Concern Worldwide has been implementing graduation programmes in a number of countries since 2008 including Zambia, Haiti, Rwanda and Burundi. These programmes are intended to address extreme poverty at the household level in a sustainable manner. In an effort to find out whether these have worked, and whether certain elements are more important than others, Concern collaborated with the Centre for Social Protection (CSP) at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) at the University of Sussex to carry out rigorous research in Rwanda and Burundi. The Terintambwe: Taking a Step Forward programme (in Burundi) and the Unleashing the Capacity of the Extreme Poor programme (in Rwanda) were implemented between 2012 and 2016 with funding and technical support from Irish Aid and the UK Department for International Development (DFID).
In the research in Burundi, a quasi-experimental randomised control design was utilised which included three rounds of quantitative household surveys (at baseline, midline and endline), administered to both an intervention and control (or comparison) group to allow for difference-in-difference analysis, as well as a substantial qualitative research component. Implemented in cohorts, the Rwanda programme has the advantage of a fourth round of data collected for the first cohort, allowing an assessment of the sustainability of the benefits a full two years after the programme ended.
The results from the research were launched at a half day event in Brighton on the 25th October 2016 attended by over thirty participants. Three presentations from Alice Simington, former Country Director for Concern in Rwanda and Burundi and Keetie Roelen and Stephen Devereux from the CSP focussed on the experiences in implementing the programme and some of the key results from the research in the two countries. The following presents a brief overview of research findings and a summary of the lively discussions these prompted during the event. Full research reports from Rwanda and Burundi are available on both the Concern Worldwide and IDS
websites.