INTERMEDIATE EVALUATION OF THE SUSTAINABLE FOOD 
SECURITY NETWORKING PROGRAM 
CARE PERU 
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY 
1. INTRODUCTION 
The Program "Sustainable Food Security Networking," REDESA, implemented 
in the framework of the USAID Title II Program, has as its purpose to improve 
the quality of life of 322,136 people -- representing 58,570 poor families in rural 
areas of the departments of Cajamarca, Ancash, Ayacucho and Puno -- by 
increasing their food security. The fulfillment of this purpose is evaluated 
through the Reduction of the Rate of chronic malnutrition of children under 3 
years old by 11 percentage points by 2006. 
In order to achieve its purpose, the program has defined two Specific 
Objectives: 
Objective 1. Sustainable Increase in the incomes of poor families. The 
result sought for the year 2006 is a 25% increase in family incomes. 
Objective 2: Sustainable improvement in the conditions of health and 
nutrition of the poor families, especially of the children under 3 years old.
The result sought for the year 2006 is the reduction of the incidence of acute 
diarrhea by one-third (from 29% to 20% by 2006).
2. COMPONENTS OF THE INTERMEDIATE EVALUATION 
In order to verify the levels of impact, effect and product obtained by the 
program during fiscal years 2002-2004, through an analysis of their main 
programmatic indicators and their management components, CARE has 
contracted the services of the consulting company SASE to undertake the 
Intermediate Evaluation. This evaluation will analyze the following key subjects: 
• Development Components: Pertinence, Viability, Efficiency, 
Effectiveness, Impact and Sustainability. 
• Development Factors: the country’s Institutional Policy guidelines and 
priorities at national, regional and local levels with respect to Food 
Security; Environmental Factors, Monitoring and Evaluation and 
Decentralization. 
• Programmatic Strategies: Construction of a Partnership Network, 
Programmatic Strategies, Communication for behavioral change, Land 
Development and Political Advocacy. 
The methodology for the evaluation is based on quantitative and qualitative 
methods. The former have as their purpose the quantification of the 
performance and impacts, and are sustained in the review of the operational 
plans, budgets and progress reports and in the application of a Household 
Survey in the target areas. The qualitative methods are applied fundamentally 
to understand the processes, conduct and conditions that influence the 
development of the Program, and how they are perceived by the stakeholders 
and beneficiaries, with the information having been collected in participatory 
processes.
3. RESULTS 
With respect to the Intervention strategy 
• The program is implementing an action strategy that has as its pillars the 
development of capabilities and the participation of all the stakeholders in 
this problem. By virtue of this Strategy, the program has changed the vision 
of CARE Peru from an isolated project implementer to an organization that 
impels concerted processes of social development. The beneficiary 
population and social actors in the program’s target zone recognize the 
importance of the actions that are being executed for the sustainable 
improvement of their standards of living. The challenge assumed by 
REDESA to work the issue of competitiveness in areas of poverty 
constitutes a contribution worthy of emphasis, as are the important 
achievements in the Partnership Network Strategy. 
• With respect to the Combined Management model, beginning with the 
incorporation of Civil Society into the Management of the program, significant 
contributions can be seen in the construction of the Social Capital and local 
institutionality that the development of the country requires. Nevertheless, it 
is important to consider that in spite of the advances and achievements 
obtained at the district and provincial levels, the beginning of actions of 
advocacy that will allow the sensitization of the civil employees of the 
regional governments remains pending. On the other hand, the recent 
promulgation of the National Plan to Overcome Poverty and the National 
Strategy of Food Security open up to REDESA a new perspective around 
advocacy in State Policy matters. 
• REDESA is contributing to the process of decentralization in the target 
zones by means of technical assistance in the strengthening of the 
capabilities of the civil employees of the local governments, the local 
population in general, and local actors to take part in the spaces for 
concerted action. Its contribution to this process can be seen through the 
active participation in the Policy Assemblies, the Agreements of Governance 
and in the Public Hearings to debate the legal framework of Decentralization. 
Its political advocacy of the formation and implementation of social policies in 
the subject of infant health and nutrition, mainly at the district level and, in 
some cases, at the provincial level, can also be mentioned. In addition, it is 
promoting citizen participation as a means of exercising the social monitoring 
of this process. 
