measuring social norms 04 Descriptive Study Final Report EXECUTIVE SUMMARY STUDY OBJECTIVES AND METHODOLOGY We addressed a knowledge gap for Tostan on the conditions of communities several years after the end of their Community Empowerment Program (CEP). Tostan’s CEP is a three year program that aims to support community self-efficacy and collective action to increase the well-being and dignity of all community members. Tostan envisions that communities will (1) re-examine and re-negotiate their existing roles, relationships, and social practices, (2) implement -- through the Community Management Committee (CMC) -- activities to promote community well-being and (3) share knowledge from CEP classes with other communities through organized diffusion. Tostan’s objectives for this study were to understand current social norms, social dynamics, and governance structures in communities that had completed the CEP three or more years ago. While previous research efforts have looked at communities during and immediately after the CEP, Tostan lacked a clear picture of their reality years after the program. Given that Tostan aims for sustainable change, the knowledge uncovered by this research has important strategic and programming implications, and can be considered a stepping stone for future research. We described the current state of communities and compared this to Tostan’s expectations for sustained change. IDinsight designed and conducted a descriptive, largely qualitative study of the current state of CEP and diffusion communities across five countries: Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, Mali,1 and Senegal. CEP communities in the study had each completed the program at least 3 years ago. We focused on describing (1) social dynamics, (2) community practice and vision alignment with human rights, and (3) abandonment of female genital cutting (FGC). We then compared this description with Tostan’s expectations based on the theory of change. Our overarching objective was to help Tostan assess the extent to which the current reality aligned with these expectations. The study was not designed to measure the causal impact of Tostan (or any other factor) but may help refine causal hypotheses that Tostan and partners could test via future work. This study was not designed to estimate causal effects. The results are a rich description of the current reality in study communities but they cannot be interpreted as attributing any aspects of that reality to Tostan, the CMC, or any other actor. The study was also limited in its ability to measure changes over time since we only collected data once. We asked respondents to reflect on change and drew some insight from their responses. However, these insights are limited by respondents’ memory and our ability to elicit and correctly interpret these recollections. We are - therefore - more cautious in drawing conclusions about change than we are in drawing conclusions about the current reality. 1 Communities in Guinea, Guinea-Bissau, Mauritania, and Mali had participated in Tostan’s Generational Change in 3 years (GC3Y) project from 2013-2016, where Tostan implemented the CEP on a large scale. Tostan conducted baseline, midline, and endline data collection and internal study of all communities participating in the CEP (including those in Senegal). Tostan’s data-collection approach was more standardized across all communities included in the GC3Y project. Descriptive Study Final Report 05 To limit bias, we selected communities randomly and respondents via the right-hand rule. We also took specific measures to mitigate bias during interviews. We included 50 communities in the study: five CEP and five diffusion communities in each of five countries.2 We selected CEP communities randomly from Tostan’s list, stratifying at the sub-regional level to ensure geographic spread. Each CEP community was paired with a diffusion community, for five pairs per country. Altogether, we completed 416 in-depth interviews, 108 focus groups, and 50 community observations. We conducted in-depth interviews with randomly selected3 married couples who had lived in the village long enough to comment on the full period since the CEP. We conducted focus groups with both randomly selected4 general residents and -- separately -- with purposely selected community leaders. We also gave great care to limiting pro-program bias. In particular, we made every effort to ensure our field staff were and appeared independent from Tostan. This included not mentioning Tostan in any communications with residents unless/until respondents did so spontaneously. Interviewers were also trained to listen actively, to probe tactfully and to maximize respondent comfort and honesty even