© Mary Kate MacIsaac/CARE

CARE AND THE SDGS:IMPACT AND LEARNING ANALYSIS

2015 -2020

Cover page shows Syrian sisters Haneen, 14, (left) and Sidra, 13, (right)
join friend Reem, 14, (centre) in a peer-to-peer support group for Syrian
and Jordanian teens at a CARE community centre in Irbid, Jordan.

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

In this report, we account for the contributions CARE
and our partners have made to these global goals,
drawing on evaluations, learning summaries or periodic
outcome reports from over 1,300 projects and advocacy/
influencing initiatives, from 2015 to 2020. We use theword “contributions” deliberately: in all our work,change happens through the combined efforts of manydifferent actors, including civil society and movements,
governments, and the private sector. Our programs are
just some of the contributing factors that lead to these
impacts and outcomes. The report also highlights what
we have learned over the last six years, and the areas weneed to focus on and improve over the next 10 years of the
SDG period, to 2030.

81

COUNTRIES HAVECONTRIBUTEDTO CHANGE FOR
157 MILLION PEOPLE
Progress Towards CARE’s 2020 Impact Target (150M)©Terhas Berhe/CAREEXECUTIVE SUMMARY

When CARE developed our 2020 Program Strategy,aligning our measurement system with the Sustainable
Development Goals (SDGs) seemed an obvious choice; as
the SDGs represent a collective, global commitment to atransformed world, it is only right that an organization like
CARE also show how its work contributes to these sharedgoals toward this collective vision.

CARE and the SDGs 02

© 2017 Caroline Joe/CARE

Overall, we have contributed to significant change in 11 of the 17 SDGs, with the largest contributions being to
SDGs 1 (poverty), 17 (partnerships), 3 (health), 8 (inclusive growth) and 5 (gender equality):

71.1m

People supported with quality
humanitarian assistance, accessto basic services, or to reducepoverty, in 51 countries

For example, 7.4m crisis-affected people in
Yemen obtained cash, improved hygiene oraccess to clean water

22.1m

People helped to increase
food security, or improve
nutrition or sustainableagriculture, in 51 countries

For example, 1.6m people in Nepal improved
their food security, through participatorysocial accountability approaches

The gender transformative approach of the Win-Win project in Burundi led to increases in rice production,
food security, and incomes, as well as feelings of safety and attitudes rejecting gender-based violence.
Adapting the EKATA model from CARE’s work in Bangladesh, women’s solidarity groups and community
dialogue helped women access the support they need to change discriminatory social and gender norms. The
approach produced a return of $5 for every $1 invested, compared to a $3 return from a gender mainstreaming
approach that just shared messages on gender equality.

42.6m

Women supported toexercise their right tosexual and reproductive
health, in 37 countries

For example, 7.8m couples in Bangladesh got
modern contraceptives from NGO service
delivery partners

4.0mChildren helped to accessbetter quality or more
inclusive education
services, in 20 countries

For example, 420,000 children in Timor-Leste
have quality education materials to support
literacy skills

The Bihar health program in India has improved health services for 28.3m women and children, strengthening
capacities of the Government health system to provide family planning, child health, nutrition and maternal
health services. Use of modern contraceptives increased from 44.5% to 77.8%, and the proportion of births
attended by skilled health personnel increased from 68.4% to 79.2%.
CARE and the SDGs 03

12.5m

Women and girls supported toincrease their levels of
empowerment and genderequality, in 66 countries

For example, CARE and our partners helped
over 260,000 women in 5 countries reject
intimate partner violence

8.2m

People helped to accessclean water or improved
sanitation services, in
17 countries

For example, 5.8m people in Peru got accessto better water and sanitation services

With our local partners RWAMREC and RWN in the Indashyikirwa project in Rwanda, a couples’ curriculum
program contributed to a 55% reduction in the odds of women experiencing physical and/or sexual intimate
partner violence (IPV). Amongst men, the curriculum led to a 47% reduction in the odds of reporting having
perpetrated physical and/or sexual IPV.

16.5m

People supported to increase theireconomic empowerment anddigniﬁed work, in 64 countries

For example, 12.5m people supported to joincommunity savings groups, 78% women

8.8m

People from most excluded
groups experiencing reduced
inequality, in 49 countries

For example, the Domestic Workers’ programin Latin America helped 90,000 increaseawareness of their rights

Made by Women has enabled 167,000 women garment factory workers in Asia to claim their rights or reducerisk of sexual harassment in the workplace, and a further 4.1m stand to benefit from improved legal practices
CARE and our partners have influenced. 77 factories have worked with CARE to make changes to their policies,
systems, and workplace cultures.

5.4m

4.1m

For example, in Madagascar we contributed
to increased resilience for 280,000 people

For example, in Ghana we helped increase
meaningful participation in local government
decision-making for 2.4m people

People supported to strengthen
their ability to build climate
resilience or reduce theirvulnerabilities, in 39 countries

57.8m

People have seen improvementsin their lives derived from 242
advocacy and inﬂuencing
successes, in 53 countries

People increased their
meaningful participation indecision-making, in 44 countries

CARE and allies successfully advocated foran additional $1bn in US Government global
humanitarian funding for famine relief, providing
assistance to 20-30m people a year from2018 onwards.
CARE and the SDGs 04

© Arlene Bax/CARE

Reviewing our global evidence and learning, we highlight three main lessons that validate our hypothesis in
the 2020 strategy Theory of Change that we could best contribute to change by multiplying impact, working in
partnership with others, and putting gender equality at the heart of our work:•

The majority of our contributions to the SDGs (63%) have come from advocacy, systems strengthening
or work to influence others to scale up models. Leveraging the learning from innovative programs toinfluence others is critical for achieving impact at scale.

•

Scale is possible when we make the right investments in locally-driven solutions with a range of partners.
Consistent commitment to a common impact goal over at least 10 years, with funding flexibility to enable
adaption and operating outside the standard project structure have proven essential, along with theability to read the political context and seize opportunities for influence.

•

Putting gender at the heart at the heart of our work has seen important successes, but needs further
prioritization: we recognize that we need to further deepen our commitment to gender equality, in our
programming and our measurement of impact.