• One of the principal achievements of REDESA is related to the construction 
of "sustainable networks," which is expressed in the formation of new 
leaders who advocate making the importance of the subject of Food Security 
more visible. This has permitted many authorities to become aware of the 
problem of malnutrition, and their having included actions and resources 
destined to support initiatives of food security within their strategic 
development plans and participatory budgets. 
• Among the successes of the Strategy of Communication for Behavioral 
Change (CBC), the following can be cited: a) The use of the training spaces 
for the diffusion of the messages of the CBC strategy; b) The constitution of 
the Facilitators’ Network; c) The revaluation of the role of the Community 
Health Agent as an educator and communicator in his/her community for the 
behavioral changes and the adoption of healthy practices; d) The design and 
implementation of studies of diagnosis for CBC; the elaboration and 
implementation of participatory CBC Plans; the identification of key 
messages and media adapted to the spaces and the social and cultural 
characteristics of the object population. 
• Among the limitations are: a) Having been placed within the beneficiaries of 
the Health and Nutrition Objective; b) The scarce use of the instrument of 
the CBC process in the field; c) The lack of widespread use of the key 
messages, including the diffusion of both sub-programmatic objectives, 
through radio spots in Quechua; d) The limitations of the Ministry of Health 
in its role as facilitator in the matter of personnel for extramural promotional 
preventive actions, and its deficiency of material resources; e) The lack of 
reinforcement of the messages about complementary feeding (consistency 
and quality of the nutrients). 
With respect to the indicators of the End Result, Strategic Objectives and 
results of REDESA (Impact). 
• The indicator that visualizes the effects at the level of the End Result is 
chronic malnutrition among children under 3 years old. The rate of 
malnutrition among the infant population of REDESA has been reduced from 
34% to 29.9% between 2002 and 2004 (a reduction of 4.1 percentage 
points), a result indicating that the achievement of the End Result is on 
course. This reduction is important considering the tendency observed in 
this indicator at the national level, if the results of ENDES 2000 are 
compared with those of MONIN-CENAN 2002. 
• The indicators of the Program Strategic Objectives (PSO) permit the 
appreciation of important achievements. With respect to the Income 
Generation Objective, the indicators Gross Value of Production (GVP) and 
Family Income Level have increased by 151% and 87%, respectively, in 
relation to the Baseline (comparison in Peruvian currency - new sols). 
• These indicators are supported by the advances achieved in the 
Intermediate Results of this Strategic Objective, which can be seen in the 
indicators: Value of Sales from the Family’s Production (which is 82.7% 
superior to the Baseline); Use of the Technical Assistance (in 2004, 48.3% 
of the beneficiary families made use of technical assistance from all types of 
suppliers versus 5% in 2002); Participation in Producers’ Associations 
(12.9% of the beneficiary families in the program participate in producers’ 
groups); and Access to Credit, which is still very limited, as only 8.5% of the 
beneficiary families obtained credit at least once and 2.8%, two or more 
times. 
• The information of the survey is also eloquent in terms of achieving greater 
expenses in foodstuffs as a result of the improvement in income. The 
results indicate that, at the global level, the per capita expense in food in 
2004 (S/.71) is 28.5% superior to the Baseline (S/.55). 
• With respect to the Health, Nutrition, Water and Sanitation Objective, whose 
key indicator is the prevalence of the diarrhea, the information shows 
evidence of a positive evolution in its decline from 35% in 2002 to 17% in 
2004. 
• Intermediate results also demonstrate that some of the activities conducted 
show positive changes in health and nutrition practices, such as Only 
Maternal Lactation, which increased from 25% in 2002 to 65% in 2004, and 
the Feeding of children during episodes of diarrhea, which increased from 
4% to 7.1% in that period. With respect to the promotion of the integral 
attention to mothers, whose effects are measured through three conditions 
(prenatal control, tetanus vaccination and attention at childbirth),,the 
information indicates that 20.9% of the women beneficiaries fulfill all three 
conditions. With respect to the result related to the adoption of good 
practices in hygiene and sanitation, interesting advances are verified only in 
the washing of hands after going to the bathroom, changing diapers and 
before preparing foods. On the other hand, the indicators on water and 
sanitation tell us that the beneficiaries are in a favorable situation with 
respect to access to these services compared to what was found in the 
Baseline, especially with respect to sanitation. 
