Impact Evaluation Baseline Report: Shekina November 2016 SPRING MONITORING AND EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 Department for International Development SPRING Monitoring and Evaluation PO 7117 List of Partners  Research Plus Africa November 2016 Coffey International Development Ltd The Malthouse 1 Northfield Road Reading Berkshire RG1 8AH United Kingdom T (+44) (0) 1189 566 066 F (+44) (0) 1189 576 066 www.coffey.com Registered Office: 1 Northfield Road Reading Berkshire RG1 8AH United Kingdom Registered in England No. 3799145 Vat Number: GB 724 5309 45 This document has been approved for submission by Coffey’s Project Director, based on a review of satisfactory adherence to our policies on:  Quality management  HSSE and risk management  Financial management and Value for Money (VfM)  Personnel recruitment and management  Performance Management and Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Richard Hooper, Project Director Signature: Cover photo: Girls processing cassava leaves at a Shekina drop off point in Rwanda Impact Evaluation Baseline Report: Shekina October 2016 IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING MONITORING AND EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 Contents Summary– Girl Cooperative Members i 1 Introduction 1 Overview of the Impact Evaluation 1 Purpose and structure of this document 1 2 Methodology 2 Business Selection Process 2 Approach to SPRING Impact Evaluation Methodology 3 Shekina Research Methodology 3 Fieldwork – Shekina Cohort 1 Baseline Survey 4 3 Results and findings 7 General and income generating activities 7 Working and learning 9 Income and spending 10 Banking and Saving 13 Life skills, well-being and empowerment 16 Annex Annex A– Demographic profile 19 Annex B – Fieldwork observations on Cooperative management 21 Annex C – Shekina IE Survey 22 Annex D – Shekina Briefing notes 37 IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – AUGUST 2016 1 Abbreviations and Acronyms BPE Business Performance Evaluation BoP Base of the Pyramid HQ Head Quarters IGA Income Generating Activity IP Implementing Partners PPI Progress out of Poverty Index RWF Rwandan Franc SACCO Savings and Credit Cooperative ToR Terms of reference IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 I Summary– Girl Cooperative Members Below we outline key findings from baseline research for the first of six grantee SPRING impact evaluations1 . The first grantee selected for evaluation was Shekina, a Rwandan based food products producer. This first baseline data collection encompassed face to face interviews with all of the adolescent girls that were members of the Shekina cooperatives. A total of 94 interviews were completed. The data collection was conducted shortly after the girls began working for the Shekina cooperatives, which was almost six months into the SPRING cohort.2 Our summary findings are structured around the Evaluation Questions relevant to the Impact Evaluation as follows: What are the key contextual factors that helped or hindered girls in accessing and using products, services and business opportunities provided by SPRING grantees?3  At the start of 2016, the Ministry of Education had introduced legislation that girls between ages 16-18 must have at least 12 hours of rest between shifts and cannot work before 8am or after 6pm. Shekina believes this made the offer of cooperative work less attractive to girls as a single day a week (which is what Shekina offers) is difficult to fit in around other work.  Shekina recounted delays in the purchase of an additional leaf dryer, which in turn has limited its processing capacity and meant that it has not been feasible to establish operations (and cooperatives) at all five drop off points.  Shekina reports the prohibition of plastic bags in Rwanda has caused delay in the design of packaging for instant cassava leaves, and a subsequent delay in recruiting girl marketers. Were there any barriers that hindered girls from accessing or using SPRING products, services or business?  The two most remote cooperatives at Buyoga and Tumba are only just starting to operate and this, combined with a higher than anticipated turnover (around 30%) of adolescent girls at the three more established cooperatives, has meant that roughly half of girls surveyed had only been in place for 1-3 weeks (working one day a week) while the other half had been in place for 2-3 months.  Anecdotally, there has been a delay in establishing payment mechanisms (bank accounts) at the cooperatives, with a subsequent delay in payment to girls. This may be a contributing factor in turnover.  Our research suggests that poor communication between Shekina and cooperative leaders (and so members) and an absence of established employment terms and conditions has left some girls confused about their employment terms, earnings and savings.  