EU-ACAP Assistance to Conflict Affected People Programme Study

This study was carried out in 2010-11 to establish baseline data for the European Union Assistance for Conflict Affected Communities (EU-ACAP) through OXFAM in the Northern and Eastern Provinces. EU-ACAP interventions are mainly to do with the provision of technical support under five main themes such as; livelihood, capacity building, community infrastructure, gender and protection, and conflict mitigation. The programme has been implemented in all three districts – Batticaloa, Ampara and Trincomalee in the Eastern Province and one district (Vavuniya) in the Northern Province. The main objectives of the study were to validate project logical framework indicators and targets and most importantly to provide the basis for comparison and the evaluation of project impact. Since the study attempted to establish baseline information of target communities to use in the future as an initial reference point to evaluate the impacts of programme interventions, the Double Difference Method was proposed as the evaluation design. A stratified random sample of 2000 households was selected for the survey, of which two-thirds were from beneficiary villages and the rest from comparison villages.