Universalia has been contracted to carry out an assessment of the Department of Foreign Affairs, Trade and Development (DFATD)’s Partners for Development Program. The objectives of this evaluation are to examine the results achieved by the program between 2010-2011 and 2013-2014, to formulate recommendations for improvement, and to identify innovations in programming and results that may be of wider interest for DFATD.
As part of this assessment, Halcyon Louis and Mia Choinière visited Dhaka, Bangladesh, to meet with several partner organizations implementing DFATD-funded projects. They had the opportunity to meet with BRAC, the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopaedic Rehabilitation (NITOR), and the International Centre for Diarrhoeal Disease Research in Bangladesh (icddr,b), which are jointly implementing a DFATD-funded program to improve treatment for children born with clubfoot. In addition, they visited the Centre for Rehabilitation of the Paralysed, which works in partnership with Queen’s University’s International Centre for the Advancement of Community Based Rehabilitation. They also met with an NGO called UBINIG with seeks to improve maternal and child health in rural areas where health care services are fragmented and underutilized.