The BEQUAL NGO Consortium (BNC) was designed to contribute to achieving the Basic Education Quality Access in Laos (BEQUAL) End-of-Program-Outcomes for access and participation: more educationally disadvantaged children and young people enrol and regularly participate in primary education. The BNC is a group of four INGOs (ChildFund, Plan International, Save The Children and World Vision,) and is sub-contracted by the BEQUAL managing contractor to deliver a package of activities developed in consultation with the Ministry of Education and Sports (MoES) and the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The BNC was intended to complement the work of other areas of BEQUAL and directly support the broader work of MoES related to participation. The BNC commenced implementation in early 2016 and will conclude late 2018.
The BNC objectives are:
Objective 1: To enable access and increase participation of children disadvantaged by language, gender, disability and ethnicity in schools through improved oral Lao language skills and reading promotion in early grades.
Objectives 2: To strengthen community mechanisms to create healthy supportive learning environments in homes and communities for all disadvantaged children.
Objective 3: 171 target schools adopt good hygiene practices.
The baseline study for the BNC intervention was conducted in July-Aug 2016 and the final evaluation of the interventions covers the implementation period from April 2016 to Sept 2018, approximately two school years. This final evaluation assesses the BNC outcomes in relation to five evaluation criteria: relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability. Data collection in 28 villages in seven districts was carried out from 17th October to 5th November 2018. A total of 1,404 people participated in the evaluation. Of this 48% (676) were females.
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