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Malawi

MIRA - Measuring Resilience in Malawi

Attachments

Overview of the Project and Organization of the Final Report

With the increasing severity of weather related shocks threatening food security, there is demand for a comprehensive protocol to monitor and evaluate resilience in the context of development. Launched as a collaboration jointly conceptualized by the monitoring, evaluation and learning unit (MEAL) within the Southern African Regional Office (SARO) of Catholic Relief Services (CRS) and the Charles H. Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University, the goal of the Measurement Indicators for Resilience Analysis (MIRA) project was to conduct a proof of concept study for resilience measurement that would make progress toward meeting this need.1 The MIRA project was developed and implemented in the context of the United in Building and Advancing Life Expectations (UBALE) program, a program that serves three of the poorest and disaster-prone districts in Malawi—Chikwawa, Nsanje, and Rural Blantyre. The purpose of MIRA is to provide timely, high frequency data offering a snapshot of the shocks and stresses experienced by UBALE beneficiaries and non-beneficiaries in these districts.

As a capstone event to the MIRA Phase I project, the results of MIRA were presented and discussed during a day-long meeting at Catholic Relief headquarters (September 23, 2016).

Having completed the proof of concept study for MIRA, consensus was established to continue the project as a consultancy with Erwin Knippenberg, named MIRA Phase II. This consultancy ran from February 2017 to September 2017. The purposes of the Phase II consultancy were as follows:

Continued data collection - continue to support ongoing high frequency data collection for the current sample until June 2017, as-well as administering an end-line.

• UBALE Expansion – expansion of the data collection to encompass all three districts currently served by UBALE

• Resilience analytics - produce additional analysis in terms of resilience capacities

• MIRA implementation protocol - develop protocols and guidelines to inform subsequent scaling up of MIRA to other countries and contexts

• Data Dashboard – develop the dashboard into a platform that facilitates the access and use of MIRA data flows - by program staff and related monitoring and evaluation specialists

• Dissemination - lead and participate in selected dissemination activities that serve the CRS-Malawi office, support CRS global community whose work is focused on resilience programming and/or on the need to measure resilience.