Do all household members own at least one pair of shoes? How often do you or any member of the household go without enough food to eat? Do you have access to clean water? How often have you lost a lot of sleep because of worries? Considering everything happening in your life, do you feel happy and capable of facing your problems? These are some of the many questions being asked regularly to women in rural areas of Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana taking part in the 100Weeks project.

100Weeks is a Dutch non-profit organisation supporting African women on their way out of extreme poverty. Operating under the tagline ‘temporary cash for permanent change’, 100Weeks provides women with €8 weekly ‘mobile money’ cash transfers via phones for 100 weeks.
Instead of offering food or supplies, 100Weeks offers unconditional financial support, along with some basic training in financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills. With that approach, women stabilise and improve their living conditions, and when those improve, they can work on creating a way to support the wellbeing of their families.

According to the ‘theory of change’ developed by the organisation, provided the women are given a chance to overcome the initial hurdle, they know what to do to stay out of poverty after the project is over. For example, they set up small businesses, create fabrics, grow crops, or buy a sewing machine to repair clothes.

Since 2017, 100Weeks has used Nebu Data Suite to collect, manage and use its project data. At that time, the programme was just about to scale up – to be launched in three African countries and to include more than 20 groups of 20 women each. With that growth arose the need for a comprehensive and flexible evaluation and monitoring system.

100Weeks’ theory consists of three main steps that are continuously monitored: covering basic needs; assets investment; and empowerment.
According to the theory, the first thing that happens once women get financial support is that they start eating more, secure their most basic needs, and the general health of family members improves. In this initial phase, they often send children to school, as they have money to pay school fees and buy books.

After they have covered basic needs, the theory says that women start to invest in assets. They begin to look for a way to generate more money, repair their houses, buy livestock, create small businesses, and produce goods to be sold. Finally, the women feel more secure and stable about their situation and livelihood. They are ready for the future and, after the 100 weeks of financial support end, they are out of poverty and they stay out of poverty.

To test the theory, 100Weeks set up evaluation and monitoring using Nebu Data Suite, giving researchers information on how women are doing over time.

The core of the system is one single multilingual baseline questionnaire. When a woman starts the programme, she completes the survey before receiving the first instalment. The interview lasts around an hour and enables 100Weeks to get to know the women who are about to receive financial support.

Baseline interviews are conducted face-to-face by local fieldwork agents who visit the women in their own environment, and the questionnaire is available on tablets via the Nebu CAPI app, after being prepared at 100Weeks’ Amsterdam office, with the results then available for the Dutch data team.

100Weeks has created tablet-based call centres that can pop up. Women are interviewed by local teams, usually every two months, for the duration of the project.

All data collected via CATI and CAPI, including historical data, sits in Nebu Data Hub, an R-based data management platform, with processed data securely pushed via the Odata protocol to Tableau and other applications.

The data gives insights into the women’s path out of poverty, showing the changes in their lives over time. For example, at the start of the 100Weeks programme, the women participating in Rwanda ate on average only 1.6 meals a day. This immediately improved after the money transfers started – after two months, the average number of meals increased to 2.5 a day.

Data also found that stress levels decreased. In Ghana, the percentage of women that often lose sleep because of worries decreased from 46% at baseline to 7% after half a year of being in the programme.

These improvements also result in the growth of businesses. Women invest in assets and livestock, and the average amount of cattle per family triples during the 100 weeks of the programme.

One group showed a strong decrease in the amount of livestock, and using Tableau, the researchers were able to disaggregate the data to see that the women were investing in more expensive livestock such as cows rather than smaller, cheaper animals (such as chickens), leading to a decrease in the total number of livestock. When such unexpected observations cannot be explained by the data, the 100Weeks team can liaise with local field teams.

The programme is successfully helping families to have a better future and lifestyle. With local coaches, 100Weeks supports more than 500 families – around 2,500 people – and has secured funding for another 500 women to build a better life.

Four steps out of poverty

The 100Weeks method is based on the Graduation Approach developed by international development organisation BRAC.

1 Overcome scarcity

People living in extreme poverty are often stuck in a survival mindset, and once their basic needs are met, they can focus on the future.

2 Invest in a better future

When no longer in the survival mindset, participants shift their focus – most women invest in a new small business, expand an existing one, or buy land and livestock.

3 Increase human capital

Women receive training in entrepreneurship, financial literacy, and life skills in peer groups.

4 Move out of poverty

During the two years of the programme, the women develop sustainable livelihoods, and when it ends, most have moved out of poverty.

Malgorzata Mleczko is head of marketing and CSR programme manager at Nebu.

This article was first published in the April 2020 issue of Impact.