Our evidence reflects this confusion, with 37% of girls unable to state how much they were earning, rising to 65% of those who began their employment in May. Over a quarter (27%) of girls’ did not know whether they were paid weekly or monthly. A third (32%) of girls did not know how they would be paid (cash or into a bank account), rising to 47% of those who started working in May. 1 Each impact evaluation will be made up of three phases of data collection: baseline, mid-term and endline. 2 The baseline was conducted in May 2016. The Shekina cooperative employment scheme started in February 2016, though half (52%) of girls only started working with Shekina in May 2016. The baseline gathers data on girls’ current circumstance and their circumstance before working for Shekina. A mid-line survey will be conducted in January 2017, to survey the girls before they leave the cooperatives. An endline survey will be conducted in January 2018, a year after the girls have left the Shekina cooperative. Through these three surveys, the impact evaluation will seek to establish the extent to which Shekina has enhanced girls’ earning, savings, learning, safety and well-being. For more details, please refer to Section 2. 3 “Contextual Factors” in this report refer to external factors that are beyond the projects control. This might include political factors (e.g., political stability, government policy); Economic factors (e.g. inflation rate, interest rate, exchange rate, disposable income available to consumers, availability of venture capital); Social factors (e.g. availability of qualified staff; consumers’ trust in new technology or business models; attitudes regarding the role of adolescent girls); Technological factors (e.g. mobile phone and internet coverage); Environmental conditions (e.g. weather or climate change; energy costs); and Legal factors (e.g. licensing, legislation, or health and safety regulations). We have also considered other operational barriers outside of the businesses control. IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 II  Similarly, 34% of girls did not know how much they will save through the Shekina savings scheme and a 33% of girls either did not know (5%) or were unaware (28%) that their employment with Shekina will come to an end in a years’ time. Income generating activities before working for Shekina  Before working for Shekina, 77% of girls had undertaken income generating activities (IGA). Six in ten had worked for a wage or salary, 48% had been involved in running a business for pay, and 34% had been involved in running a business for no pay. 23% of girls had not undertaken any income generating activity before Shekina.  Half of girls (53%) undertook work for a wage or salary as their main IGA, 15% were involved in running a business for pay and 9% helped to run a business without being paid.  When describing an average week just before they started working for Shekina, 55% of girls had undertaken paid work. To what extent have girls improved their earnings and savings as a result of accessing business opportunities provided by SPRING grantees?  Girls that stated their main IGA prior Shekina had been working for a wage or salary (53%), stated they earned a median RWF2,4004 a week; those whose main IGA had been running a business for pay (15%) earned a median RWF1,125. This compared with their estimate of a median RWF1,200 a week at Shekina.  Before working for Shekina, 26% of girls held income in a bank account and 13% held income in a savings account. A quarter (27%) held income in a savings group/SACCO, 14% held it at home and 9% with a parent/guardian. Since working for Shekina, girls showed little change in the way they held their income and savings.  Most girls had other sources of income outside their Shekina earnings: 81% had savings/money set aside; 61% received money outside of paid work; and 80% had savings in the form of animal husbandry investments.  Girls that had money/savings before Shekina (81%) stated they held a median RWF10,000.  Girls estimated they would save a median RWF80,0005 at Shekina. To what extent have girls' improved their life skills, safety and well-being as a result of accessing products, services or business opportunities provided by SPRING grantees?  Girls’ were asked how they liked working for Shekina, what they liked most/least. Encouragingly, most girls (87%) mentioned things they liked about working for Shekina, including: enjoying working in a group (cooperative) of girls (37%), being taught to save (5%), helped to prosper (3%) and the good Shekina relationship management (3%). A quarter (24%) of girls mentioned things they disliked about working with Shekina and tended to focus on issues surrounding late payment.  More than half (54%) of girls are motivated to work to earn money and a third of girls are motivated to work to improve their own and their families welfare, and this latter group are more likely to make joint spending decisions together with their parents.  Most girls (70 %) had a long term goal of opening or expanding a business, though fewer had a clear idea of what this business would be. Nearly half of girls (46%) planned to use their Shekina savings to help open or expand their own business. 