For the future, we are committing to: strengthen our partnerships, shifting power and working in solidarity; adapt
faster and more proactively; more consistently seek and respond to the feedback from the impact groups inwhose lives we seek change; and continue improving our impact measurement systems and capacity across theorganization.
While we have seen significant progress over the first five years of the SDGs, the COVID-19 pandemic and theincreasing numbers of people in need as a result of climate change and other crises make it clear that achieving
the SDGs targets is harder to imagine today than perhaps it was when they were agreed in 2015. As CARE embarks
on a new organizational strategy towards 2030, our evidence shows that we will need to increase our focus onequitable partnerships and gender equality if we are to contribute to greater impact at scale in the future.
We invite you to join us.
CARE and the SDGs 05

When we launched our 2020 Program Strategy, CARE
also developed a measurement framework to track ourprogress towards our impact ambition of helping 150
million people experience positive change. This included
the use of SDG indicators or other proxy/related
indicators. Alignment with the SDGs seemed an obvious
choice because the SDGs represent a collective, global
commitment to a transformed world: it is only rightthat an organization like CARE be able to transparently
demonstrate how its work contributes to these sharedgoals and this collective vision. Using the SDG indicators
as metrics to guide our data collection gives us a common
global frame and set of commitments to shape ourevidence base, and a shared platform to discuss resultswith others, especially governments and UN bodies.
Given that so many actors have made commitments to
the SDGs, being able to show that a specific intervention
contributes to achieving those common goals enables
CARE to speak a common language within the global
humanitarian and development sector and therefore
helps make the case for adopting proven approaches or
successful strategies more broadly.

INTRODUCTION© Felipe Thiboutot /CAREThe Sustainable Development
Goals reflect a global vision of abrighter world of dignity, equality,
sustainability and prosperity forall. These aspirations not only unite
and inspire us, but also provide acommon language and framework
to hold each other to accountSofia Sprechman Sineiro,

CARE International Secretary General

This report outlines the contributions CARE and ourpartners - from civil society 1, government, private
sector, and academia - have made to improve the lives ofpeople and advance 11 of the 17 SDGs over the last five
years, from 2015 to 2020. It also shows some examplesof what we have learned, who we have worked with, andwhat we need to improve over the coming 10 years aspart of our new strategy, as we seek to help accelerate
progress towards the SDGs.

Including social movements, women’s rights organizations, grassroots or community based organizations, local and national
non-governmental organizations (NGOs), associations, alliances and networks, and regional and international NGOs.

1

CARE and the SDGs 06

OUR GLOBAL ACCOUNTABILITY
We first reported our contributions to the SDGs in 2019, based on data from 2015 to 2018. At that point, we could
report positive impacts for 45.8 million people (70% of whom are women and girls). Over the last two years wehave expanded our data collection, from 713 projects reporting impacts and outcomes, to over 1,300, and greatly
improved our ability to capture the impact of our advocacy and influencing work. Overall, CARE and our partners
in 81 countries have contributed to positive change for 157 million people, 63% of whom are women or girls.
This has exceeded our impact target of 150 million people by 5%, by the end of 2020.

CARE and Partners’ Contributions to the SDGs

71.1

22.1

MILLION

SDG1

8.2

SDG6

Water and
Sanitation

SDG3

Zero Hunger

16.5

4

MILLION

SDG2

Ending poverty& Saving LivesMILLION

42.6

MILLION

Health &Well-Being

8.8

5.4

MILLIONMILLION

SDG8

SDG10

SDG13

ReducedInequalities

MILLION

SDG4

SDG5

Education

MILLION

Inclusive
Growth12.4

MILLION

ClimateActionGenderEquality

4.1

45.2

MILLIONSDG16

MILLION

Inclusive
Governance

SDG17

Partnerships

We have surpassed our target for humanitarian assistance (70m impacts or outcomes vs 20m target) and nearly
met that for food and nutrition security and resilience to climate change (49m impacts vs 50m target), but wehave not met all the targets we set ourselves: in particular, for reducing gender-based violence (GBV) we were
only able to show impact for 12% of our 12m target. We believe that this may be reflective of how complex it canbe to measure change in relation to GBV, as well as relatively low levels of funding for that area of work. We also
met less than half our targets for improving sexual and reproductive health (40% of our 88m target) and women’s
economic empowerment (48% of 30m target). Although our contribution to SDG17 may be significant, we recognizethat along with many other international humanitarian and development organizations, we have not sufficiently
lived up to our collective commitments on partnership with local actors, particularly women’s organizations
promoting gender equality. We describe later in this report in further detail what we need to do to improve andour plans for the next decade.

CARE and the SDGs 07

METHODOLOGY
The data in this report come from a process of summative analysis of evidence from project evaluations, periodic
outcome reports or studies, where change was demonstrated in relation to one or more of CARE’s core indicators.
In most cases, we measure our contributions to change, rather than proving impacts or outcomes are uniquely
attributed to our programs, as our approach to monitoring, evaluation, accountability and learning is based on
the principle that there are almost always other actors who also contribute to changes in the contexts in which
we work.2
The table to the right shows how suchcontributions to change against a specificindicator (in this case hunger) arecalculated from an individual project.
Based on a representative survey of the
impact population with which a project isworking, we can apply
the change in baseline (A)and latest measurements for a specificindicator (B)to the total impact population number (D)to obtain the number of people
experiencing positive change on thisindicator in this project (E).

Project:
SHOUHARDO II in Bangladesh% of household experiencing
hunger in last 4 weeks(A) % the start of the project

91,4%(B) % the end of the project

42,4%(C) % the difference (=A-B)

49,0%(D) # of people in the impact
population represented by the
sample surveyed in the ﬁnal evaluation

3,060,050(E) # of people experiencing less hunger(=C*D)

1,499,425

SHOUHARDO II impact data, from Table 4 of the project Final Evaluation

This data is then compiled in CARE’s global Project and Program Information and Impact Reporting System (PIIRS),
along with that from other programs in other countries that have also reported change in the numbers of people
experiencing hunger or food insecurity. This summative process enables us to calculate the total number of people
for whom CARE and our partners can show contributions to improved food security (the sum of all the E’s from thetable above, across all projects that report change in relation to food security or hunger). We also use this data toidentify particularly successful or high impact strategies that should be applied in other programming, adapted
to the local contexts: our learning behind the numbers.
While we have tried as far as possible to capture evidence from all CARE’s programs over the last six years, there
are still many cases where projects have not been able to report. Sometimes projects do not have funding forevaluation studies, or donors may require that they use very different indicators that are not comparable with
the SDG indicators largely included in this report. There are some projects that have not reported their outcomesor impacts into our global system, while others saw evaluations or activities postponed due to COVID-19, or wereunable to carry out measurement of impacts at household or individual levels due to COVID-19 restrictions. We
have erred on the side of caution, probably under-estimating impacts where there were choices to be made about
what to count. Further details can be found in the Annex on the methodology used to collect and validate the datain this report, and in these frequently asked questions.

