Independent Final Evaluation: Nutrition Emergency/Nutrition Emergency Pool in DRC (PUNC)/DR-Congo

Action Against Hunger’s nutrition emergency pool began in 2008, when the state, and specifically the Ministry of Health (MoH), created PRONANUT, a specific division within the MoH responsible for nutrition. Over time, it was financed in several phases including both annual and multi-year funding arrangements, and has seen a significant evolution in its approach. The Nutrition Emergency Pool in DRC (PUNC) under evaluation is a fiveyear programme focusing on Nutrition and Water, Sanitation and Hygiene (WASH). Its global objective is to contribute to the prevention of morbidity and mortality linked to malnutrition in the DRC through identification and emergency response to nutrition crises. This includes strengthening both national and community level surveillance systems as well as integrated interventions; streamlining the process from alerts to Severe Acute Malnutrition (SAM) admissions’ intake in close coordination with the government and other partners. Based on alerts from the National Surveillance System (SNSAP), the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC), clusters and other humanitarian partners, Action Against Hunger deploys a team to determine malnutrition rates in the health zone at risk through a SMART survey. This task is shared with other survey actors in the country, mainly PRONANUT or COOPI, and is coordinated at the national-level through the Coordination Committee. With a team of over fifty rapidly deployable staff, Action Against Hunger’s emergency pool is one of the largest and most reactive of its kind in-country, and intervenes in the most remote and hard to reach communities in crisis.

The programme was evaluated again in 2015. In light of the benefits of this last external evaluation, there was a desire by the project team to avoid repeating what was already learnt and provide useful (new) learnings related to programme implementation. The present evaluation also focuses on issues of community involvement, accountability and building resilience. The approach differs significantly from other Actio  Against Hunger evaluations; it employs the Core Humanitarian Standards (CHS) as its main reference, which encapsulate the most commonly used OECD/DEC but also emphasises other core requirements which are essential for humanitarian as well as development organisations: participation, accountability, effective use of resources. The evaluation approach was designed to be, amongst other elements, participatory and inclusive, facilitative, qualitative, forward looking, process and communications oriented. A web blog with strong visual aids and evidence from the field was used as an interactive means of sharing the evaluator’s experience and to materialise a transparent evaluation process. It can be accessed in the following link: https://punceval.wordpress.com