4 Confusion over earnings and savings at Shekina was evident in both a high proportion of girls indicated they did not know what they were earning/saving or providing very high estimates, which skews the mean score. For this reason, where estimates have been provided we have used the median figure as a better representation of a typical response. 5 As above IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 II To what extent have adolescent girls accessed SPRING products, services or business opportunities? Have the products of grantee ventures reached girls at the Base of the Pyramid (BoP)?  The mean Progress out of Poverty Index score across the 94 participants was 556 . According to the Index, there is a 47% chance that a person in Rwanda with an Index rating of 55 lives on less than $2 a day and a 61% chance that this person lives on less than $2.50 a day. This suggests that through its SPRING funding Shekina is reaching girls at the Base of the Pyramid. 6 The PPI uses data collected from ten questions about household characteristics and asset ownership and calculates the likelihood that the household is living below the poverty line. Questions are tailored to each country: http://www.progressoutofpoverty.org/country/rwanda IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – AUGUST 2016 1 1 Introduction 1.1 Overview of the Impact Evaluation The Impact Evaluations are the core contribution to assessing SPRING’s impact on the lives of adolescent girls and the wider market for products, services and business models benefitting adolescent girls. They also play an important role in assessing SPRING’s additionality and value for money. Over the lifetime of SPRING, we will conduct a total six grantee impact evaluations. Each impact evaluation will be comprised of three phases: baseline, mid-term and endline. We conducted our baseline research in May 2016 shortly after Shekina had completed its recruitment of the Cohort 1 girls. This report is the first baseline report of the six planned impact evaluations and the first within the first cohort. 1.2 Purpose and structure of this document In this document, we present the initial findings from the baseline research for one of the two grantee businesses from Cohort 1 selected for inclusion in the SPRING Impact Evaluation. This report presents the initial baseline findings for Shekina. In this first section of the report we introduce the framework of impact evaluation overarching the SPRING programme and Shekina specifically, detailing: grantee selection, methodology and fieldwork process and feedback. In the subsequent section 2, we present our findings in line with questions from the programme Terms of Reference. We first map out girls general and income generating activities before and now they are working for Shekina. We then progress to detail girls’ income and spending; and banking and saving, both before and since working for Shekina. Finally, we explore girls’ current perceptions of their life skills, well-being and their future goals. We present income and savings as median measures to accommodate a wide dispersion of responses and provide a more representative measure of the average response. Where we have used four and five point scales to enable girls to rate their perceived work and life skills and well-being, we have rebased these scores to a 20 point scale to facilitate comparability. Where relevant, we highlight differences at subgroup level, in particular across the drop-off sites (reflecting both geographic and cooperative establishment) and respondent’s employment starting date, as these were the two aspects of widest dispersion, with less difference evident across age, education, and household size. Throughout, we report against logframe indicators where possible. IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 2 2 Methodology 2.1 Business Selection Process The selection of the right businesses to include in the Impact Evaluation is crucial to ensuring that we can measure impacts of the programme. To help ensure that we selected the most appropriate business for inclusion in the Impact Evaluation we asked key members of the IP team to provide their opinions of the six Business Performance Evaluation (BPE) businesses against a number of criteria. The IP team members who provided their opinions included the SPRING CEO, the Programme Director, Technical Director, Fuse Project and the SPRING Investment Advisor. The criteria we asked the IP team to consider included: chances of business survival (so there is a good chance that the business will be operational at the endline stage); depth of impact (the impact upon girls that is measureable); breadth of impact (to ensure we can collect a good sample of beneficiary girls) and potential for learning (to help inform future programming). After reviewing the feedback of the IP team and our own assessment of the evaluability of the businesses, we