2
There are a few cases where we do attribute the impact of an intervention to a project through a Randomized Control Trial or quasiexperimental design, where we are seeking to “prove” the validity of a specific model or approach, such as the cases of Win-Win in
Burundi (described under SDG 2) or Indashyikirwa in Rwanda (under SDG 5).

CARE and the SDGs 08

SDG 1: ENDING POVERTY AND SAVING LIVESCARE and partners have helped 71.1m people in 51 countries,
52% women and girls, obtain quality humanitarian assistance,
reduce poverty or access better quality basic services
SDG 1: Top 10 Countries
7.4

3.7

2.3

1.1

1.2

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

1 Yemen2 Syria

3 Ethiopia

4 Bangladesh

5 Somalia

1

1

0.7

0.9

0.6

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

6 India

7 Uganda

8 South Sudan

9 Jordan

10 Sudan

9

2

6

4

1

10

3

8

5

7

SDG Target 1.5 seeks to reduce exposure and vulnerability to climate-related extreme events and other economic,
social, and environmental shocks and disasters, a core focus for a humanitarian and development organizationsuch as CARE. Together with our partners we have influenced humanitarian donors such as the United States
Government or the European Commission to increase funding for famine relief or resilience, enabling an additional
45m crisis-affected people to access quality assistance (see further details under SDG 16). We have supported
a further 25.5m people directly through CARE and partners’ programs in disaster and crisis-affected countries,
such as Yemen, Syria, Ethiopia, Bangladesh, and Somalia. 52% of those provided supported with humanitarianassistance are women and girls.
CARE’s largest humanitarian response program has been to multiple crises affecting Yemen - conflict, cholera,drought, and floods - working with partners to provide water, food security and cash support:• Cash transfers to families in the European Union-funded Addressing Food Crisis in Yemen project ensured

people were 5.6 times more likely to have enough food at the end of the project. 3 months after the cashtransfers ended, families were still 3 times more likely to have enough food than they had been before.
70% of women said that they can make more decisions•

The Emergency Assistance for Conflict-Affected and Vulnerable Communities project, supported by the
US Government, enabled 31,000 people to access clean water, and close to 440,000 to adopt improved
hygiene practices. 90% more people at the end of the project had more than the minimum required of 15
litres of clean water a day, and people were 3 times more likely to treat their water before drinking it•

The Dutch Government supported Yemen Joint Response program enabled over 400,000 people to accessclean water, and 30,000 to access health services
CARE and the SDGs 09

Our most significant areas of assistance are ensuring access to clean water or improved sanitation and hygiene(11.4m), support for food and nutrition security (8.5m), cash or voucher assistance (3.7m), shelter and housing (1.8m)
and sexual and reproductive health services (1.1m). 89% of 17.4m people provided with humanitarian assistanceacross 276 projects reported being satisfied with the quality, relevance, timeliness and accountability of CARE
and our partners’ support.

The story of Mona (to right) shows thepower of the leadership, solidarity andinitiative that women show all around theworld in humanitarian crises. The focus
on promoting gender equality is at theheart of our humanitarian assistance.
This process includes ensuring Rapid
Gender Analysis (RGA) at the start of ourhumanitarian programming - including
over 60 RGAs at national, regional andglobal levels to inform our response to
the COVID-19 crisis. RGAs are increasingly
being taken up by other organizations
beyond CARE, and are now frequently
carried out in partnership with national
Governments, UN Agencies or other NGOs.
Women Lead in Emergencies (below) is aparticularly promising new approach toput power and decisions in the hands ofwomen best able to know their family andcommunity needs, and how to respond
most effectively to these.

Mona Ayash Hassan is a community health volunteer in the UN
OCHA-funded Yemen Humanitarian Fund, working as part of a
rapid response team to improve communities’ preparedness
and cholera prevention. With the help of her colleague Nagib,
pictured here, she started a personal initiative to clean andsterilise water tanks at the distribution points. Savings fromher allowance as a volunteer enabled her to build a new
cottage for her family.
© Bassam Saleh/CARE

Don’t plan for us, plan with us: How women’s voice and leadership improves humanitarian assistance
CARE’s Women Lead in Emergencies model is already showing powerful results in Uganda. The Yoleta
Women’s group, for example, collaborated with male leaders to organise a peaceful strike when no action
was taken on complaints that they had to walk 10km to the nearest food distribution point. Dialogue withhumanitarian agencies then persuaded them to move the distribution point closer to the community.
Women who said they are confident in their own negotiation and communication skills more than doubled
to 91%, while those that said they can work with other women to solve problems more than tripled to 92%.
CARE and the SDGs 10

Groups also responded to COVID-19 and its impacts on gender-based violence (GBV). One of the women’sgroups adapted their business to make face masks, which were then purchased by CARE and distributed
to women who needed them. Women’s groups and role model men were also able to respond to anincrease in GBV, supporting survivors when many service providers were unable to access refugeesettlements due to COVID-19 restrictions.
The COVID-19 pandemic was spreading towards the end of the period of this report (up to June 2020), so we do
not yet have impact or outcome data from our COVID-19 response. But by the end of June, CARE and partners
had already reached 16m people directly with interventions to protect or mitigate the effects of the pandemic,
including information and risk communication, clean water, hygiene kits, food support, cash assistance, SRHR
services, or GBV service information; 178m had also been reached through mass media.

