Evaluation of Khartoum Urban Poor Programme, Sudan

General:
1. This report is primarily based on literature review (Oxfam project reports and literature on IDPs) and primary data collected from the project target areas during the May-June 2008. Areas visited include Mayo and Soba south of Khartoum, Jebel Aulia, Dar ElSalam and Gamair in Omdurman and Haj Yousif in Khartoum North.

2. The objectives was to assess Oxfam's Khartoum Urban Poor Programme (KUP) performance, impact and the appropriateness of methods and approaches used and to educate the programme future strategies by drawing lessons from past and providing contextual analysis and forecasting possible changes in the immediate future which can ensure relevance of Oxfam response and the sustainability of its strategic intervention.

3. The methods used were primarily participatory with primary and secondary stakeholders and they included (a) review relevant literature (mainly academic literature on IDPs and poverty, UN and INGO's reports and Oxfam KUP project documents), (b) Interviews were conducted with Oxfam project staff, Catholic church leaders, School headmasters, CBO leaders and some government officials at locality level, ome leaders of parent-teachers associations. Some individual women were also interviewed to draw their personal/household biography, as human interest stories (Annex I); (c) Eleven group discussions were with representatives of institutions, organizations and networks dealing with Microfinance, with women and CBO groups (KUP partners), school teachers and parents associations and school friends, (d) Observation methods were also used during the field visits to complement other methods and generate debate, and (e) some numerical data was collected from some schools to assess the academic performance of pupils in Oxfam supported schools.

4. The main constraints were related to the secondary data available. (a) Scarcity and inconsistency of official data and absence of desegregation that directly suits the evaluation purpose, (b) Oxfam reports also suffer the problem of inconsistency and progress reports are not dated and a clear contradiction was depicted in CBO budget allocation figures between the reports and figures of previous evaluation reports. And (c) Some CBOs keep no regular records and most of the figures given were dependent on memory and/or estimates.