#4 For the Establishment of Birth Certificates and National Identity Cards to IDPs in Kumba.

This project helped women and men without ID cards and birth certificates to go through the services and delivered them pro bono.

This is a small economic help, but more importantly, it helps prevent the real risks of harassment, arbitrary arrest, extorsion, sexual violence, and lack of mobility presented by lack of ID card. This project was the best protection project in the pre-screening and became finalist because the verification revealed a substantial number of beneficiaries unavailable or not recalling the assistance. It performs much better than complex projects because it is focused and cost-effective.

Using data from a protection report of DRC, opposed to the population of the area, we estimated roughly a substantial 1.15% chance of going through a highly traumatic event if the person does not have an ID card.

Reply to the NGO:

Dear team of XXXX,

Apologies for the late response. Your project did well in our contest and performed better than many better funded projects from other organizations with also more experience. This is because you focused on a specific protection risk (lack of documentation) and addressed it in a cost-effective way.

There were two organizations with this focus in the protection section, and when we did the verification the effects of the project were more visible in the second one. You remain a finalist to this contest, and we strongly encourage you to apply again in 2024.

A critical factor was that several persons in the list, about 20% of the total, reported not having benefitted from this assistance, maybe due to misinformation or fear. Coupled with about 45% of contacts unavailable, it made the quality of the verification weaker than that of the other finalist. Those whom we contacted, however, reported the same effects across the two projects, and your project was significantly less costly. Note also that there was one person who complained about wrong spelling in his birth certificate, we hope that can be remedied.

We think this organization has great potential. Please remain focused and cost-effective in your interventions and consider participating in the next contest, under any category! https://forms.gle/kXHiZ9sLw3xHARxN7

Check out also our pro-bono services which may help you measure impact in a more quantifiable way in the future. We would love to work with you. Services | Effective Help (efhelp.org)