CARE’s COVID-19 response

ENDING POVERTY
Target 1.1 of the SDGs aims to eradicate extreme poverty as
measured by the international poverty line (US$1.90 a day) while
Target 1.2 seeks to at least halve rates of poverty according tonational poverty lines. Overall, close to half a million people havebeen supported by CARE and partners to escape poverty. The
Typhoon Haiyan Reconstruction Assistance project, for example, worked with local partners Antique Development
Foundation, Fatima Credit Cooperative and TSKI, contributing to reducing poverty by 9 percentage points (from
95% to 86%), enabling 11,858 people to escape poverty (76% women and girls).
These overall poverty impact numbers are almost certainly underreported; the resources required to gather
data on household consumption and calculate poverty rates means that most programs are not in a position tomeasure their impact on income poverty.
CARE and the SDGs

11

Shomoshti (Prosperity for the Poorand Disadvantaged) in Bangladesh
contributed to reducing poverty by 16
percentage points (from 81% to 65%),
as measured by the national poverty
line, enabling 130,540 people toescape poverty (51% women and girls).
Local women service providers have
had a 73% increase in their monthly
income, from US$34 to $54, and 53%of these women have also reported
an increase in control of their income.
The project applies a Making Markets
Work for the Poor (M4P) approach witha focus on addressing the causes ofboth poverty and gender inequality
within markets.
Shomoshti is funded by the Swiss
Development
Corporation,andimplemented with 5 local partners(BDO, DAM, GBK, IDEA, and SOLIDARITY),
along with 7 national private sector
partners (Lal Teer, Bengal Meat, ACI
Animal Health, Aarong Dairy, ACI
Godrej, Pragati LIC and GME Agro).

Lima Rani in Rangpur tending her cows.
Shomoshti has helped farmers increase
productivity and access to markets,
ensuring private sector buyers pay more
for better quality dairy products.

© Tapash Paul/CARE

INCREASING ACCESS TO BASIC SERVICES
Target 1.4 seeks to ensure access to basic services for all
1 Million People
women and men, particularly the poor and vulnerable. In
Increased their access to basic services (SDG 1.4)
addition to our work to promote access to services such as
health, education, water and financial services (which arecovered under SDGs 3, 4, 6, and 5 and 8, respectively), CARE
and partners contributed to increasing access to other basic services such as agricultural extension or social
protection for over 1m people, 57% women and girls.
For example, Souqona in the Palestinian Territories contributed to increasing access to productive infrastructure
and agricultural services by 20 percentage points (from 15% to 35%), enabling 70,000 people to live with greater
dignity (33% women and girls). 63% of participating women increased their self-confidence and position in thefamily, due to the increased choice in their economic activities, and women making decisions around market
channels increased from 1% to 51%. Souqona is supported by the Australian Government, and works in partnershipwith the International Centre for Agriculture and Research in Dry Areas and Applied Research Institute – Jerusalem.
CARE and the SDGs

12

SDG 2: ENDING HUNGERCARE and partners have helped 22m people in 51 countries, 56%
women and girls, increase food security, or improve nutritionor agriculture
SDG 2: Top 10 Countries

2.5

MILLIONMILLION

2.6

MILLIONMILLIONMILLION

1 India

2 Peru3 Yemen

4 Bangladesh

5 Ethiopia

5

1.6

0.9

2.3

1.8

0.6

0.7

0.6

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

6 Nepal

7 Malawi

8 Zimbabwe

9 Syria

10 Mali

9
6
2

10

3

1

4

5

7
8

CARE and partners helped reduce food insecurity for 5.3m people in 28 countries, 50% women and girls, a
reduction of 20 percentage points (from an average of 40.1% to 20.4%). For example, the Canadian Governmentsupported GROW project, in close partnership with the Government of Ethiopia, contributed to reducing foodinsecurity by 26 percentage points (from 36% to 10%), while increasing food security for nearly 260,000 people.
Suaahara II in Nepal has contributed to reducing food insecurity by 12.5 percentage points (from 25.1% to12.6%), increasing food security for 1.6m people. Working with 4 local partners (DBI EAN, ENPHO, NTAG, and
VDRC) as part of a consortium coordinated by HKI, the US Government-funded program works in 42 of Nepal’s
77 Districts. The project has successfully scaled up a participatory health mapping tool at national level (SelfApplied Technique for Quality Health, SATH), as well as Community Health Score Boards (CHSB) to promotesocial accountability.
CARE and the SDGs

13

CARE and partners have also contributed to close to almost 1.4m children under five in 18 countries escaping
stunting, an average reduction of 9.5 percentage points (or 1.1 percentage points per year), increasing the foodand nutrition security for nearly 3.3m people. This includes:•

1.2m children under five in Peru have escaped stunting since 2011, influenced by CARE and partners’ advocacy
work as part of the Child Malnutrition Initiative•

The Support for Service Delivery Integration (SSDI) Services project in Malawi, a US-government funded
consortium coordinated by Jhpiego, contributed to reducing stunting by 10 percentage points (from 47% to
37% - a reduction of 2.5 percentage points a year), reducing stunting for 50,000 children under five
What does it take to eliminate stunting? CARE and our partners’ learning is that this involves:•

Promoting an integrated food systems approach, so all food and nutrition security programs include
objectives for improved nutrition, especially for women and children•

Promoting multi-stakeholder platforms that bring a range of actors together to solve malnutrition•

Promoting gender equality and changing social norms, through participatory dialogue to challenge
negative power dynamics, and harmful gender and social norms around nutrition•

Adapting for emergencies, particularly with cash transfers or voucher assistance programs•

Advocating for results, to increase ambition and funding for nutrition, at national and global levels

Our programs also contributed to over 5.5m people in 34 countries improving other measures of food and nutrition
security. For example, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded Technical Support to the Government ofBihar program contributed to improving Minimum Dietary Diversity from 21% to 24%, improving nutrition fornearly 3.6m women. The POWER Africa program in Cote d’Ivoire, supported by the MasterCard Foundation, helped
see an increase from 43% to 74% in the share of people having three meals a day, improving food security
for 36,000 people.
How gender equality contributes to foodsecurity.
The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation-funded
Win-Win project in Burundi compared a “gendermainstreaming” approach that simply shared
messages on gender equality, with a more
intensive, solidarity-based approach that helped
women access the support they need for genderequality and to change discriminatory social andgender norms, adapting the EKATA model from
CARE’s work in Bangladesh. The project partneredwith the Africa Center for Gender, Social Researchand Impact Assessment, GLID, RBU 2000 Plus, theUniversity of Burundi and IRRI.

