Endline Evaluation for Sponsorship for Refugees

CGS is carrying out the endline evaluation of Save the Children's Sponsorship for Refugees programme in Greater Cairo, measuring endline values for the outcome indicators across basic education, health, child protection and livelihoods, and drawing lessons for future flexible-fund programming. The current phase focuses on unaccompanied and separated children, mostly aged twelve to eighteen and largely Sudanese.

Three features set it apart from a standard endline. Its scope reaches beyond the current phase: primary data covers 2025 onward while earlier phases from 2019 are examined through desk review, so the design's coherence can be assessed across a period in which the target group narrowed from refugees and migrants to unaccompanied children. The programme has run through two delivery modalities, directly and through national partners, and the sampling frame is tagged by modality so differences between them can be surfaced. Because the programme is transitioning to local partners ahead of phase-out, sustainability is examined as a live question rather than retrospectively.

The design is theory-based: with no practical counterfactual and no comprehensive baseline, it reconstructs and tests the theory of change through contribution analysis, weighing alternative explanations. Data collection is mixed-methods, participatory and child-centred, with all data disaggregated by gender, age and ability using the Washington Group Short Set. Enumerators are gender-balanced, recruited with priority from refugee communities, and complete Save the Children's safeguarding induction before any contact with children. Deliverables include an inception report and evaluation matrix, bilingual tools and reports, and a dissemination workshop with a child-friendly summary.