decided, in agreement with the IP and with donor approval, to select Shekina and Totohealth for the Impact Evaluations. In this report we present the findings from the baseline research for Shekina. The baseline findings for Totohealth are presented in a separate report. Shekina Shekina produces food products for sale in Rwanda and export overseas. Its SPRING grant focuses on involving adolescent girls in the production and sale of dried cassava leaves, where it engages adolescent girls to source cassava leaves from local farmers in the rural Rulindo district of the Northern Province of Rwanda order to fill supply orders. Shekina also plans to use adolescent girls to market a new product, instant cassava leaves, door-to￾door. Prior to SPRING, Shekina employed girls aged 14-19 to assist with processing cassava leaves at its HQ in Bushoki (6 part-time and 7 seasonally)7 . Shekina also worked with girl farmers who supplied them with cassava leaves. Through the SPRING grant, Shekina established 5 cooperatives of 20 girls each, 100 girls in total, to source and process cassava leaves from local farmers. The girls work one day a week collecting and processing, earning around RWF 3000, or USD $4, per month. Half this income is given to the girls as monthly earnings and half is deposited into a cooperative savings account which the girls will have access to as a cooperative after one year. Shekina will rotate girls out of the cooperative after one year, giving them access to the additional 50% of the earnings they have saved, and select 100 new girls per year. In their application, Shekina stated that their product helped girls generate income, save, invest, protect earnings and assets, learn, return to school, stay in school, and feel safe and secure. A review of Shekina materials and a field assessment supported the assertion that Shekina would help girls generate income, save, and protect earnings and assets. Three areas of possible impact were identified: Impact on adolescent girls’ earning and savings: Adolescent girls may benefit directly from Shekina through increased earnings and savings. They currently earn income as processors, and may in future earn income as door-to-door marketers. Adolescent girls may also benefit from increased skills and learning by organising suppliers through cooperatives and marketing products door-to-door. Impact of learning: Adolescent girls may benefit from on-the-job learning working to source cassava through cooperatives. The proposed door-to-door marketing group may also benefit from experience with salesmanship and can sell other products alongside instant cassava. The transferability of skills around processing cassava leaves is limited. Impact of cooperatives: The impact of money saved through cooperatives is evaluable, although not in this report. The rationale of the compulsory savings is unclear. Shekina had suggested that girls might use this money as a SACCO, or micro￾lending group, so that individual girls can borrow money to pay for school fees or start-up costs for their own enterprises, or as 7 KPI report March 2016 IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 3 capital for agricultural ventures owned by the cooperative, such as pig farming. However, it is not clear that Shekina will play any role in administering the cooperative after the girls have left or will provide any guidance on how girls might use the money. Girls that are leaders of the cooperatives may also acquire leadership and management skills, through implementation rather than through formal learning. Further details on Shekina’s SPRING funded activities are available in Annex C. 2.2 Approach to SPRING Impact Evaluation Methodology The SPRING impact evaluations are designed and tailored to the individual circumstances and business models of the selected grantee. However, all impact evaluation methodologies share several common features:  Focus on adolescent girls. Whereas the Business Performance Evaluation focuses on SPRING businesses as the unit of evaluation, the focus on the Impact Evaluation is adolescent girls, who, depending on the business approach, benefit as users of the product or service, by providing services, or working in the supply chain.  Use of local female interviewers. Adolescent girls may be hesitant to open up to male interviewers or people they don’t know. We use local female interviewers to build trust between interviewer and respondent and thereby improve the quality of response.  Mixed methods. We use both qualitative and quantitative methods to triangulate the impact of the SPRING business on adolescent girls.  Common impact indicators. We have developed a suite of common indicators for the impact areas of learning, earning, saving, safety, and well-being that will be asked of respondents in all cohorts so that we can compare results both within and between cohorts. We also use a suite of common impact indicators for women’s empowerment to measure impact across all enterprises. After each cohort we will review these common indicators to ensure they are still relevant.  