A community gender dialogue in Gitega, Burundi.
Discussions aim to shift attitudes about gender andthe power relations between men and women.
© Irenee Nduwayezu/CARE

The gender transformative approach led tosignificantly greater increases in rice production,
food security, and incomes, as well as feelings ofsafety and rejection of gender-based violence. It
saw a return of $5 for every $1 invested, compared
to a $3 return for every $1 spent from the gendermainstreaming approach.
CARE and the SDGs 14

In crisis and disaster-affected contexts, CARE and partners have also
provided food and nutrition support to 8.5m people, including:•

7.1m people provided with adequate and sufficient
food in 25 countries, 52% women and girls•

1.7m people adopting adequate nutritional in 25
countries, 52% women and girls

1.1m people (52% women and girls) provided
with adequate and sufficient food by the
Food Assistance Program in Amran and Abyan
Governorates in Yemen, supported by the World
Food Program

220,000 people (50% women and girls) adopted
adequate nutritional practices through the supportof the UNHCR-funded Emergency Assistance projectfor Somali Refugees Hosted in Dadaab as well as thesurrounding host population in Kenya

800,000 people (50.1% women and girls)
provided with adequate and sufficient foodby JEOP in Ethiopia, supported by the US
Government

170,000 people (55% women and girls) adopted
adequate nutritional practices with the support of
the Emergency Response to Drought and Cyclone
project in Mozambique, funded by the US Government

The US Government-funded Emergency and Regular Food Assistance in Syria project provided 34,000 people
with adequate food and 84,000 with cash or vouchers, working with local partners Ihsan RD, IYD, Shafak, andSyria Relief. People were 10 times more likely to have enough food. 48% of people ate better quality food, and
63% of people ate more diverse meals. Farmers actually grew more food, and bakeries were able to produce
and sell more bread. Prices were more stable and higher demand made it possible for everyone to produce
more food. “I felt like life will go on, and we are able to find new ways to live a better life,” says Nidal, a local
baker, when asked about what’s different about his life after working with his community to improve wheat
production. What’s his advice was to others who face the same challenges? “Depend on yourself to improveyour situation and your life.”© CARE/Irenee NDUWAYEZUCARE and the SDGs

15

SDG 3: HEALTH AND WELL-BEING
CARE and partners have helped 43m people, 86% women and girls,
in 37 countries exercise their rights to health, particularly sexualand reproductive health
SDG 3: Top 10 Countries

26.1

9.2

0.9

0.9

0.7

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

1 India

2 Bangladesh

3 South Sudan

4 Kenya

5 Nepal

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.3

0.3

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

6 Sierra Leone

7 Malawi

8 Zambia

9 Yemen

10 Niger

5

2

1

10

9

6

3
4

8

7

In 40 projects across 22 countries, CARE and partners have helped enable access to modern contraceptives for
28m women (with an average increase of 33 percentage points, from 45% to 78%). In addition to the Bihar healthprogram in India (see box below), other programs with impacts on family planning include:•

7.8m couples were provided modern contraceptives through over 25 local NGO partners supported by the NGO
Health Service Delivery Project in Bangladesh, a consortium coordinated by Pathfinder and funded by the US
and UK Governments•

660,000 women exercised their Sexual and Reproductive Health (SRH) rights through the ECRHS in Sierra
Leone, supported by the German Government. ECRHS worked with 4 local partners (ABC Development, ADP,
MADAM, and RODA) and the Mano River Union to help increase use of modern contraceptives by 12 percentage
points (from 47% to 59%)
CARE’s Bihar Technical Support Program, supported by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, has helped
the Government improve maternal, new-born, and child health, across the whole state (population 128
million). 19.4m women and girls have seen improved health services. Use of modern contraceptives has
increased by 11.5 percentage points, from 46.5% to 58%, while skilled birth attendance increased by 11
percentage points (from 68% to 79%). The proportion of live births for which the mother received at least
4 ante-natal care visits also increased, from 8% to 35%.
CARE and the SDGs 16

CARE and partners also contributed to increasing skilled birth attendance (SBA - the proportion of births attended byskilled health personnel) by 13 percentage points (from 63% to 76%), enabling an additional 1.2m women to have theirbirths attended by skilled personnel, and a total of 11.3m women to exercise their SRH rights in 18 countries, including:•

200,000 women are exercising their SRH rights, with SBA increasing by 24 percentage points (from 13% to 37%)in the CARE-GlaxoSmithKline Community Health Worker Initiative in Bangladesh•

SSDI in Malawi contributed to increasing SBA by 24 percentage points (from 71% to 95%)

Other areas of improved health include women’s reproductive health decision-making (covered under SDG 5), andaccess to improved health services. For example, in partnership with three local NGOs (AFV, ISCV and Leadership
Challenges), the Norwegian-Government funded PROMEESS II in Niger increased the proportion of women aged 15
and above who had used SRHR services and were satisfied with them, from 57% to 90%, enabling nearly 320,000
women to exercise their SRH rights. MANI in Kenya, a consortium coordinated by Options and funded by the UK
Government, helped increase the proportion of women receiving at least 4 ante natal clinic contacts during
pregnancy, from 41% to 54%.
CARE and partners also play important roles in enabling access to health services in humanitarian crises. The
US Government-supported South Sudan Emergency Mobile Health, Nutrition, and Protection Project supported
mobile health teams that brought health services closer to the population; from an average of 36 km to a little
less than 5 km. This enabled 31,000 people to get health care who would not have been able to access it without
the project. People were 29% more likely to take a child to a health centre, and 33% more likely to get theirchildren vaccinated. Women were 60% more likely to get a visit from a health worker after they gave birth. In Syria,
the UNFPA-funded Promoting Access to Family Planning and Gender Based Violence Services in conflict-affected
communities program has enabled access to at least one SRH service for nearly 160,000 women.
The Canadian Government-funded Shelter,
Protection, and Health project for South Sudanese
Refugees in Uganda increased access to healthservices, in partnership with local Refugee Welfare
Councils. The number of women who give birth in ahealth centre went up 2.3 times, and 91% of healthworkers said they felt more prepared to handle
the influx of refugees. The project worked with
community volunteers to do door-to-door healthvisits and referrals so that people can access theservices they need, and set up a case management
system to help GBV survivors seek support andreferred survivors to local health services.
58% of women and 52% of men feel less exposed
to risks of violence now, and 100% of people reportfeeling they are now living a more dignified life.

