Sarel Project

Project Description

USAID/Senegal awarded the Sahel Resilience Learning (SAREL) contract to the Mitchell Group (TMG) to strengthen the resilience of households and communities in Niger and Burkina Faso. Recognizing that individuals living in the agropastoral and arid agricultural zones of the Sahel are susceptible to increased poverty, marginalization, water scarcity, weak governance, and gender inequality, SAREL aims to reduce chronic vulnerability and persistent humanitarian assistance and facilitate inclusive growth. Enhancing existing technology and innovation, integrating various development and humanitarian efforts, empowering women and girls, capacity building of national and regional institutions, frequent monitoring and evaluation, and collaboration and learning to determine best practices serve as the central components to SAREL. The project supports the network of USAID implementing partners working in the Sahel across all sectors who are grouped under the Resilience in the Sahel-Enhanced (RISE) Initiative which groups together humanitarian and development funded projects to build resilience. SAREL plays the role of bringing these partners together in collaboration, learning from best practices and sharing knowledge surrounding resilience to improve programming, implementation and results. The knowledge management and collaboration portion of the SAREL project works in tandem with the monitoring and evaluation of the RISE partners to inform and improve resilience implementation and coordination.

Key Accomplishments

Key activities and events of SAREL includes establishment of a virtual network of knowledgeable resilience practitioners, database creation of best resilience practices and their location, co-organization of collaborative learning events, organization of a Sahel leadership Program (SLP), launching  community-based ethnographic research aimed at building the resilience capacity of adolescent girls and their communities, co-development and delivery of a course on population, resilience, and the role of women in food security in the Sahel, implementation of one-day trainings for RISE partners in Niger and Burkina Faso to introduce Collaboration Learning and Adaptation (CLA) processes, completion of a Baseline and on-going Midline Quantitative Impact evaluation of the RISE partners, and completion of a midterm performance assessment of the RISE Initiative.

– SAREL Wins Case Competition

Implementation

2014- 2019