Nascent Solutions is a woman founded and predominantly woman run organization. Our programming targets women as intersectional change agents in the African context being key decision makers in matters relating to children, the family and the broader community. We promote the empowerment of women through education, business and agriculture training and apply community-wide behavior change modalities to achieve gender equality across many populations. Our gender and women focussed programming includes

• Violence Against Women Progams
• Microfinance Business Training and Women’s Group Development
• Literacy and Fiance Training For Women
• Computer Literacy Training For Women
• Girls Education Sensitization -through social media, community leaders, radio broadcasts and International Women’s Day Celebrations
• Girls Education Initiatives
• Maternal and Child Care Initiatives
• Women Focussed Nutrition Training

Projects

Africa’s youth is beset by the problems of malnutrition, disease and poor education. All three of these factors interact to put the African child at severe health risk and make the attainment of a fulfilling productive life a difficult prospect. Nascent works to bolster the health, nutrition, and education of the African child by aggressively targeting preventative sanitation, promoting a culture of hygiene, facilitating proper nutrition and robust early literacy education. Our comprehensive focus on youth is expressed in programs that include.

• School Feeding Initiatives for Primary School Children in Poor Communities
• School Infrastructure including the construction of classrooms, bathrooms, and toilets.
• Sanitation, Health and Hygiene initiatives including deworming, well and handwashing station construction and hygiene sensitization
• Literacy curriculum development and teacher training programs to give instructors the best tools to impact children positively.
• Applying innovation and technology to bring literacy learning tools and books to poor rural youth.
• Constructing and stocking libraries in rural schools.

Projects

Nascent Solutions believes that improving programs requires robust monitoring, evaluation, and research (MER). Nascent also believes the burden of data collection should never outweigh the value of the information gathered. We help funders and clients assess the value of each indicator and the trade-offs inherent in expanding the size or complexity of their monitoring strategy. Most important, Nascent believes MER should be action-oriented, meant to assist stakeholders to make better decisions.
Nascent offers the following MER expertise to funders and clients:

• Independent evaluation and quality assessment services in the education, health, agriculture, food security, nutrition, and gender sectors. Nascent boasts evaluation methodology expertise and experience in several sectors. We are proficient in evaluating-large scale projects in challenging environments, utilizing a variety of methods and tools among a range of stakeholders and beneficiaries.

• Design and implementation of tailored monitoring systems for the collection, analysis, and use of routine data. Nascent strives to work within existing MER structures and processes and to identify pre-existing champions for MER. We work with funders and clients to articulate specific, measurable, achievable project goals and link those goals to the most useful metrics for success. Further, we establish monitoring systems that continually improve as programs evolve.

• Mixed-methods research to address learning agendas and plug gaps in evidence. Nascent’s subject matter experts generate quantitative and qualitative evidence to improve program design and influence policy.

• Guidance in the integration of technology in M&E processes, via mobile data collection, dashboards, GIS mapping, and other techniques. Nascent has long experience leveraging technology to improve the cost-efficiency, quality, and timeliness of data for improved decision-making.

• Capacity building among staff and stakeholders on best practices in theory of change design, performance indicator design, data systems design, study design, quantitative and qualitative methodologies, and data collection, management, analysis, visualization, and utilization.

Nascent’s small HQ staff and agile field teams uniquely position our organization to mobilize quickly to handle crisis. In crisis situations we prioritize an effective and oranized response plan with a simplified responsibility and command structure, clear communication and distribution channels, and verifiable beneficiary outcomes monitored in truncated intervals. Our field teams are adept in the following primary components of crisis response:

• Agile Programming in response to environmental, socio-political, and cultural incidents, including supply chain disruptions.
• Food allocation, distribution and transportation
• Medical Supplies allocation distribution and transportation.
• Rapid community sensization and mobilization

Nascent utilizes modern tools and methods in the implementation of our vision. We tap indigenous resources and creativity in developing strategies to meet our vision of a self-reliant and poverty free Africa. We deploy technology where possible to expand the opportunities of the poor in rural communities without access to critical development and learning resources.