When Powerful Stories of Sustainability and Resilience Emerge from Data and Other Real-World Challenges: The Case USAID/Mali Out-of-School Project Ex-Post Post Evaluation

This presentation aims to share stories of sustainability of outcomes emerging from the ex-post evaluation of USAID/Mali Out-of-School Project, also known as PAJE-NIETA. The purpose of the evaluation was to examine the sustainability of the PAJE-NIETA outcomes, six years after project completion. PAJE-NIETA was a five-year project designed to enable 10,000 rural youth between the ages of 14 and 25 who had either never been to school or who had dropped out in the early grades to become better educated, more economically productive, civically engaged and empowered to improve their lives and those of their families and communities. The project developed an integrated holistic model of youth development to guide project implementation and several approaches to promote sustainability of project interventions and outcomes. The presentation will focus on powerful stories from program beneficiaries collected as part of the ex-post evaluations recounting how PAJE-NIETA changed their lives until it closed and the tremendous efforts they mobilized to sustain their wellbeing after project closure amid a myriad of personal and collective chocs caused by war, insecurity, displacements, migration, and loss of livelihoods and life. In telling those stories, the presentation will discuss the extent to which PAJE-NIETA integrated holistic model and sustainability strategy were effective in empowering youth to create their own enterprises, maintain their skills and jobs, and continue to be engaged in their communities. Finally, the presentation will share important limitations the ex-post evaluation faced and how those limitations were mitigated to tell moving stories of project sustainability and resilience.