John Burns joined the Center in early 2006. He is working in partnership with seven organizations in Africa, looking at the development and application of an approach and tools to measure the impact of humanitarian assistance programs. Prior to joining the Center, John worked as a consultant for the European Commission and was responsible for their food security initiatives in southern Sudan. He has also worked in various capacities for the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the World Food Programme in Africa, Central Asia, and the Middle East. He holds a Bachelors degree from Rhodes and a joint Masters degree from the Fletcher and Friedman Schools at Tufts University.
E-mail: john.burns@tufts.edu
Reports
The USAID funded PSNP Plus project ‘Linking Poor Rural Households to Microfinance and Markets in Ethiopia’ ended in December 2011. The PSNP Plus was designed as a three-year project in support of the Government of Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP), which provides food and or cash to chronically food insecure households in exchange for labor on rural infrastructure projects, or direct transfers to households unable to participate in physical labor activities. The overall goal of the PSNP Plus was to build household resilience and household assets through market linkages and access to microfinance this goal being directly linked to the objective of facilitating the graduation of households from the PSNP and out of chronic food insecurity.
This report presents the findings of the first two stages of an assessment of the PSNP Plus project in Doba woreda in West Hararghe. These assessments are part of a broader longitudinal impact study of the PSNP Plus project, which targets poor, rural households in food insecure areas that benefit from the Productive Safety Net Program (PSNP). The goal of PSNP Plus is to move households towards graduation from PSNP through market-driven approaches to diversify their livelihoods, build assets and link to financial services and markets.
The Feinstein International Center has been developing and adapting participatory approaches to measure the impact of livelihoods based interventions since the early nineties. Drawing upon this experience, this guide aims to provide practitioners with a broad framework for carrying out project level Participatory Impact Assessments (PIA) of livelihoods interventions in the humanitarian sector. Other than in some health, nutrition, and water interventions in which indicators of project performance should relate to international standards, for many interventions there are no ‘gold standards’ for measuring project impact.
The population of Southern Sudan was caught in a civil war from 1983 to 2005. During the war, several major famines led to a massive food aid intervention by the World Food Programme – intervention that continues to the present. Much of this food was delivered to vulnerable people by air drops, with the actual targeting of assistance on the ground left to local leaders and traditional authorities. The main objective of targeting was to minimize exclusion.
This report is the outcome of an impact assessment of the ‘Pastoralist Survival and Recovery Project’ implemented by Lutheran World Relief and partners in North Dakoro, Niger. The assessment is the last of four impact studies carried out by the Feinstein Center under the “Impact Assessment of Innovative Humanitarian Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa” research initiative supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
This report is the outcome of an impact assessment of the ‘Chical Integrated Recovery Action Project’ an integrated livelihoods and drought mitigation intervention implemented by Africare in the Tillaberi region of Niger. The assessment is one component of a broader applied research initiative “Impact Assessment of Innovative Humanitarian Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa” supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The ‘Chical Integrated Recovery Action Project’ was designed to assist ten communities to cope with and recover from the effects of an ongoing food crisis triggered by a failed harvest in 2004.
This study was an impact assessment of the ‘Zimbabwe Dams and Gardens’ Project’ a community based famine prevention and mitigation intervention being implemented by CARE International in Masvingo Province, Zimbabwe. The assessment is one component of a broader applied research initiative “Impact Assessment of Innovative Humanitarian Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa” supported by the Bill & Melinda (B&M) Gates Foundation.
This study was an impact assessment of the “Gokwe Integrated Recovery Action Project” (GIRA) a drought recovery and famine mitigation intervention being implemented by Africare in the Midlands Province of Zimbabwe. The assessment is one component of a broader applied research initiative “Impact Assessment of Innovative Humanitarian Projects in Sub-Saharan Africa” supported by the Bill & Melinda (B&M) Gates Foundation.
Book Chapters
By John Burns and Andrew Catley. In Alpaslan Özerdem and Richard Bowd (eds.), Participatory Research Methodologies: Development and Post-Disaster/Conflict Reconstruction, Ashgate, London. 2010.
Peer-Reviewed Articles
By Daniel maxwell, Helen Young, Susanne Jaspars, John Burns and Jacqueline Frize (2011). Food Policy , Vol. 36(4), pp. 535-543.