CLA Case Study - Reaching the Most Vulnerable: Partnering with Haiti's Government

Last week at a USAID presentation, Emily Janoch, Senior Technical Advisor for Knowledge Management and Learning at CARE, spoke about Kore Lavi, a program launched in October 2013 by CARE, the World Food Program, Action Contre la Faim, World Vision, and the Haitian Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs (MAST) with funding from USAID’s Office of Food for Peace.

The Kore Lavi program is multi-faceted and includes a social safety net mechanism for providing vulnerable people with electronic and paper vouchers for the purchase of locally sourced and grown staple foods and produce, as well as a pilot school feeding program that also focuses on local vendors and foods.

WATCH: We sat down with Janoch to learn more about this CLA case study.

Kore Lavi incorporated Collaborating, Learning, and Adapting (CLA) in its program design by including the government of Haiti from the beginning in the planning and award process . First lady Sophia Martelly identified the need for a food security safety net and travelled to Mexico and Brazil to gather ideas of what could be done in Haiti. MAST then worked closely with Food for Peace to design an innovative program that could be adapted as necessary. With this model of development, the hope is that CARE and their partners will build capacity within the Haitian government for increasing ownership of the program.  

Kore Lavi works to incorporate local context into the program at every step. Early on, it was recognized and acknowledged that half of all development aid in Haiti goes to people who do not need it. Using this knowledge, Kore Lavi worked with MAST to create a new targeting mechanism to identify and reach the most vulnerable in society.

The program is also designed with an emphasis on adaptability and sustainability. Haiti frequently finds itself in emergency situations. Natural disasters are common, and the goal is to create a program that can be scaled up to serve a larger portion of the population should the need arise.

Perhaps the most appealing part of the program is the help desks that were created to encourage instant feedback from participants and improve accountability. Representatives from the implementing partners hold regular help desk office hours where program participants can ask questions and raise concerns regarding their participation or the benefits they are receiving. The feedback is then used not only to address the individual concerns raised by the participants, but also to make changes to the overall program as it develops. To date, this help desk system has responded to 98% of all help desk entries.

Kore Lavi is in the process of producing a midterm report, but at the end of her presentation, Janoch referenced the introduction of learning cycles designed to discuss the monitoring and evaluation data that has been collected thus far and learn from it. CARE reports that in the first year of program implementation, 109,790 people benefited from social assistance, 358 local vendors have been engaged to provide services to the chronically poor through the social safety net mechanism, and more than 18,000 households have gained access to locally produced and nutritious food through the monthly food vouchers.