Adapting and Improving Graduation to Resilience in Uganda

The USAID/BHA Graduating to Resilience Activity is implemented by AVSI Foundation with the American Institutes for Research (AIR) and Trickle Up, with the goal of graduating 13,800 extremely poor refugee and Ugandan households in Kamwenge district from conditions of food insecurity and fragile livelihoods to resilience. With impact evaluator Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), the Activity team is testing variations of a comprehensive approach to improving vulnerable household resilience over two implementation cohorts, employing group and individual coaching; asset transfer; referrals to local services; and psychosocial support. Because the Activity comprises several experiments and is as complex as its operating context, we built CLA into the Activity design from the outset to be able to consciously learn and adaptively manage activities as they progressed. The Activity has fueled learning with formative research assessments, scenario planning, performance and context monitoring data, and two refinement periods for reflection. This learning has enabled flexible, evidence-driven adaptations to aspects of operations like the allocation of participants to coaches and to the length of cohort implementation, and to aspects of the Activity theory of change and design such as the inclusion of psychosocial support in Cohort 2. The Activity team has shown a commitment to a culture of learning by readily offering feedback, identifying challenges, and embracing adaptations as they have evolved, and as such, adaptive management and positive outcomes from Cohort 2 are anticipated to be even stronger than Cohort 1.