Mid-term Review Report of Shincon’s Yunnan Left-Behind Children’s Development Project

Background

The project goal is to contribute to improved quality of life for left behind children in Zhaotong and Xishuangbanna of Yunnan province, and reduced number of children who are left behind. Awareness raising of children's rights, capacity building, and advocacy are main work methods. Stakeholders are also trained within the family guidance program , focusing on the relationship and communication between children and adults, and the value of the child.

Purpose/objective

The purpose of the evaluation was to have a participatory and systematic process focusing on learning at all levels of involved parties. The main goal for the evaluation was to give a true and realistic view of the activities and how these have influenced the beneficiaries. Recommendations as to how the project should continue during the last phase of the project period were emphasized.

Methodology

Literature review of documents such as project reports, records, media reports and publications, as well as qualitative research methods including individual interviews, focus group discussions and field observation.

Key findings

Many activities have been carried out for children at both project sites. The children did not fully understand the concepts of child rights. There is progress towards the objective “improve children’s awareness of self-value” and “promote children’s participation in self-development” and also improvements in the children’s ability to manage daily routines and deal with interpersonal relationships independently. Nonetheless, it is difficult to identify the actual causes of such progress, whether it is the result of the project intervention or a combination of several aspects.

In Xishuangbanna, the progress concerning implementation and improvement of policies and legislations related to child development, and the attention to child development has been remarkable, and even influenced the surrounding areas. The establishment of children’s clubs is a joint effort of the project and the Yunnan Provincial Strategic Plan for Child Development. In Zhaotong, such joint effort in community is weak, but the needs of the children have increasingly become important on the school agenda, and the relationship between the teachers and the students is friendlier and more intimate than the relationship between the parents and the children. It is hard to identify whether the changes in Zhaotong are the results of the project intervention or other measures.

In Zhaotong, the lectures for caregivers did not achieve obvious effect. In Xishuangbanna, parents’ attention to child development has increased. According to the children’s reports, there is no obvious positive change in parents’ awareness and behaviour in neither project site.
International Child Development Programme training has made remarkable progress. Both the number of participants and the number of beneficiaries have exceeded the expectation. Trained caregivers obtained a new perspective of child development. The majority of the facilitators are researchers and government staff from the city. Only a very small proportion represent the most vulnerable and caregivers from rural communities. The program is supposed to transcend class and region, but how it would adapt to the complex and diverse social cultural context of China remains unresolved.

Xishuangbanna Women’s and Children’s Legal Consulting and Aid Centre has improved within social mobilization, optimization of social resources and policy advocacy, while the partner in Zhaotong has increased community participation and made innovation in optimizing educational resources in school. The capacity of the implementing agency at village level needs to be strengthened since their ownership of the project and initiative to make decision are still weak. Both partners have managed to push the government to better target its resources at most needy children and parents. Shincon has strong capacity, but is not able to institutionalize a participatory monitoring and evaluation mechanism or ensure both bottom-up and top-down project operation.

Recommendations

• Improve children’s and parents’ understanding of child rights. Strengthen or develop children’s leadership skills
• Feasibility study can be conducted to better understand the relevant needs and market for the International Child Development Programme. More partners should be identified for the second round of Training of Trainers.
• Improve the participatory project management system to ensure better interaction with the partners.
• Provide targeted and tailored capacity building for rural caregivers.
• Mobilize media to pay attention to issues around child development and also use social media to disseminate knowledge and skills regarding child development.
• Strengthen the project team within Zhaotong Women’s Federation.
• Facilitate more experience sharing between the two partners.

Comments from the organisation

NLM recognizes the findings and recommendations of the evaluator. During the early phase of the project implementation, it became clear that the interest for and the potential of the International Child Development Programme was great both among partners and other participants. Consequently, more effort was put into this part of the project than the rest. The International Child Development Programme has several stages of training and certification. It is therefore only natural that it is too early to see significant impact of this program among the target group.