education — Publications

MMCC: A Social Circus in Afghanistan - Building Courage & Growth in Afghan Children, Youth and their Communities

October 2023

This year, Samuel Hall embarked on identifying interventions to scale and sustain in Afghanistan. What are initiatives that can be sustained, in a context of limited funding and widespread need? Our team found that social circuses are the right answer to building alternative education pathways, particularly for underserved communities, and social cohesion across Afghanistan.

Founded in 2002, The Mobile Mini-Circus for Children (MMCC). MMCC and its local partner, the Afghan Educational Children’s Circus (AECC) has expanded into a countrywide education program focusing on teaching children to lead.

The MMCC is a reflection of what children in Afghanistan need today – a society that is suffering its most urgent humanitarian crisis as of the fall of Kabul in August 2021 and lacking in resources for both education and entertainment. It is also a reflection of what could have been in Afghanistan for the last 20 years, and the potential of what could be in the future.

Samuel Hall’s pro-bono evaluation of Mobile Mini Circus for Children measured its impact across various areas. We found that through its activities, MMCC has created an impact by empowering and encouraging youth leadership; inclusion & integration of Displaced Communities; facilitating trust and community building and encouraging inclusive and safe spaces for young girls and women

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Download Factsheets Here

Samuel HallOctober 16, 2023MMCC, Education, Social Circus, Afghanistan, education, Children

KNOMAD - Youth, Migration and Development: A New Lens for Critical Times

March 2022

As the world undergoes a period of uncertainty, young people around the world are particularly affected by the growing inequalities and the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, especially as they transition to adulthood. Young people who have made the difficult choice to move, or who have been forced to do so, are particularly marginalised in their current environment: they are not only socially and economically vulnerable, but also psychologically and often legally so.

KNOMAD [Global Knowledge Partnership on Migration and Development] supported by the World Bank commissioned Samuel Hall to produce a scoping paper exploring the nexus between Youth, Migration, and Development. The paper reveals youth & young migrants in the world as resourceful actors of sustainable development in a global context marked by crises.

The paper also draws attention to regional and subregional specificities across the world - setting an agenda on how youth migration can contribute to development and how it can be meaningfully integrated into development strategies.

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AKF - Implementing the CBC in Dadaab & Kakuma Refugee Camps

October 2021

In Kenya, UNHCR are partnering with the Ministry of Education to improve the delivery of the new Competency-Based Curriculum (CBC) in refugee camps and surrounding low-resource settings. As part of this effort, the Aga Khan Foundation tested the Values Based Education (VBE) modules in Kakuma to generate evidence of how this proven approach is relevant for teachers and schools in refugee settings as they strive to deliver the CBC with quality.

Samuel Hall was commissioned to provide a detailed examination into the current status of CBC implementation in Dadaab and Kakuma camps as well as generating initial evidence on efficacy and relevance of VBE in refugee settings. This report identifies the challenges, capacity gaps, and opportunities facing teachers and schools as they implement the CBC in Kenya’s refugee-hosting areas and identifies the potential of VBE to enable teachers to deliver the CBC with quality. The recommendations and learnings can also be considered more broadly across Kenya.

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COVID-19 in Afghanistan: Knowledge, Attitudes, Practices, and Implications

July 2020

COVID-19 threatens Afghanistan’s many gains, from progress in access to education for children and trust in formal protection mechanisms to social norms around gender and trust in Government. With a healthcare system already stretched to the limits, ongoing conflict and natural disasters, widespread food insecurity and reductions in foreign aid, stakeholders in Afghanistan were already facing a complex and worsening situation. COVID-19 has the potential to disastrously exacerbate this. Samuel Hall is supporting the Afghanistan Protection Cluster (PC) and other stakeholders with this brief to fill in key knowledge gaps around how COVID-19 is understood and perceived and its current and likely implications.

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The Womanity Foundation - Girls CAN Code

June 2020

The Womanity Foundation are implementing GCC at a particularly critical juncture with Afghanistan charting an uncertain path in 2020 and beyond. This uncertainty extends to the role of women in Afghan society as well as the context for female education and employment. In a fast changing environment, how can Womanity maximise their impact and best work with Afghan girls to create tangible changes in their own lives? With these questions as a basis, Samuel Hall: evaluated the GCC programme from 2016–2019; conducted a context and market analysis on potential income and work pathways for Afghan girls with a focus on the tech sector and broader trends in STEM; mapped a forward strategy for Womanity to scale its impact.

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UNICEF - Participatory Research with Adolescents to Unpack How Decisions are Made Whether to Stay in School in Zambia

August 2019

Commissioned by UNICEF Zambia, Samuel Hall conducted a highly qualitative study on ‘how decisions are made on whether or not adolescents (age 10-19) complete their schooling in Zambia’. With fieldwork in eight districts across the country – namely, Lusaka, Rufunsa, Katete, Petauke, Luwingu, Lunga, Mufulira, and Senanga – the study provides an understanding of the decision-making process around school retention/drop-out.