• A clear achievement of the program is the participation of grassroots 
organizations in spaces for concerted action, with the objective of promoting 
and coordinating actions in health, nutrition, water and sanitation 
(Intermediate Result 3). The percentage of beneficiary families indicating 
that, in their locality, the JASS and Health Committees participate in Policy 
Assemblies confirm this affirmation (JASS: 27.1%; Health Committees: 
20.6%). 
With respect to Efficiency 
• The levels of budgetary execution show that in the period under 
consideration, $11,823,610 dollars have been invested, representing 55% of 
the Title II resources assigned the Program and 42.8% of the total of 
resources for the period. 
• The unit costs for the production of the activities show substantive 
differences among the corridors, an aspect that denotes that in each corridor, 
the technical teams faced a different context in terms of prices and of 
answers to the Partnership Strategy. These differences take on a special 
dimension in the case of the activities that respond to the intermediate results 
of the Income Generation Objective. 
 
• The normalization of the unit costs in an index that permits placing the 
corridors (regions) in order from the most cost efficient to the least cost 
efficient shows that Puno is the corridor that displays the highest levels of 
Efficiency at the global level as well as in the sub-programmatic objectives. 
Ancash, Cajamarca and Ayacucho follow, in that order. 
With respect to Effectiveness 
• Taking the goals up to 2006 as a reference, we can observe that most of the 
activities have advanced beyond the goals programmed for the entire period 
of the program, some surpassing the goals by 100%, whereas there are 
activities whose physical advance is far behind in relation to the period of 
implementation. In the case of the Income Generation Objective, among the 
activities that have substantially surpassed the goals is the indicator 
“Number of Validated Pilot Projects” (with the execution of 290% of the 
programmed goal), whereas among those in which the goal has not been 
met is the activity “Number of Producers who obtain credit,” which advanced 
17%. 
• With respect to the execution of the activities in the Health, Nutrition, Water 
and Sanitation Objective, the activity that surpasses the predicted goal is the 
Number of approved and implemented Projects (139%), whereas those that 
are in lowest levels are the Number of JASS that operate and maintain 
Water and Sanitation systems (30%) and the Number of Families benefited 
by potable water systems (39%). 
• The degree of fulfillment of the annual physical goals of each corridor shows 
that, although the goals are distributed among the four corridors in equitable 
way that is mutually agreed upon, the conditions and particularities of each 
corridor can be either advantageous or limiting for purposes of their being 
fulfilled. This, combined with the management that each one makes, 
determines the degree of attainment of the global goals. The Synthetic Index 
of the levels of fulfillment reflects these considerations, with Puno being in 
first place in the case of the Income Generation Objective, followed of 
Ancash; whereas in the case of the Health, Nutrition, Water and Sanitation 
Objective, the levels are similar. 
• The positive balance obtained in the qualification of the beneficiaries with 
respect to the implementation of the activities can be considered as a 
reference point for the implementing agents, since it expresses the 
perception that they have about the expected benefits. The lowest 
qualifications corresponded to credit access and the installations of latrines, 
which bear a relation to their physical advance. 
With respect to sustainability 
• The strategies developed by REDESA in all the corridors open up a 
range of opportunities in the target zones for those strategies to be 
adopted by the State. In this task, the local governments carry out the 
preponderant role. In the implementation process, they use resources for 
diverse activities, and participate and/or actively support the actions 
being promoted, implemented and strengthened by REDESA. 
• REDESA has fulfilled a role as facilitator at the local level, achieving a 
result that diverse institutions promote and carry out actions in the areas 
of health, nutrition, water and sanitation. It has also sponsored the 
strengthening of the institutional capability of the local stakeholders, who 
are increasingly orienting themselves to the incorporation of the 
strategies of the program, thus assuring the sustainability of the 
intervention. However, the achievement of sustainability implies 
overcoming limitations such as the high rate of turnover in personnel in 
the local governments and the state entities, especially in the Health 
sector. As a result of the program, producers’ associations and 
federations have been formed, which in turn have constituted support for 
the sustainability of the Program, especially in the economic sense. 
