In 2018, UNICEF Liberia engaged Coram International as independent consultants to conduct a ‘Formative’ Evaluation of the ‘Be a Change Agent’ project (B-CAP). The goal of the B-CAP project was to empower and improve the well-being of the most vulnerable adolescents in two urban communities characterised by a concentration of vulnerable adolescents in Monrovia. The project objective was to train at-risk adolescent girls (sex workers, HIV/AIDS positive and former drug users) in the age group of 10 to 19 years in youth entrepreneurship through formal and non-formal educational support and livelihood skills training. The evaluation assessed the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency of the B-CAP project as well its sustainability and readiness for scalability in line with the OECD/DAC criteria. The overall purpose of the evaluation, in line with its formative nature, was to facilitate learning, capture good practice and generate knowledge to inform the implementation of future interventions for adolescents in Liberia, as well as more widely. The evaluation also gathered lessons learned through the implementation of the project to date and produced recommendations to enable ‘mid-term’ corrections of the project, and to support the Government of Liberia to strengthen strategies for supporting adolescent development. The findings, recommendations and lessons learned were used to support the Government of Liberia through its various line ministries to strengthen adolescent development interventions also informed UNICEF’s support strategies in this area.
In 2018, Coram International was also contracted by UNICEF Liberia to undertake a Situation Analysis (SitAn) of women and children in Liberia. The primary purpose of the SitAn was to provide insight to the situation with respect to the rights of women and children in Liberia and to analyse the capacity of duty bearers at all levels in meeting their obligations in the fulfilment of these rights. Under the project, the team collected and analysed available information and data in relation to the thematic areas; child protection, social protection and child poverty, WASH, nutrition, health, education, climate change, and armed conflict. In addition consultations were held with UNICEF and stakeholders in-country to obtain primary data in areas where information was not available to validate findings. In the SitAn the team provided a disaggregate assessment of the status of and trends in the realisation of children’s rights; an analysis of the immediate, underlying and structural causes of the disparities/inequities across various groups; and upon this basis provided recommendations for future action, programme interventions and policy directions in order to address inequities and accelerate progress towards the SDGs and fulfilment of child rights conventions.
In 2010, Coram International reviewed Liberia’s Juvenile Justice Law in the light of international standards, and, on the basis of this review, developed a training package for magistrates, judges and prosecutors on child-friendly justice in the Liberian context. The training was supported by a facilitators’ guidebook for use in order to implement the training.
