This independent final and endline evaluation assesses the Joining Forces for Food Security and Child Protection in Emergencies project against the OECD-DAC criteria of relevance and coherence, effectiveness, efficiency and coordination, sustainability, together with gender equality and inclusion and child participation. It uses a mixed-methods, before–after design, comparing endline indicators with baseline and explaining the movement through participants’ own accounts.
The project was very effective on its protection, knowledge and awareness objectives, and structurally constrained on its food-security objective. It demonstrably contributed to building children’s, caregivers’ and communities’ knowledge, shifting gender norms, reducing concrete protection risks such as child marriage and child labour, and improving children’s psychosocial wellbeing.