Conditional Cash Transfers

All selected beneficiary households received cash transfers conditional on children’s primary school and health service attendance during a one-year time period. This served two purposes. First, the cash transfers aimed to help households cope with the consequences from the negative drought shock in the previous year and in particular to protect children’s human capital by re-inserting them in school and improving their health status. As such, this component provides a possibility to evaluate the role and impact of CCT programs in a context where both high prevalence of poverty and uninsured risk exposure exist (e.g. weather risks like drought). A second objective of this component is that it serves as an anchor in order to evaluate the additional benefit of the other two interventions discussed below on various outcomes.

Occupational training

In addition to the Traditional CCT, one third of the beneficiary households also received a scholarship to allow one of the household members (preferably a member between 15-25) to choose among a number of technical and/or vocational training courses offered in the municipal headquarters and aimed at providing participants with new skills for income diversification outside of subsistence farming. In addition to covering the costs of the training, the program also compensated the participants for lost wages while in training, up to 6 months. Beneficiaries of this component also participated in additional workshops to develop labor market skills.

Productive investment grant

Another third of the beneficiary households received, in addition to the Traditional CCT, a grant aimed at encouraging recipients to engage in productive investments with the goal of asset creation and income diversification. This grant was conditional on the household developing a business development plan that outlined the objectives of the business and proposed investments outside of subsistence farming in new livestock or non-agricultural income generating activities. Beneficiaries also participated in business-skill training workshops organized in their own communities.

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