Interviews with wider market actors. We will collect qualitative evidence on the impact of each grantee on product markets to report against the core indicator of market change. We will carry out in-depth interviews with entrepreneurs within the relevant sector. This will be done at the endline phase when sufficient time has passed for potential demonstration effect to occur. 2.3 Shekina Research Methodology The Shekina impact evaluation is comprised of three stages of respondent feedback: at baseline, at midterm and endline. For the initial baseline we collected data through face to face interviews with all Cohort 1girl cooperative members at each of the Shekina drop off sites. We intend to repeat this baseline survey in 2017 with the second intake of Shekina cooperative members. We also hope to undertake a baseline face-to-face survey amongst up to 50 girls that Shekina plan to employ in a marketing capacity. This research will be scheduled when we have clearer sight of when the girls are in place. 2.3.1 Quantitative Face to Face Interviews with girl cooperative members The initial Cohort 1 baseline survey took place in May 2016. The population was all girls that were working in a Shekina cooperative. In January 2017, we will again speak to the cohort 1 girls we surveyed, either at the drop-off site or their homes, to explore their experiences of being part of the cooperative, their future plans and in particular, what they plan to do with the 50% of their earnings that were saved. The provisional timetable is presented below in Table 2.1. IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 4 Table 2.1: Provisional Research Schedule–Shekina Girl Cooperative Members Cohort 1 Cohort 2 Baseline Survey May 2016 May 2017 Midterm Survey February 2017 January 2018 Case study interviews February 2017 February 2018 Endline June 2018 June 2019 Case study interviews June 2018 June 2019 We will also attempt to interview girls who did not complete their full year with Shekina at the midterm stage to identify issues including why they left the programme and what could have been done, if anything, to help them stay on. All interviews conducted at endline, one year after the girls have finished working with Shekina will be conducted at their homes. 2.3.2 Instrument Design – Adolescent Girl Cooperative Members The quantitative survey of the adolescent girl cooperative members was designed to gather information that would enable us to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of the businesses in contributing to the girls’ economic empowerment. The instrument was designed in consultation with Shekina and our local research partner Research Plus Africa and was approved by Shekina before we began the fieldwork process. The survey was then translated into Kinyarwanda. This ensured the instrument elicited information that was also useful to the business and culturally appropriate. The survey gathers baseline information in the following:  General and income generating activities;  Awareness of income earned and savings held;  Control over income;  contribution to household income and spending;  Knowledge and learning – work related learning; and  Confidence and well-being - social learning. The survey assumed girls working in the cooperatives would have been in place for three months when we surveyed them in May 2016. This same questionnaire will be used for Cohort 2; and the questionnaire will serve as the blueprint for subsequent rounds of data collection at midterm and endline. 2.4 Fieldwork – Shekina Cohort 1 Baseline Survey 2.4.1 Face to Face Survey of Adolescent Girl Cooperative Members Training The survey team was comprised of five female interviewers and a female supervisor. All were present for a one day training held on the 16 May in Kigali. The training was conducted by Research Plus. The survey and briefing notes were reviewed and discussed one question at a time. Through feedback from the field team, we identified the need for an additional question to ensure we captured all types of saving:  D10- Did you have savings of any other kind (pigs, poultry) The interviewers then had the opportunity to familiarise themselves with the survey content and the tablets they would conduct the interviews on before conducting mock interviews with each other to test the survey script and routing. IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 5 Piloting On the 17 of May we travelled to the nearest drop-off site (Bushoki) and each interviewer conducted a pilot interview with a different member of the cooperative. At the close of the pilot day, a full debrief session was held where interviewers were able to recount their experiences. The pilot interviews were completed using pen and paper. The completed paper surveys were then reviewed and final guidance provided to the field team. Feedback from the interviewers and review of the completed surveys facilitated final survey adjustments, most notably