Hair braiding in the Uganda Rhino camp forSouth Sudanese refugees.
© Jakob Dall/CARE Danmark

CARE and partners also have significant experience strengthening other areas of health services:•

1.2m people increased access to HIV testing or treatment services through US Government-funded HIV and AIDS
programs in Kenya and Zambia•

507,000 women and girls in Bangladesh, Cameroon, Chad, Cote d’Ivoire, DRC, Mali, Niger and Pakistan accessed safe
post-abortion care and other SRH services through the support of the SAFPAC project•

70,000 people affected by drug or substance abuse, including 531 people of diverse Sexual Orientation or Gender
Identity, accessed improved mental health services through the GROW project in Peru. GROW is supported by the
US Embassy and works in close partnership with the Ministry of Health

CARE and the SDGs

17

SDG 4: QUALITY EDUCATIONCARE and partners have helped 4.0m children 20 countries,
60% girls, to access better quality or more inclusive
education services
SDG 4: Top 10 Countries

590

2

199

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

1 India

2 Somalia

3 Timor-Leste

4 Cambodia

5 Afghanistan

71

6

352

417

MILLION

69

61

50

47

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

6 Haiti

7 Burundi

8 Rwanda

9 Mali10 Tanzania

5
1

9
2

4

8
7

10

3

CARE’s work on education focuses primarily on SDG Target 4.1(free, equitable and quality primary and secondary education) and
4.2 (quality early childhood development, care and pre‑primaryeducation). Around half of CARE and our partners’ impacts on
SDG 4 come from our education program in India, improving
education for over 2m girls and boys, including:•

1.3m children, 51% girls, increased their access to quality education services through Start Early: Read in
Time, a model for Early Grade Reading developed with support from the US Government. The program helped
increase the proportion of students able to read with comprehension from 21% to 41%. The model has also
been adopted and scaled up by the state of Uttar Pradesh•

620,000 girls accessed education through the Government of India’s Kasturba Gandhi Balika Vidyalaya (KGBV)
program, a residential education model (6-8 grade classes) for minority and/or scheduled-caste adolescentfemales who never enrolled or dropped out early. CARE India supports the Government in planning andcapacity strengthening, helping create curricular frameworks and pedagogical approaches, drawing onlearning from CARE’s SOAR model. 95% of the girls in the SOAR model (known as Udaan in India) passed grade
five exams, and 91% continued schooling into subsequent grades•

Teachers’ Resource Laboratory, supported by the Charities Aid Foundation, is an innovative model addressing
barriers preventing marginalised children, especially girls, from choosing to study science, technology,
engineering, and mathematics (STEM). Girls mentored through the TRL model have scored in the range of
90 percentile, as compared to non-mentored children who scored in the range of 50 percentile. TRL is being
scaled up by the Government of Uttar Pradesh to all 18 divisions of the state
CARE and the SDGs 18

Students in grade one at Metagou
Primary school in Liquica workthrough their Lafaek magazine.
© Josh Estey/CARE

CARE in Timor-Leste has been producing and distributing Lafaek educational magazines to students since
1999, and they now go to every school in the country. The project provides learning materials to all students
in cycles 1-3 of basic education, the only learning material available for 83% of the student population. The
Lafaek Facebook page is the sixth most popular page in the country.
Lafaek has improved education services for nearly 420,000 children, 48% girls. 96% of students surveyedreport using the magazine for literacy skills development, with 66% of mothers also using the content forbasic literacy skills development.
Much of CARE’s education programs focus on systems strengthening in support of Governments, to expand
education services or improve their quality, particularly for the most marginalized groups. This includes:•

340,000 children, 48% girls, accessed improved education services as a result of the Multilingual Education
Program in Cambodia. Supported by the Australian Government and in collaboration with UNICEF, the program
has helped the Government develop and implement a Multilingual Education plan•

300,000 children, 44% girls, increased access to learning materials and improved school conditions throughsupport to students, teachers, community education committees and State Ministries of Education provided
by ESPIG in Somalia, funded by the Global Partnership for Education•

The Young Men’s Initiative (YMI) has worked with multiple local partners across the Balkans since 2007,
supported by the Austrian and Swiss Governments, the OAK Foundation and other donors. Adapting and pilot
testing a curriculum originally developed by Promundo in Latin America, YMI has scaled up its norm-shifting
interventions, through expansion to new countries and adoption of the program by Government at national
levels. YMI has led to greater participation of young men and young women in different daily house chores,
increased knowledge of sexual and reproductive health, and improved views on gender roles and norms, suchas GBV and homophobia.

CARE and the SDGs 19

Layla Bilie Cige, 14, is from
Ayanle primary school,
Einabo district, Somaliland.
© Toby Madden

Somalia is a difficult place for girls to finish their education. Only 30% of Somali children are in school, only
40% of whom are girls. Years of civil war, drought and displacement have resulted in the country having oneof the lowest primary school enrolment rates in the world. CARE and partners help girls in Somalia to gain
an education through looking at the wider reasons children can’t get to school. We provide tailored support
to school-aged girls and their families, to help girls stay in school, transition from primary into secondary
school, or enrol in non-formal classes if they have already been out of school for some time.
“If I ruled the world”, Layla says, “first of all I’d make sure there is justice and I’d encourage people to get an
education. Especially those who didn’t go to schools but have reached school-age. Going to school is likesomeone going from darkness to light.”

