Beneficiary reach counting methodology
Save the Children’s methodology and process for beneficiary counting of children and adults reached is in line with Save the Children international definition of people reached directly (i.e. those individuals that receive inputs, participate in activities or access services provided by Save the Children, its partners or individuals/institutions to whom Save the Children or its partners have provided sustained support)
Save the Children Somalia/Somaliland country office counts only beneficiaries reached directly through health, nutrition, child protection, education, WASH and FSL services. To ensure program team apply one common methodology and understand the methodology of counting beneficiaries in detail, the Research Evaluation Analysis Learning Monitoring (REALM) team adopted the following approach for counting beneficiaries:
- Food security and livelihood: Reports beneficiaries who received different livelihood services including cash transfers, commodity/ food voucher, cash for work activities and asset recovery (including livestock)-these beneficiaries total number was captured from actual household registration data that was collected by the program teams and counted only one time. For example, if the beneficiaries are getting cash or other services for four rounds/times, the beneficiaries are counted only the first round to avoid double counting.
- Health, Nutrition and WASH: Reports beneficiaries under health sector who have received free health services including treatment of malaria, pneumonia, diarrhea and other medical services. Whereas nutrition beneficiaries are those screened and acquired nutrition services to deal with SAM/MAM cases. To avoid double counting for both health and nutrition beneficiaries, we record and count only new admissions/ cases. For WASH, reported beneficiaries are those reached through water trucking and construction/rehabilitation of water points. To avoid double counting and estimation vouchers that are based on actual household registration are used for water trucking and water management committees established for water points to register people receiving water.
- CP & Education data was recorded from the supported child friendly spaces(CFS), schools & training reports.
Eliminating Double Counting
In line with the Save the Children International’s approach of eliminating double counting (duplication across sub-themes and themes must be corrected to calculate an unduplicated estimate of people reached in the country), the following approaches are adopted:
- For multi-sectoral projects, during reporting, relevant program teams meet to discuss and identify double counting beneficiaries by referring to project documents therefore, the identified and agreed number of beneficiaries are removed as double counting.
- For new projects targeting villages that have been previously reached and beneficiaries reported before – only those beneficiaries reported to have not benefited from earlier projects before are reported as new beneficiaries.
