Sustaining Development: Results from a Study of Sustainability and Exit Strategies among Development Food Assistance Projects - Honduras Country Study

To be effective, development projects must result in lasting change. Projects may meet their objectives by improving economic, health, or social conditions while they are operating, but genuine success is achieved only through sustained change that does not depend on continued external resources. To assess the effectiveness of the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) Office of Food for Peace (FFP) development food assistance projects’ sustainability plans and exit strategies for achieving sustainable impacts after the projects exited their implementation areas, the Tufts University Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy, a partner on the USAID-funded Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance III Project (FANTA), conducted a multi-country study of project activities, outcomes, and impacts from 2009 to 2013.

Twelve FFP development projects in four countries (Kenya, Honduras, Bolivia, and India) were included in the study. Funding for these multisectoral projects ended between 2008 and 2009, providing the study team with an opportunity to observe how their activities, outcomes, and impacts evolved over the 2–3 years after the projects exited. In Honduras, three organizations—Adventist Development and Relief Agency (ADRA), Save the Children (SC), and World Vision (WV)—implemented development FFP projects in the technical sectors of maternal and child health and nutrition (MCHN); water and sanitation (W&S); and agriculture, income-generating activities (IGAs), and natural resource management (NRM). These organizations also implemented cross-cutting infrastructure projects.