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World view Africa 100 weeks to change One organisation is helping women in Africa escape poverty, working with survey software firm Nebu to track progress. By Malgorzata Mleczko Do all household members own at least one pair of shoes? How often do you or any member of the household go without enough food to eat? Do you have access to clean water? How often have you lost a lot of sleep because of worries? Considering everything happening in your life, do you feel happy and capable of facing your problems? These are some of the many questions being asked regularly to women in rural areas of Uganda, Rwanda and Ghana taking part in the 100Weeks project. 100Weeks is a Dutch non-profit organisation supporting African women on their way out of extreme poverty. Operating under the tagline temporary cash for permanent change, 100Weeks provides women with 8 weekly mobile money cash transfers via phones for 100 weeks. Instead of offering food or supplies, 100Weeks offers unconditional financial support, along with some basic training in financial literacy and entrepreneurial skills. With that approach, women stabilise and improve their living conditions, and when those improve, they can work on creating a way to support the wellbeing of their families. According to the theory of change developed by the organisation, provided the women are given a chance to overcome the initial hurdle, they know what to do to stay out of poverty after the project is over. For example, they set up small businesses, create fabrics, 14 grow crops, or buy a sewing machine to repair clothes. Since 2017, 100Weeks has used Nebu Data Suite to collect, manage and use its project data. At that time, the programme was just about to scale up to be launched in three African countries and to include more than 20 groups of 20 women each. With that growth arose the need for a comprehensive and flexible evaluation and monitoring system. 100Weeks theory consists of three main steps that are continuously monitored: covering basic needs; assets investment; and empowerment. According to the theory, the first thing that happens once women get financial support is that they start eating more, secure their most basic needs, and the general health of family members improves. In this initial phase, they often send children to school, as they have money to pay school fees and buy books. After they have covered basic needs, the theory says that women start to invest in assets. They begin to look for a way to generate more money, repair their houses, buy livestock, create small businesses, and produce goods to be sold. Finally, the women feel more secure and stable about their situation and livelihood. They are ready for the future and, after the 100 weeks of financial support end, they are out of poverty and they stay out of poverty. To test the theory, 100Weeks set up evaluation and monitoring using Nebu Data Suite, giving researchers information on how women are doing over time. The core of the system is one single multilingual baseline questionnaire. When a woman starts the programme, she completes the survey before receiving the first instalment. The interview lasts around an hour and enables 100Weeks to get to know the women who are about to receive financial support. Baseline interviews are conducted face-to-face by local fieldwork agents who visit the women in their own environment, and the questionnaire is available on tablets via the Nebu CAPI app, after being prepared at 100Weeks Amsterdam office, with the results then available for the Dutch data team. 100Weeks has created tablet-based call centres that can pop up. Women are interviewed by local teams, usually every two months, for the duration of the project. All data collected via CATI and CAPI,