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Download Katete District Report

Download Petauke District Report

Download Rufunsa District Report

Download Senanga District Report

Download Luwingu District Report

Download Lunga District Report

Download Mufulira District Report

Download Lusaka District Report

EUTF/Samuel Hall - Mid-Term Review of the EUTF Regional Development and Protection Programme in Kenya: Support to the Development of Kalobeyei

November 2018

In 2018, Samuel Hall in collaboration with the EU reviewed the Kalobeyei Integrated Socio-Economic Development Plan (KISEDP) project to assess whether objectives had been achieved, and where obstacles and opportunities exist to inform future iterations of the project.

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UNESCO - Inclusion of Afghan Refugees in the National Education Systems of Iran and Pakistan

November 2018

This paper was commissioned by the Global Education Monitoring Report as background information to assist in drafting the 2019 GEM Report, Migration, displacement and education: Building bridges, not walls, accessible here.

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Dubai Cares - Improving Access to and Quality of Early Childhood Education in Zanzibar

September 2018

This study assesses the relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and sustainability of the Watoto Kwanza project, designed to address some of the key challenges facing Zanzibar’s pre-primary education sector as of 2013.

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UNICEF/MoLSAMD - Child Marriage in Afghanistan: Changing the Narrative

July 2018

The primary objective of this report is to provide contextualised analysis in the knowledge, attitudes and practices of communities in order to inform the development of future programming to either mitigate the impacts of child marriage or prevent further engagement in child marriage across Afghanistan.

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UNICEF/UNESCO - A Global initiative on Out-of-School-Children

June 2018

Samuel Hall has prepared this Country study in order to provide recommendations to key stakeholders on how to address the significant challenge of an estimated 3.7 million children aged 7-17 being out-of-school in Afghanistan.

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UNICEF - Improving Street-Working Children's Access to Education and Livelihoods Support for their Families

September 2017

The primary objective of this project has been to conduct an evaluation of the project itself and provide recommendations for key stakeholders to support street-working children moving forward. In order to do so, it has also gathered information on the context of child labour and protection issues in Afghanistan as needed.

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Dubai Cares - Strengthening Early Childhood Education: Programme Evaluation

January 2017

The overall goal of this research was to conduct an evaluation of the programme considering its effects after conclusion using the OECD-DAC criteria (relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability) to inform Dubai Cares’ design, development and investment in potential future programme iterations, or similar programming in the Afghan context.

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UNICEF - Evaluation of the Youth Education Pack Programme in Somalia

January 2017

Based on the requirements of Global Outcome 5, an evaluation of the UNICEF YEP programme has been commissioned by UNICEF to understand lessons that can be learnt from providing informal education in Somalia, both in the terms of delivering relevant skills that can improve the lives of beneficiaries, and the impact a tailored curriculum can have on peace building in Somalia when drivers of conflict are taken into account. The central question of this evaluation is therefore: ‘Has the implementation of YEP in Somalia had an impact on conflict drivers among marginalised youth by reducing reliance on negative coping and strategies and improving access to sustainable livelihoods?’

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Mercy Corps - Evaluation of the Somali Youth Leaders Initiative

November 2016

Understanding what works to reduce violence, including violent extremism, is a key priority for many policymakers. Despite this need, to date there is very little research evaluating the effects of development programs on violence reduction. To address this knowledge gap, Mercy Corps undertook a rigorous impact evaluation of a 5-year stability-focused youth program in Somalia known as the Somali Youth Leaders Initiative (SYLI).

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NRC - Thinking Forward About Livelihoods for Refugees in Ethiopia

August 2016

This study was commissioned by NRC Ethiopia to document lessons learned as well as to provide a strategic framework to inform NRC’s positioning on integrated programming. It examines the role of NRC in the provision of refugee livelihoods and education.

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UNHCR - Education Scoping Study for Somali Refugees

November 2015

This scoping study was commissioned by UNHCR to inform the future regional education strategy for Somali refugees to be developed in 2015.

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Womanity Foundation - School-In-A-Box Endline Survey 2015

June 2015

This evaluation, the fourth of its kind, was commissioned to assess conditions at twelve schools where the programme is completed or ongoing, as well as three schools where it is soon expected to commence.

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Download the Executive Summary (Dari)

GIZ - Evaluation of the Basic Education Programme for Afghanistan

November 2014

The present study’s first aim was to review the relevance and impact of the strategic choice made by GIZ BEPA’s to use community mobilization as a conduit for the promotion of girls’ secondary education. Its second aim was to evaluate the quality of implementation and sustainability of the programme; and finally, it will provide GIZ with practical recommendations for the improvement and potential extension of the programme.

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Download the Executive Summary (Dari)

Download the Executive Summary (Pashto)

NRC - Evaluation of NRC's Youth Education Pack (YEP)

July 2014

This report is an evaluation of the YEP project using the OECD-DAC criteria and substantive quantitative, qualitative and contextual information from the field.

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