Evaluation of Concern Worldwide's Humanitarian Assistance to Conflict Households in Eastern DRC

The Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) is one of the world’s least developed countries. Conflict, natural disasters, instability, and weak governance, constrain development. Currently, DRC has 5.7 million displaced people. In this context, OFDA funded this 1-year $3-million Humanitarian Assistance to Conflict-Affected households in Eastern DRC program.   The program targeted and reached 120,000 people with Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH) support as well as 16,800 people with Economic Recovery and Market Systems (ERMS) or income generation (IGA) and Cash for Work (CfW) support. In doing so, the program team overcame many challenges, including evacuation from a program area, Nyunzu. Additionally, reaching the targeted number of IDPs required working in more communities than initially planned.   Women, men, and leaders’ value all of the program’s interventions. Additionally, indicating relative value, groups made more positive than negative comments about ERMS (income generation and cash for work) than WASH. However, WASH benefited approximately seven times more people and cost about three times more. Thus, dollar for dollar, the groups valued WASH and ERMS interventions about the same, indicating a well-balanced investment.   Concern Worldwide’s experience in the area and continuous assessments informed its decisions on sectors. Although Concern Worldwide did not design the program with communities, all groups are happy with the decisions on sectors, scoring an impressive average satisfaction of 4 out of 5 or 80% complete satisfaction. Leaders are the happiest, with returnees a little less satisfied than average.