CARE and the SDGs 20

SDG 5: GENDER EQUALITY
CARE and partners have helped 12.5m women and girls
increase their levels of empowerment and gender equality,
in 66 countries
SDG 5: Top 10 Countries

26.1

9.2

0.9

0.9

0.7

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

1 India

2 Bangladesh

3 South Sudan

4 Kenya

5 Nepal

0.7

0.6

0.5

0.3

0.3

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

6 Sierra Leone

7 Malawi

8 Zambia

9 Niger

10 Yemen

5
9

10

6

1

2

3
4

8

7

Gender equality is at the heart of all CARE’s work. CARE’s Gender Equality Framework makes clear that genderequality is sustainably achieved through mutually reinforcing efforts to: build agency of people experiencing
gender discrimination, change relations between them and the people in their lives, and transform structuresin order that they realize their full potential in their public and private lives and are able to contribute equally
to, and benefit equally from, social, political and economic development. This reflects the key point in the 2030
Agenda for Sustainable Development (UN, 2015) that the SDGs “seek to realize the human rights of all and toachieve gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls”. Under SDG 5, we particularly highlightthe contributions CARE and our partners have made on improvements in relation to gender-based violence(SDG Targets 5.2 and 5.3), women’s participation and leadership (Target 5.5), decision-making on sexual andreproductive health (Target 5.6), and economic empowerment (Target 5.a).

ADDRESSING GENDER-BASED VIOLENCECARE and partners have helped over 2.3m women in 34 countries to change attitudes around gender-based
violence (GBV), to reduce levels of GBV, or to access support services for GBV survivors, including:•

680,000 additional people reject Intimate Partner Violence (IPV), increasing by 30.5 percentage points (from42.5% to 73%), enabling 1.7m people overall to exercise their right to a life free from violence. The proportionof men and boys rejecting intimate partner violence in 21 projects that measured this also increased, although
to a lesser degree: from 53% to 65%
CARE and the SDGs

21

•

175,000 fewer women experienced violence: the proportion of women experiencing violence from an intimate
partner reduced by 16 percentage points (from 32% to 16%). CARE and partners’ programs also helped 29,000
fewer women to experience sexual violence from someone other than an intimate partner, reducing by 8
percentage points (from 47.5% to 39.5%)•

670,000 people accessed support services for GBV survivors or other measures of GBV prevention or
response. CARE has also supported 2.3m people in 64 countries to access information and services about
GBV in COVID-19

What does it take to prevent and respond to GBV? CARE and our partners’ learning is that this involves:
•
•
•
•
•

Engaging men and boys as equal partners/family, through approaches that involve dialogue
Supporting or setting up Safe Spaces for Women and Girls
Helping women learn about GBV, rights and relevant laws, as well as building leadership skills
Getting local leaders, traditional authorities and government support services involved
Partnering with local coalitions and service providers, and co-creating approaches with Governmentand communities© Peter Caton

Eric and Olive, above, received couples’ training on positive power relations, as part of the Indashyikirwa
project in Rwanda. The project focused on preventing gender-based violence by working with men andwomen - as couples and individuals - to challenge harmful and restrictive constructions of masculinity andfemininity that drive inequality leading to GBV. One of the central points the couple took away from thetraining was the importance of balancing power. There was ‘economic violence’ in the relationship, whichmeant that Erik had full control over the family’s property and finances. They now share this responsibility,
and teach their children that there are no separate jobs for boys and girls.
Working with local partners RWAMREC and RWN, and with funding from the UK Government’s What Worksto Prevent Violence Against Women and Girls program, Indashyikirwa has a wealth of qualitative andquantitative research and evidence to support the model’s success. The project’s impact evaluation foundsubstantial and statistically significant overall reductions in the experience of physical and/or sexual IPV
at 24 months of follow-up among both women and men.
CARE and the SDGs 22

WOMEN’S VOICE AND LEADERSHIP
CARE and partners have helped 1.4m women have greater voice and leadership, influencing decision-making inpublic and private spheres. This includes increasing women’s access to decision-making in the household:•1m women in 36 countries have greater control over economic
resources, increasing the proportion of women able to participate
equally in household financial decisions by 13 percentage points(from 18% to 31%). The GlaxoSmithKline-funded HALOW+ projectin Bangladesh, for example, contributed to increased household
financial decision-making for 200,000 additional women, a 33
percentage points increase (25% to 58%)•

450,000 more women make their own informed SRH decisions,increasing the proportion of women able to make informed
decisions by 31 percentage points (from 36% to 67%). SAFPAC
in DRC, for example, contributed to an additional 107,000
women being able to make their own informed SRH decisions,an increase of 47 percentage points (from 40% to 87%)

What helps increase women’s participation in financial decision-making? CARE and our partners’ learningis that this involves:••••

Helping women increase their incomes or savings, which makes them more likely to then be able to
make joint or sole financial decisions
Challenging negative social norms to enable women to participate in collective action or in community
decision-making processes
Ensuring women have access to training and learning opportunities
Getting men engaged in women’s economic empowerment activities

CARE has also increased women’s access to decision-making in the public sphere. This includes increasing accessto financial services, enabling women’s participation in the market-place, including:•

54,000 women exercise leadership in formal and informal
decision-making spaces. The US Government-funded ENSURE
project in Zimbabwe, for example, helped 8,000 womenleaders in water point or disaster management committees,
and producer/marketing groups•

13.3m women in 62 countries have accessed formal or informal
financial services. This includes CARE’s Village Savings andLoans Association (VSLA) model, as well as access to credit,savings or micro-insurance services from microfinanceinstitutions or banks. Globally, CARE and partners have helped
significantly grow VSLA membership over the last years, fromaround 3m women members in 2017, to 9.7m in 2020, as part ofa deliberate scaling strategy. 3.9m women also increased theiraccess to formal financial services, including over 720,000
from Microvest-supported financial institutions3.

Between 2012 and 2019, microfinance institutions in which MicroVest had invested increased their number of active borrowers by 8.3
million people (88% of whom are women) in 32 countries. As MicroVest contributes 10% of capital needs to the institutions they invest in,this strategy can reasonably claim to have contributed to increased financial inclusion for 830,000 people.