• The producers recognize that conditions are being generated to improve 
the commercialization, in the sense that they have improved the quality of 
their products, which results in their obtaining better prices. They also 
emphasize the contribution of CARE as the organizer of the supply and 
the search for markets for certain groups of producers. 
• The participation of the private sector can be seen fundamentally in the 
purchase of products and the technical assistance for the fulfillment of 
quality standards. 
With respect to Monitoring and Evaluation 
• The System of Monitoring and Evaluation of REDESA is in a stage of 
development; in order that it constitute an instrument of efficient 
management, it will be necessary to improve the levels of validation and 
feedback. Applying the tools that are used, information is collected that is 
important for the evaluation. It is necessary to make concepts and 
methodologies more uniform, however, especially those that refer to the 
elaboration of each indicator and the establishment of units of 
measurement. 
4. RECOMMENDATIONS 
With respect to design and management 
• The analysis of the vertical logic enables us to see that some objectives 
of the Intermediate Results and of the Activities must be reframed. 
Similarly, the analysis of the horizontal logic places several of the 
indicators into question; as a result, the Reconstruction of Logical 
Framework is necessary. Although the program is characterized by its 
flexibility, it is recommended that instruments be elaborated that pass 
minimum guidelines to the implementing agents with respect to the Action 
Strategies and the development of the activities. 
With respect to the programming 
• The planning of the activities must take into account not only the 
economic resources available, but also the human resources, the target 
population, the complexity of the actions and the surrounding conditions, 
both advantages and limitations. The restructuring of the POA is 
recommended so that the use of resources for each goal to be reached is 
clearly quantified. 
With respect to the implementation of activities 
• To the extent possible, budgetary changes and budgetary reassignments 
among headings must be avoided. If they are inevitable, it will be 
necessary to undertake the corresponding reprogramming, and to make it 
official, in order to avoid the existence of differentiated achievements 
(activities with over-execution or scarce levels of fulfillment) at the end of 
the fiscal year. 
• The practice of taking permanent measurements of the degrees of 
satisfaction of the beneficiaries with respect to the Program would be very 
useful for the feedback and adjustment of program actions. 
With respect to Efficiency 
• The National Advisers would have to program ("handle") jointly with the 
Administration, the budgetary allocations and, in a coordinated fashion, 
analyze the REAL unit costs of the activities, fixing margins that are 
based on the real prices. This analysis would constitute a basic input of 
the POAs and the official documents of the Program. 
• The General Coordination of the program must incorporate an indicator 
of effectiveness that permits the periodic analysis, at the level of the 
different activities of the Intermediate Results, of the relation between the 
resources assigned and those executed. 
With respect to sustainability 
• In order that the income generation activities in poor families are 
reflected in an improvement of their nutritional levels, they must be 
accompanied by training activities on food consumption, nutrition and 
health for both groups of beneficiaries. Also, the work of sensitization - 
which has had important achievements with the results of the Monitoring 
of the Client – must be extended to all the local and provincial 
governments of the program target areas, as well as to the regional 
governments, with a view toward achieving their participation in the 
definition of a Strategy of Food Security and Infant Nutrition at the 
regional level. 
• Due to the achievements obtained in the strengthening of the 
participation spaces of the population, such as Policy Assemblies and the 
CCLs - in which the OCBs carry out an important decision-making role in 
the identification of their priorities - advocacy of the sensitizing and 
training of the promoters and community leaders as a basis of 
sustainability is recommended. 
• Advocacy of the development of the capabilities of the small producers, 
with a view toward their association and organization in order to be 
inserted in productive chains. 
• Emphasis on activities that permit the generation of standards required to 
institutionalize the activities of the program. Associated with it is the 
necessity to develop a set of operational guidelines for the development 
of the Strategies of the Program and to systematize the successful 
experiences of all the Corridors, with a view toward their replicability. 
• Establish a graduation system according to the levels of capabilities 
achieved by the grassroots organizations that are being strengthened by 
the activities of the program. A system of graduation established with 
criteria of continuous ascent not only guarantees the sustainability of the 
achievements reached, but fundamentally stimulates the population and 
its authorities to continue a development process by passing though 
stages. 
