Program Review of COAST Trust

1. Project Description and Background to Evaluation:
COAST Trust with the funding assistance from Strømme Foundation (SF) has been implementing SECDI program in Cox’s Bazar and Patuakhali districts with the goal:  “by the end of 2013, 26171 households of Coastal part of Cox’s Bazar and Patuakhali districts of Bangladesh are satisfying their livelihood needs in a sustainable manner”. SF has conducted midterm evaluation of the Master Plan in 2012 considering it as a whole in order to improve the quality of the program. However, based on the mutual understanding with COAST Trust, SF further decided to review COAST’s program separately. In this regard an independent consultant has reviewed the program. During this time decision has been taken to review mainly two interventions- Education and People’s Organization in Cox’s Bazar area.

2. Purpose/objective:
Outcomes of this partner specific review will provide relevant information to the ongoing scope of work of COAST Trust; explore why the education interventions implemented by the program succeeded or not; and their capacity to continue and implement such programs.

3. Methodology:
The methodology of this review has been participatory, as much as possible. Specific methodologies for this review have been: Review documents, Review the existing reporting monitoring formats used in the field, Preparatory meeting with SF personnel at Dhaka office, Meeting with COAST Trust management in Dhaka and field level staff, KIIs with program participants at grassroots level, FGDs with program participants at grassroots level, FGDs with community people, FGDs with government and NGO representatives, Organizing workshop with program staff at COAST Trust office- Cox’s Bazar, Compilation of data /information, analysis and report writing.

4. Key findings:
Pre-school:  Running pre-school in the mosque-based ‘Moktab’ has been a brilliant concept to attract the people to involve their children in mainstream education system. COAST Trust from the initial stage established pre-schools mostly in the Moktabs. Starting from 2003, COAST Trust extended child education in a total of 314 pre-school with 9,451 children. Out of 314 pre-schools 219 (70%) have been based in mosque-based Moktabs. Proportion of boys and girls is almost 50:50. At present total 1050 children are enrolled in 35 pre-schools, of which 21(60%) are in Maktab.
Quality Education:  In Cox’s Bazar region COAST Trust started work with 6 primary schools in its 4 branches to ensure quality education. A total of 2769 students are now reading in these 6 schools. On average there are 462 students in each school with averagely 92 students in each grade.
Shonglap:  Starting from 2004, a total of 273 centres with 6,918 adolescent girls completed one-year course and all of them are graduated. The last batch of adolescent girls completed the course in March 2013 (total 1375 girls in 55 centres). This is undoubtedly a success of the organization to empower so many numbers of adolescent girls in the area.
Prottay:  Like the Shonglap centre, it was a demand from the community and from the Shonglap adolescent girls to start life education for adolescent boys. In this respect SF extended support to partner organization to start boys’ education centre with the name ‘Prottay’ in 2011. COAST Trust started 10 centres in two upazilas with 200 boys of age group 11–18 years. All are ‘working children’.
People’s Organization (PO):  COAST Trust in its policy indicated- “COAST People’s Organization (PO hereinafter) is formulated as an alternative institution based on the community. This is comprised of member participants of micro finance program of COAST Trust.”   People’s Organization (PO) is well-defined by Strømme Foundation in its strategy paper in a wider sphere saying- “People’s Organization is a collection of person who comes together for fulfillment of a common cause. PO is the collection of persons which will work for the betterment of their own members and community”.  This is the basic difference of PO defined by SF and COAST Trust.

5. Recommendations:
Some of the recommendations are:
• Maktab based pre-school is a promising idea to run in this area. Community also accepted it happily. As per demand of the community there need to run more pre-schools. The organization could think of expanding the program in more remote areas. 
• It is needed to develop skills of teachers on session plan, facilitation technique, use of education materials, ‘Joyful learning’ etc. which they feel important to learn.
• In order to measure quality education, some more indicators need to be considered; such as, completion rate of grades of the children with gender discrimination, percentage of numbers obtained in each subject (or GPA obtained) in the examination etc.
• If the organization thinks to continue this quality education program, it is also important to develop capacity of the respective staff through providing formal training.
• “Shonglap follow-up centre” should be continued to enhance the capacity of the graduated girls to continue their viable IGAs.
• Special effort could be made to send back the Shonglap graduated girls to formal schools. 
• In the present curriculum of Prottay centre, some lessons on social development, institution building and vocational training could be added.
• In principle, PO leaders at branch level should represent all village groups of that branch. Respective PO in a branch should have link with village level groups; PO leaders should have regular contacts with these groups.
• There should be a provision to organize general meeting for the leaders of village level groups (5 leaders in each group) where the PO leaders will play the role as facilitators.
• Existing monitoring tools need to be reviewed and further analyzed in line with the present situation of the field and appraising capacity of the monitoring staff.  
              
6. Comments from the organisation, if any: (this section to be filled by the staff responsible in SF’s Regional Office)