relaxing the assumption that girls will have been working with Shekina for three months and limiting the Income Generating Activity (IGA) enquiry (days, hours, earning) to the main activity only where respondents were engaged in more than one IGA. We also introduced a separate spreadsheet, to collect the respondents’ full contact details – including village, cell phone number and parent/guardians name and consent – to facilitate follow up survey. In field Over the week of the 23 May, each of the five drop-off sites were visited on the day that the site was operational. A total 94 interviews were completed. Achieved Interviews For the baseline research Shekina provided us with a list of girls in each of the five cooperatives at each drop off site. In a number of instances, the girls present were not those names provided to us, but working with the drop-off site manager, a final list of contacts was compiled. At each site, the interviewers were introduced to the cooperative members. On a one on one basis, the interviewers then spoke to each of the girls, explaining the background to the survey and formally inviting them to participate in the survey. The girls were assured of the anonymity of their feedback8 . A gift of a pack of sanitary pads and a bar of soap were provided to each girl in recognition of their time. Each girl was invited to participate in future research, and where they agreed, full contact details were gathered. The achieved interviews are reflected below. Table 2.2: Completed interviews at each drop off site Contact list of names provided Total initiallist of names provided 100 No longer working for cooperative (- 30) New to cooperative (names provided on the day) +29 Achieved Interviews Total sample available 99 Absent on day but still working (-5) Achieved Interviews 94 2.4.2 Fieldwork issues, informal feedback and observation Informal feedback and observation over the fieldwork period highlighted the following:  Recent legislation introduced in Rwanda prohibiting girls between ages 16-18 from working before 8am or after 6pm and requiring that they have at least 12 hours of rest between shifts. As a result the offer of a single day’s work per week may appear less attractive to the pool of potential cooperative members, reducing the size of the pool. 8 To ensure anonymity, only findings at Total Sample level will be reported IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 6  Adolescent girls can be hard to attract and keep at work – and there is an unanticipated turnover of girls in the established cooperatives. Between a quarter and a third of the original cooperative groups have been replaced during the initial months.  Anecdotally there is a lack of communication between cooperative leaders and their members. This, together with an absence of a formal contract of employment, has created a lack of clarity on earnings, savings and terms of employment.  Our research suggests that girls who have dropped out of the cooperative will have to approach the cooperative for any earnings or savings not received, however, there does not appear to be a formal process in place.  Farmers were still able to deliver their leaves directly to Shekina Head Quarters (HQ) on any day and get paid immediately and that this meant Cooperatives at Base and Bushoki received fewer leaves to process. We estimate that 40% of the leaves are delivered straight to Shekina HQ.  The Buyoga and Tumba drop off sites are not yet fully operational. There are long distances between these sites and the Shekina HQ. For the drop off sites to operate, Shekina has to visit each site to deliver scales for weighing the leaves and then take leaves back to Shekina HQ. This can require two trips. Further feedback on the management of the Cooperatives are reflected in Annex B. 2.4.3 Respondent Profile– Girl Cooperative Members The average (mean) age of respondents was 18.6 years. Thirty seven percent of girls were 18 years of age and 27% were 19. All girls stated they were single. The average household size was six members. Nearly all girls were Christian (96%). Three quarters (74%) of girls were educated to primary/some years of secondary school, 21% had completed lower secondary and 4% had completed some years of upper secondary school while 1% reported having completed high school. Overall, around half of the girls we surveyed had been working in a Shekina cooperative since February/March 2016 and half had only started working in a Shekina cooperative in May 2016. 