With respect to the System of Monitoring and Evaluation 
• The System of Monitoring and Evaluation must be fed by the POA, which 
in turn must respond to the cycle of the project. This will permit the 
evaluation of the state of each one of the activities, such as “being 
programmed,” “in execution,” “executed,” and “presented.” This way it will 
be possible to detect the level of the process that present bottlenecks, 
and solve them in a timely fashion. 
• The reports must offer monthly information, with dates of completion to 
be able to gradually evaluate the advances and, therefore, the efficiency. 
The information on all the levels must have the same characteristics, with 
a view to its consolidation and the subsequent analysis of the 
effectiveness in terms of results. 
With respect to Political Advocacy 
• Give priority to the actions of advocacy that are oriented to the sensitization 
of the political decision makers and authorities of the regional and local 
governments with respect to the advances obtained in the subject of food 
security and infant nutrition. The achievements of the Program must be 
diffused and be exposed in a special way to high level functionaries of the 
government, especially to those who have direct responsibility over the 
National Plan to Overcome Poverty and the National Strategy of Food 
Security. 
• In the measure that REDESA is contributing to the generation of Social 
Capital with an ample vision of development in which Food Security is given 
priority, it becomes essential to systematize the experience and to establish a 
methodology that permits the gathering of the meaning of the process of 
development at local and regional levels. 
5. LESSONS LEARNED 
• The direct assumption of the causes that generate food insecurity becomes 
an important instrument for the definition of Strategies for the Struggle 
against Poverty and Food Security in the measure that they are made 
operational in a framework of integration, association and participation of the 
most representative social actors of the society on which they are going to 
act. 
• The actions that in the long run obtain a greater empowerment of the 
population and the participation of a greater number of social actors are 
those that are oriented toward the strengthening of capabilities, overcoming 
the “asistencialismo” (assistance that perpetuates dependence on outside 
assistance) that characterizes most of the Food Security programs. 
• The experience of the present evaluation demonstrates that it is not possible 
to measure the effectiveness of an integrated program if the Operational 
Plans are not developed in a manner that is coordinated and consensual 
among the implementing agents at all the levels and regions. 
• In order that the implementing agents can verify their achievements, a 
constant monitoring of the established goals for the period is required. 
• The qualification (“grading”) by the beneficiaries of the activities must be 
considered as a reference point for the implementing agents, since it 
expresses the perception on the benefits the beneficiaries expect to receive. 
• The advocacy activities that are relevant in the framework of a Program are 
those that have as their major objective, the well-being during childhood in 
the framework of a sustainable strategy. 
• The strengthening of the capabilities of the major local and regional 
stakeholders is what sustains the entire process of Decentralization, with 
sights on assuring that the authorities, as well as the communities, have the 
necessary and sufficient technical tools to confront this challenge. 
• A lesson learned in this period of execution of REDESA is the need to 
sponsor the joining income generating activities with health and nutrition 
activities in an effort to achieve an integrated vision of the program. 
• The development of a CBC strategy shows better results in the 
implementation of processes that are standardized and validated and that 
permit the establishment of a common system of indicators and processes of 
evaluation, as well as the adjustment of these processes to the particularities 
in each region. 
• The success of a CBC intervention is in the combination of mass media, 
especially radio, using the language and vocabulary according to the social 
and cultural profile of the population, and with messages adapted to each 
type of audience as part of the marketing of the adoption of suitable 
practices. 
• The sustainability of an intervention model that is sustained in the 
construction of a Partnership Network - for political advocacy - requires a 
process to change the organizational mentality and culture from vertical and 
centralized to horizontal and decentralized. Thus, all the actors will be able to 
commit themselves to the constant support of diverse activities, the 
leveraging of resources and especially, to the making of decisions. 
• A Development Plan that has as its objective the reduction of poverty and 
malnutrition must be constituted as an instrument that brings together 
populations in extreme poverty – traditionally isolated from economic circuits 
– with the Regional Development Centers. In this framework, the formation 
of new leadership contributes to democratic renovation if accompanied by a 
more transparent and publicly accountable management.