Child Grants Programme Impact Evaluation Follow-up Report

The Lesotho Child Grants Programme (CGP) is an unconditional social cash transfer targeted to poor and vulnerable households. It provides every quarter a regular transfer of between M360 and M7501 to poor households with children that are selected through a combination of Proxy Means Testing (PMT) and community validation and registered in the National Information System for Social Assistance (NISSA).

The programme is run by the Ministry of Social Development (MoSD) of the Government of Lesotho, with financial support from the European Commission and technical support from UNICEF-Lesotho.Oxford Policy Management (OPM) was contracted by UNICEF to design and undertake an independent evaluation of Round 2 Phase 1 of the CGP pilot.

The present document summaries the findings of the quantitative component of the evaluation, whose main objective was to to assess the impacts of the CGP pilot on the wellbeing of beneficiary children and households. The study also sheds light on the operational effectiveness of the CGP pilot and provides insights on the indirect social and economic impacts of the pilot in the community where it operates, beyond those who directly benefit from it.