Impacts of a Cash-Plus Programme to Women’s Savings Groups in Mali
Impacts of a Cash-Plus Programme to Women’s Savings Groups in Mali
The Government of Mali with support from UNICEF introduced a cash-plus programme to women’s savings groups in rural Mali in response to COVID-19. UNICEF Innocenti – Global Office of Research and Foresight conducted a mixed-methods impact evaluation of this programme between 2022 and 2023 as part of the Gender-Responsive Age-Sensitive Social Protection (GRASSP) research programme.
The cash-plus programme combines (quarterly) cash payments with complementary services in the areas of child wellbeing and women’s empowerment over the course of one year. The impact evaluation consists of two treatment arms (cash plus services, and services only) and one control group, as part of a cluster randomized control trial. Programme impacts were measured through a 16-month follow-up survey on the same households interviewed at baseline. The evaluation will broadly inform a potential scale-up of the programme in Mali (and similar contexts) as well as the design and implementation of child- and gender-sensitive social protection policies and programmes and their shock-responsiveness.
A full impact evaluation report and baseline and endline briefs (English and French) will be available.