The DFID Programme to Accelerate Improved Nutrition for the Extreme Poor in Bangladesh aims to improve nutrition outcomes for children, mothers and adolescent girls by integrating the delivery of a number of nutrition-specific (or direct) interventions with the livelihood support provided to extremely poor people by three existing programmes in Bangladesh. These three programmes are the Chars Livelihoods Programme (CLP), the Economic Empowerment of the Poorest Programme (EEP) and the Urban Partnership for Poverty Reduction Programme (UPPR).

DFID has commissioned an evaluation of the programmes’ impacts and the Terms of Reference (TOR) for a mixed-methods impact evaluation (IE) of the programmes (dated 10 June 2012) are provided as Annex 1. The purpose of this Inception Report is to map progress to-date in meeting the TOR and in particular, to convey details of the agreed design, objectives, expected outputs and governance of the evaluation.

The objectives of the evaluation have been modified substantially from the original TOR over the course of the design phase in consultation with DFID to (a) ensure a robust and cost effective design for the available resources and (b) to reflect the actual programme implementation as currently planned. An earlier feasibility study was carried out in 2012 to contribute to the design reported here.

The current objectives of the evaluation are:

1. To assess the impact of the combination of direct (specific) and indirect (livelihoods) nutrition interventions in three different DFID programmes on the nutritional status of children under two; and to compare this with the impact of the existing livelihoods interventions;
2. To explain this impact, drawing on wider qualitative and quantitative evidence describing programme specific and wider societal/contextual processes with the potential to impact on programme outcomes; and
3. To assess the cost effectiveness (value for money analysis) of integrating direct and indirect interventions in the three livelihood programmes and to specify the best delivery model for doing so.

In terms of the target audiences for the evaluation, the primary users are DFID, its programme implementing partners at all levels and the Government of Bangladesh. However, DFID expects the findings to be published and disseminated more widely, to benefit secondary users including other stakeholders in the Bangladesh nutrition and development community. Moreover, since the evaluation expects to generate evidence that has wider global significance, other secondary users include global policymakers, practitioners and researchers concerned with nutrition programming.

An Executive Summary of the report is available here.