Acting Locally, Thinking Globally: Harvesting Outcomes in South Sudan

Throughout its short history as an independent country, South Sudan has experienced conflict, natural disasters, and other shocks and stressors. As the largest donor in South Sudan, USAID aims to build resilience and empower communities. Policy LINK, a global Feed the Future activity that advances leadership and collaboration for better policy systems, shifted tactics at USAID’s request to focus on working with communities to decide on their own resilience priorities. The activity’s five-step process seemed to produce promising results. As the activity ended in December 2022, Policy LINK wanted to learn more about the outcomes of its South Sudan work and share lessons with others working in the country.

With support from the Policy LINK global team and USAID’s Bureau for Resilience and Food Security, a team was engaged to design and implement an outcome harvest evaluation. This methodology uncovers intended and unintended outcomes and, in keeping with the Policy LINK approach, is centered around community members' voices while maintaining rigor. The recently-completed evaluation identified a variety of positive outcomes, including that community members’ mindsets had shifted and that they had felt more agency over prioritizing and sharing their needs. These "expected outcomes" led to others, like women in the community taking on a larger role in local decision-making and leadership, and communities applying improved agricultural practices. The outcome harvest helped Policy LINK understand how its work had affected communities and enabled the team to share those lessons with others.