This post was originally posted on LittleRipples.org.
I’m now calling them our all-star refugee Assessment Team. This group of 11 (image) has been helping iACT measure the impact of Little Ripples since 2014. In total, the team has completed six assessments for us and contributed to further improving and designing our survey tool. And we now have an official team cheer! We stack our hands in the middle of our huddle, count to three, and collectively yell, “Assessment Team, high!!.” The “high” was an addition by our Project Coordinator Oumda Tarbosh. I believe it was meant be a direction to the team members to throw their hands up high in the air, but instead they mistakenly incorporated the “high” into our team cheer. And it stuck!
For this assessment we completed a nearly 100% follow-up from baseline of the previously measured Little Ripples Pond students and our control group children. The intense three days of assessments were fluid. Held at Little Ripples School, each day a group of caregivers and their children waited patiently to be registered and taken through interviews. For their time, our Little Ripples School cooks prepared nutritious meals each day for every child attending our assessment. They ate rice, meat, lentils, and bread. This was all coordinated by Oumda, and I’ve come to observe that the meal program for children in his community is one of the things he is most proud of. He seems so happy and content to see children eating. While we watched the children eat, he asked me, “How do the children look? Do they look healthier to you?” I responded, “Yes, Oumda, they do. They seem much healthier.” “Thank you, thank you,” he replied with a big smile.
Following our final assessment morning, we said goodbye to our team and colleagues in Goz Amer. The next couple of days Gabriel and I will be making our way back to the capital of Chad then onward to Cameroon to conduct a needs assessment for Little Ripples.
Stay tuned!
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