Mid-Project Evaluation of Liangshan Health and Development Project Sichuan, China

Background:
An American physiotherapist living in Taiwan initiated this project. She had an interest in leprosy-affected people. In 1999, she visited Sichuan Province in southwest China. In 1999, she wrote a concept paper that initiated the Project.

The long-term goals are to increase the health, education, and future income opportunities for children of the poor families, particularly the children of poorer families with illness and disability, living in remote agricultural villages, through an integrated health and community development village-by-village approach, in such a way that the whole village will benefit.

Purpose/objective:
It is the mid-project evaluation of the Liangshan Health and Development Project, which started in 2002 and ends in 2006. The purpose is to assess the project’s first phase, for improvements and adjustments for the last phase.

Methodology:
Qualitative assessment of the project, based on document revision and a field work. On the field work interviews were conducted with the project leaders, key government, and village leaders. Participatory activities were done with some of the villagers. The Team toured two project villages and visited the project office and the county government office.

Key findings:
The Team was very impressed with the wide acceptance and positive impact of the project. The government and villagers see the project in a very favorable light. The two villages visited by the team are needy and challenging. The project’s impact in these two villages is positive and impressive.

The villagers give suggestions as to what the project should help them with. The project staff discusses these suggestions in light of the issue of sustainability as an important part of the discussion. The villagers seem to have a sense of ownership of the project’s interventions.

The project officer, Dr. Gao, has done a good job in managing the project. He is responsible for a wide variety of things. His scope needs to be more narrowly focused to being the project’s liaison to the government, villages, and project leader. He should have a team of development workers, one assigned to each village.

The project has done an impressive job in advocating and providing for these marginalized villagers. The project should continue to advocate for their Primary Health Care (PHC) needs, education needs, economic needs, social needs, and family needs.

Recommendations:
It will be difficult for the project to meet its target of being involved in 10 villages by their 5th year.  Therefore, the Team recommends that the number of villages be scaled back or the project period be extended.

The team sees benefit in the project office being moved from the Communicate Disease Control (CDC) building to a higher-level governmental office building such as the county government building. This would provide greater visibility to the government for greater intersectoral cooperation.

Comments from the organisation, if any: