ADDENDUM TO BUSINESS CASE

INCLUDING FOR BRIDGE FUNDING AND SCALE-UP COST EXTENSIONS

SUMMARY INFORMATION
Project Name	Stopping Abuse and Female Exploitation Programme (SAFE) Programme in Zimbabwe
Country or region targeted	Zimbabwe
Type of cost extension (if applicable)	Cost and time
Original project budget	The original approved business case had a budget of £12,000,000.00 and this was reduced to £7,239,627.16.
Original project start and end dates	15/04/19 - 14/04/23
Cost extension value (if applicable)	£1,049,275.10
New reduced budget (if applicable)	N/A
New project end date (if applicable)	10 April 2025
Business Case Document No.	57941024-300024

INFORMATION
What is the project’s purpose?
Stopping Abuse and Female Exploitation (SAFE) is a five-year programme which will improve understanding of how to prevent and respond to gender-based violence (GBV) in Zimbabwe. The programme will produce a scalable model with evidence on what works to prevent violence. This is focused on Zimbabwe and has a wider application to efforts around the world for GBV prevention. The SAFE programme intends to address three problems: the high levels of GBV in Zimbabwe; the lack of sufficient evidence on the drivers of GBV in Zimbabwe and what works to prevent it; the integration of GBV prevention into other sectoral approaches (such as cash transfers, resilience, and livelihoods programming). To achieve these aims, SAFE has created a new intervention called Toose TOOSE = Together – reflecting the whole of household approach to GBV prevention. (toh-say) which combines household economic strengthening, family wellbeing and community influencing. Toose incorporates consideration of inclusion, particularly focussed on people with disability and different household types, to ensure it is rooted in community reality. Toose is being piloted in communities in three districts (Chikomba (rural), Mwenezi (rural) and Chiredzi (urban)) and is complemented by a basic response service to GBV survivors in those districts. Delivery in one of those districts is through a partnership with the FCDO funded Zimbabwe Humanitarian and Resilience Programme (ZHARP) which is implemented by WFP. The SAFE programme is underpinned by high quality evidence, to inform programme adaptation and design and to measure the programme’s effectiveness.
What is the objective of the cost extension or other changes?
The ultimate value of the SAFE approach will be realised through a scale-up and replication of Toose with new partners who have a much wider global and national reach. This SAFE Programme time and cost extension will deliver a greater impact than originally planned for less money than originally budgeted. It will capitalise on the interest [in Toose] shown by large-scale organisations (including WFP, GIZ, USAID, religious groups) with a programme of support to help them to take this approach to scale. The original SAFE programme budget was £12m with delivery between April 2019 and October 2023. At its inception the programme assumed that it would be the initial phase of a longer running stream of development support beyond 2023. This included a follow-on programme to both directly support the deployment of Toose at scale and working with others to take it on. The programme was paused in 2020 during the initial stages of COVID-19 and it was adapted to provide technical assistance on safeguarding as part of the COVID-19 response. In 2020, the programme budget was reduced to £7.5m (which also included the COVID-19 response facility). In 2021 the programme was extended to March 2024 to account for the delays experienced through COVID 19. The conclusion of the ODA allocation process and then Country Planning for 23/24 and 24/25 meant that there was no space for a new phase of SAFE to support a scaled-up delivery of Toose and further research and evaluation work. The extent of the 2020 programme cuts were determined by the calculation of the smallest size needed to generate a defensible model for GBV prevention. The cuts were primarily managed through reduction of the scale of testing (from 4-3 districts); switching international to national staff inputs; reducing the depth of evaluation and reducing focus on research uptake and continuity planning. It was also assumed that the programme could access external / CMP For example, the CMP What Works 2 – had originally been identified to provide additional technical assistance and support for an endline evaluation. This has not come to fruition following budget cuts and difficulty in aligning the newly designed SAFE programme with the What Works requirements. support for research uptake. This assumption (of minimum viable size) has held true. Even in this challenging delivery context the SAFE programme has produced some extremely promising results. Without an extension, this programme will finish in 2024 with a strong score and with a significant body of research and learning. However, it will also leave us in a situation where we have high levels of interest but without an institution who can support the uptake of the Toose process: technical assistance and user-friendly resources to allow this uptake; and without the quantitative evidence on GBV prevention that will be most valued in global fora. Highlights of the programme to date, include: The Toose approach has been shown to: Prevent violent escalation in participants homes (56% of households) Build understanding of gender roles and harmful behaviour (86% of participants) Increase gender equality in households (86% of participants) Fit well with existing development programming – as demonstrated by WFP in their urban resilience programme. The SAFE Learning Unit have produced innovative studies that are contributing to our shared understanding of the dynamics of GBV. Covering issues such as: Understanding GBV prevalence in Zimbabwe – a baseline study Attitudes towards GBV in Zimbabwe Using savings and loans as an entry point to change. Evidence of Toose impact and demonstration of a process that can be layered into other development programmes or CSO efforts has meant organisations such as WFP, churches, GIZ and Musasa are interested to take on the Toose approach. And, the Ministry of Women’s Affairs, Community Development, Small and Medium Enterprise have expressed strong interest because this approach resonates with the government’s new GBV strategy.
What is the additional and total support the UK will provide?
A cost extension would see the programme budget increased by £1,049,275.10 and the end date taken from 10 April 2024 to 10 April 2025. The extension will be delivered through the existing two commercial providers for the SAFE Programme: SAFE Communities – Ecorys – a current contract of £5,079,738 to 10 April 2024, extended by £649,995 to a new total of £5,729,733 ending 10 April 2025. SAFE Evaluation and Learning Unit – Tetra Tech - a current contract of £1,196,628.80 to 31 March 2024 extended by £399,280.10 to £1,595,908.90 ending 31 March 2025. The extension budget by financial year is included in the table below: FY23/24 Fees Expenses Total Payment Ecorys (Communities) £105,849.00 £34,500.00 £140,349.00 Tetra Tech (Learning & Evaluation Unit) £111,023.54 £111,023.54 Total FY23/24 £216,872.54 £34,500.00 £251,372.54 FY 24/25 Fees Expenses Total Payment Ecorys (Communities) £414,805.00 £94,841.00 £509,646.00 Tetra Tech (Learning and Evaluation) £206,186.56 £ 82,070.00 £288,256.56 Total FY23/24 £620,991.56 £176,911.00 £797,902.56 Total for Extension £837,864.10 £211,411.00 £1,049,275.10
What are the expected results?
The extension will deliver: Support for WFP to operationalise Toose in their Zimbabwe portfolio and to promote this as part of their global commitment to being gender transformative. Assessment of a further ten potential partners for delivering SAFE with uptake support delivered to at least another four organisations who have demonstrated commitment and capacity to take on Toose at scale. Potential partners include: the Apostolic Churches, the Catholic Church, GIZ, USAID, Musasa and other women’s rights groups. A quantitative evaluation of the SAFE programme impact on beneficiaries – providing globally credible evidence to support uptake. Enhanced support for national, regional, and international stakeholders to learn from SAFE programme findings and lessons and/or take up, test, and scale up the SAFE programme model in Zimbabwe or similar contexts. Support for an institutional home for the Toose approach to GBV prevention and response. This will link a local organisation with Social Development Direct Social Development Direct is a private social enterprise linked to Plan international and which receives UK funding to provide technical assistance on social development to the FCDO’s country network. who will provide ongoing advice and guidance to help that organisation to advocate for women’s rights and to promote the uptake and use of Toose beyond the life of the programme. A more extensive package of Toose materials that can be taken up and used by interested stakeholders. These include online and off-line facilitation materials that support each of the Toose sessions.
What is the approach to implementation?
The approach will be delivered through contract extensions for SAFE Communities – ECORYS and the SAFE Evaluation and Learning Unit – Tetra Tech. The cost and time extension activities are there to rebuild the streams of delivery in line with the original ambition of the programme. The established programme structures to support reporting, governance and delivery will remain in place and these include: The Programme Working Group – including FCDO and all first-tier delivery agencies, with a representative from WFP recently added. Joint programme log frame – agreed and updated through the programme working group. Joint risk register – agreed and updated through the programme working group. The original programme design has paid due regard to the impact on gender inequality in compliance with the International Development (Gender Equality) Act 2014. Gender-based violence is not only a consequence of gender inequality but also increases gender discrimination and reinforces girls’ low status in society. This extension has the potential to increase the impact of the Toose approach to GBV reduction.
Describe any key changes to the original business case including the theory of change or new evidence from ongoing monitoring, evaluation or learning work?
The original SAFE business case was adaptive in approach; placing emphasis on the inception phase to identify a promising pilot model, geographic focus, and downstream partners. The impact and outcome have remained consistent. The central hypothesis of SAFE’s theory of change (ToC) remains consistent through this extension which will rebuild part of the original programme ambition around research uptake and evidence. If anything, the delivery experience, and evidence to date has strengthened the core pillars of the original ToC: to reduce intimate partner violence as well as other forms of violence against women and girls, changes are needed at both the household level (via delivery of the Toose family wellbeing programme and household economic strengthening via Internal Savings and Lending Schemes (ISALs), pillars 1 and 2) and the community levels (through community mobilisation/dissemination by Toose participants, and through key influencers, pillar 3). These three ToC pillars encompass the Toose methodology. Toose will be supported by work to enable survivors of violence to access the services they need by tackling barriers (through supporting access to Musasa services in the district, pillar 4). Finally, SAFE will generate learning on the pilot approach, both to inform the refinement of Toose and to evidence that it works (pillar 5). This extension increases the ambition of log frame output 5 which focuses on taking the standard package of Toose to support its future use by organisations who have the capability to take this to a much wider scale. It will also strengthen output 4 increasing the strength of the impact evaluation and adding to the body of research from this programme. A full review of output and outcome indicators will be commissioned in the first month of this addendum. Risk On agreement of the extension the Programme Working Group will update the programme risk register. This will be a process to iterate / adapt the register to the ongoing programme delivery and experiences and no substantive changes are expected. However, there is one significant risk that we have introduced through a more ambitious approach toward delivering Toose through other partners. Although Toose is based on internationally proven best practice it is yet to be fully evaluated in Zimbabwe and so the full impact of the model is not entirely understood, particularly when it is taken on by new agencies. A precautionary approach to this will therefore be taken. This means: the implementation will be actively supported with evidence generated from ongoing Evidence and Learning Unit studies together with a formative research process that will monitor if the approach is generating any new / unexpected risks to communities and if it is still likely to be effective in reducing violence. If a risk of harm becomes evident, or if the evaluation shows that Toose is likely not to be effective, then interventions with WFP and other partners will be re-considered and potentially halted.