2.4.4 Progress out of Poverty Index Scores To what extent have adolescent girls accessed SPRING products, services or business opportunities? Have the products of grantee ventures reached girls at the Base of the Pyramid? The mean PPI score across the 94 participants was 559 . According to the Index, there is a 47% chance that a person in Rwanda with an Index rating of 55 lives on less than $2 a day and a 61% chance that this person lives on less than $2.50 a day. This suggests that through its SPRING funding Shekina is reaching girls at the Base of the Pyramid. Full respondent demographic details are available in Annex A. 9 The PPI uses data collected from ten questions about household characteristics and asset ownership and calculates the likelihood that the household is living below the poverty line. Questions are tailored to each country: http://www.progressoutofpoverty.org/country/rwanda IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 7 3 Results and Analysis In the following chapter we describe the findings of the baseline survey of Cohort 1 Adolescent Girl Cooperative Members: their general and income generating activities before working for Shekina; the nature of their work with Shekina, their income and spending; and banking and saving before and since they have been working for Shekina. Finally, we explore girls’ perceived life skills and well-being. 3.1 General and income generating activities The baseline survey collects data on both girls’ general and income earning activities before they started working in the Shekina cooperatives. This will enable us to assess how SPRING has impacted on girls’ lives, employability and empowerment at mid-term and endline. 3.1.1 General Activities before working for Shekina A quarter of cooperative girls were attending school before they started working with Shekina. Nearly all girls were doing unpaid work at home, and most were doing unpaid work outside the home. Over half (55%) of cooperative girls were doing other paid work10 . Table 3.1: Activities before working for Shekina (All respondents) Before you started working with Shekina… can you tell what activities you did in a normal week…. And how many hours did you spend on these activities Total Sample (%) Avg Hours per week (mean) (Base = all respondents) 94 N = as per activity Attend school 26% 34.96 Unpaid work at home (e.g., cooking, cleaning, washing clothes) 99% 25.7 Unpaid work outside the home (e.g. going to market, fetch water) 81% 13.58 Other work for which you were paid 55% 18.46 Leisure time (e.g. reading, visiting family and friends, playing games) 85% 6.39 Church/mosque/praying 99% 5.48 N=94 Average hours on activities p/weekday 10.3 Average hours on activities p/weekend day 7.36 Average hours on activities p/day 9.5 3.3.2 Income Generating Activities before working for Shekina The SPRING Impact Evaluation has defined income generating activities as: working for a wage or salary; running or doing any kind of business; and helping without being paid in any kind of business run by your household11 . Before working for Shekina, 60% of cooperative girls had worked for a wage or salary, rising to around 70% of those 18 years old and over. Nearly half (48%) had operated some form of business and 34% had helped run a household business without being paid. Only 23% had no experience of income generating activities. 10 Full details in Annex B – Additional Tables 11 As adopted by the International Household Survey Network Survey of Activities of Young People 2010 IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 8 Table 3.2: Incidence of Income Generating Activities Any activity Total sample (%) (Base = all respondents) 94 Did you work for a wage or salary? 60% Did you run or do any kind of business? 48% Did you help without being paid in any kind of business run by your household? 34% More than one activity 51% No income generating activity 23% Main activity Total sample (%) (Base = all respondents) 94 Did you work for a wage or salary? 53% Did you run or do any kind of business? 15% Did you help without being paid in any kind of business run by your household? 9% Just over half of respondents (53%) had worked for a wage or salary as their main activity, 15% had run a paying business and 9% helped a business without being paid. Girls in the more remote cooperatives at Buyoga and Tumba were more likely to have worked for a wage as their main activity than girls from less remote cooperatives. When asked their main activity in this work:  57% of girls working for a wage were involved in farm work, and 4%(n=2) in each were involved in trading; digging ditches for soil protection, picking tea, or working on VUP’s project  71% of girls running their own business were involved in trading  37% of girls involved in unpaid work for a business were involved in carrying stuff to market, and a 25% were involved in trade. Insight: Over half of girls worked for wage/salary before SPRING Those working for a wage/salary (53%) worked an average 3.6 days a week, 19.7 hours, earning a median RWF2,400 a week. Those running their own business (15%) worked an average 2.7 days a week, 11.6 hours, earning a median RWF 1,000 a week. Those working with no pay (9%) worked an average 2.9 days a week, and 11 hours. Table 3.3: Time and earnings spent on main Income Generating Activity Weekly days, hours and earnings Days Hours Weekly earnings (Median RWF) Did you work for a wage or salary? (n=50) 3.6 19.7 2,400 Did you run or do any kind of business? (n=14) 2.7 11.6 1,125 Did you help without being paid in any kind of business run by your household? (n=8) 2.9 11 IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 9 3.2 Working and learning 3.2.1 Motivation for working with Shekina The most common motivations for working for Shekina were to earn money (64%) and improve their own/family’s welfare (30%). One in ten (11%) girls wanted to socialise with their friends. The most important motivations for working for Shekina were similarly to earn money (54%) and improve both their own and their family’s welfare (30%) as illustrated in the table below. Table 3.4: Reasons girls work with Shekina Why did you want to work with Shekina? And why else?What was the most important reason? (open response) Any Reason for working with Shekina (%) Most Importantreason for working with Shekina (%) (Base = all respondents) 94 To earn money 64% 54% Improve my own/my family’s welfare 30% 30% Socialise with friends/others 11% 2% Learn about cassava leaves and processing 5% 3% Learn new skills/training/teaches entrepreneurship 5% Love working in a group 3% Told project needed girls that had dropped out of school 3% To be able to venture into business 2% Felt I needed to work/not to be idle 4% 2% Other 4% 5% 3.2.2 Main work tasks at Shekina To what extent have girls' improved their employability skills a as a result of accessing products, services or business opportunities provided by SPRING businesses? Girls described their main work tasks as sorting cassava leaves (98%), ensuring the cleanliness of the workplace (9%) and cleaning cassava leaves (3%). A few girls were also responsible for weighing (2%), transporting (2%), or with senior responsibility at the sites (2%). We asked girls what they liked most and least about working for Shekina. The vast majority (87%) girls mentioned something they liked: 37% mentioned they liked working with other girls in the group with whom they work to sort the leaves. Other aspects they liked included: the pay (9%), that the work taught them how to save (5%) and helped them prosper in life (3%) and that they like their good relationship with management (3%). A quarter (24%) of girls mentioned dislikes, largely associated with frequency of payment: nine percent of girls mentioned delays in payment, one sought daily payment and another, payment at the end of the month worked. Four percent of girls mentioned a low salary. Insight: Delay in setting up cooperative payment structures impacts satisfaction Anecdotally, setting up cooperative’s bank accounts is taking longer than anticipated and there is a delay in payment for work completed, with monthly payments only received by the more established cooperatives. Some girls had worked more than one week without pay. IMPACT EVALUTION BASELINE: SHEKINA SPRING IMPACT EVALUATION – NOVEMBER 2016 10 The girls were asked to rate their ability to perform a number of work related tasks and skills. Girls rated aspects of their specific role at Shekina most highly including their ability to process cassava leaves, do their current job well and work with others (an element of the job that many said they particularly liked). They tended to rate their more general business abilities less highly including their ability to run a business, run a cooperative and to understand business or employment contracts. Those girls that started working in a cooperative in May consistently rated their work abilities slightly lower than girls that started in February/March. Table 3.5: Rating of work abilities (Rebased average score) How would you rate how well you are able to… (4 point scale rebased out of 20) Total sample (Score) Rebased score out of 20 (Base = all respondents) 94 Pre-Process (sort) cassava leaves 17 Do your current job well 17 Able to work with others 16.5 Speak up in front of others 15.5 Able to run your own business 15 Able to give and take instruction 15 Understand your business agreement/ employment contract 14.5 Able to run a cooperative business 12.5 *4 point scale: 4=very able; 3 fairly able, 2=not very able; 1=not at all able. To facilitate comparability, the final score was multiplied by 5 to rebase it out of 20. 3.3 Income and spending 3.3.1 Earning To what extent have girls improved their earnings as a result of accessing products, services or business opportunities provided by SPRING grantees? Nearly forty percent of the girls (37%) did not know how much they earned each week at Shekina. This percentage was composed mostly of girls that began working in May (65%), and those at Buyoga (74%) and Tumba (50%), who were unlikely to have received any pay yet. This compares with only seven percent of girls that started working in February/March and still did not know how much they were earning. The median earnings amongst the 63% of girls that knew how much they earned was RWF1,20012 . Insight: Girls are unclear about their earnings From what Shekina has told us, girls earn RWF800 per week processing leaves. Our survey reflects that only 38% of girls estimate their earnings are