1

CARE and the SDGs 23

CARE has also increased women’s access to decision-making in political spaces (formal and informal), throughsupporting their leadership in community development committees and budget planning meetings, including:•

3,400 women participated in open budgeting processes in the World Bank-funded JATRA program in
Bangladesh. Citizen participation in pre-budget ward meetings more than doubled to 12% of total population,
including 51% of women and 68% of the poor/marginalized•

VSLAs also serve as an important space for women’s solidarity and collective action, with impacts for womenthat are transformative well beyond the act of saving and the ability to increase credit and incomes. In West
Africa, for example, VSLA networks include over 1.9 million women, with proven power to convene, build
political will, and support girls’ aspirations and growth in their communities. As a result, marginalised women
through VSLA networks in Niger, Ghana, Benin and Mali have collectively advocated for policy change andwomen’s representation in local governance, and have built networks of potential voters for women politicalcandidates. The VSLA movement in Niger - known as Mata Masu Dubara - has led to significant advances inwomen’s political participation© Josh Estey/CARE

Salamatou Dagnogo, above, first joined a VSLA in Niger, after she found herself penniless and stranded thereby her abusive husband. After 18 months, Salamatou used her earnings to purchase a bus ticket back home toCôte d’Ivoire where she was reunited with her children. Knowing the difference that this savings group madeto her life, she began thinking about bringing the model to women in her own country. She approached herfriend Fati Abdou, a community educator at the local CARE office, who she suspected would support the idea.
Together, they made a formidable pair: Salamatou with her determination for a better life for all women, and Fatiwith her skills in organizing communities and teaching new ideas. “I used nights and weekends with Salamatou
to start groups and prove that savings changed more than just women’s income,” Fati says. “We knew we could
do more.” Gradually, more women were convinced to join the savings groups. Salamatou founded 150 groups
herself. Between them, Salamatou and Fati have helped more than 260,000 women across Côte d’Ivoire startsaving and begin to build futures. But VSLAs are about much more than just savings. “People who knew me
before — they now see the difference in my life,” Salamatou says. “But it’s not me alone. My story is the same fora lot of women. We help ourselves, and we change our situation.” In 2020, Fati visited CARE’s office in Atlanta toteach staff how savings groups can work to support women in the United States.
CARE and the SDGs 24

SDG 6: CLEAN WATER AND SANITATIONCARE and partners have helped 8.2m people, 54% women andgirls, in 17 countries access new or improved clean water or
sanitation services
SDG 6: Top 10 Countries

5.8

507

423

362

325

MILLION

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

1 Peru2 Zambia

3 Zimbabwe

4 Mali5 Madagascar

222

153

131

105

60

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

6 Ethiopia

7 Bangladesh

8 Sierra Leone

9 Nepal

10 Malawi

9

7

4

1
8

6

10

2
3

5

CARE and our partners’ programs contributing to increase access to water and sanitation services (Target 6.1 and
6.2)4 include:•

5.8m people increased access to or better managed water and sanitation services through the support ofSABA in Peru, funded by the Swiss Government, and in partnership with national/local Government•

320,000 people in Madagascar have better water and sanitation services through RANO WASH (see box below)•

260,00 people accessed clean water and 160,000 improved sanitation through SPLASH in Zambia, a USGovernment funded consortium led by FHI 360, that worked in partnership with local government and Ministryof Education to increase access to services in schools and their communities•

34,000 people increased access to solid waste collection services through COMEQS in Zambia, supported by
Comic Relief, and working in partnership with KZF, PPHPZ and local Water Trusts, an increase of 30 percentage
points (from 6% to 36%)

We do not include people assisted with humanitarian water, sanitation, or hygiene support here, except for cases where projects canshow they have met standards for water and sanitation outlined under SDG 6. See also SDG 1 for further details of CARE and partners
work on water, sanitation, and hygiene in our humanitarian programs, including in response to COVID-19.

4

CARE and the SDGs 25

RANO WASH in Madagascar is a US Government-funded consortium led by CARE, in partnership with Bushproof,
CRS, Sandandrano and WaterAid, working to help rural communities create solutions for sustainable andequitable water, sanitation, and hygiene (WASH) systems. The project works with the government andprivate sector enterprises, so they can invest in, build, and operate rural water systems through publicprivate partnerships. To date, 68,000 people have gained access to safe, clean water, and 253,000 people toadequate sanitation.

©Timothy Buckley/CARE

Precious is one of 75,000 people in Zimbabwe who now have access to clean drinking water, through CARE
and the Chivi Rural District Council’s efforts under the Australian Government-funded Chivi WASH project.
“When we used to go at the river, we would drink dirt. Cattle would drink in the mud and we would also drink
there, having no idea at all how safe it was. Even goats would walk in our drinking water…People will besinging, men will be whistling, celebrating the borehole. … I am so happy to have seen our water coming out.
I feel happy that I washed with the water and got to play with it. I played with the water, I washed with it andI stomped in it. And I poured it over myself. I stood in the water, and I jumped up and down in it.
We need to take care of the borehole, so that it doesn’t break down… I am happy because the river is quite a
distance from here. It was the norm to get there and find a long queue of people waiting for their turn to getwater. There is a large population here, and I had waited sometimes until it got dark. And one is bound tocome across many things at night. No crocodiles are found at the borehole. Nothing there poses any danger.”

CARE and the SDGs 26

SDG 8: DECENT WORK AND INCLUSIVE GROWTH
CARE and partners have helped 16.5m people in 64 countries,
81% women, increase their economic empowerment or accessto dignified work
SDG 8: Top 10 Countries

1.7

2

1.2

1.1

1

MILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLIONMILLION

1 Uganda

2 Ruanda

3 Burundi

4 Malawi

5 Tanzania

871

716

703

652

554

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

6 Niger

7 Ethiopia

8 India

9 Kenya

10 Mali

10

8

6
7
1

9

2
3

5
4

A primary focus of CARE’s work on SDG 8 is around dignified work, particularly for economically marginalizedgroups such as female garment workers in Asia, or domestic workers in Latin America (see further under SDG 10).
CARE and partners contributed to increasing the proportion of women who are members of groups that enable
them to claim their labour rights by 42 percentage points (from 4% to 46%), enabling an additional 117,000 women
to claim their rights.
Made by Women works with national and regional partners from trade unions and other civil society
organizations and with garment factories and brands, to promote the rights of female garment workers.
The program has enabled 167,000 women garment factory workers to claim their rights or reduce risk ofsexual harassment in the workplace, and a further 4.1m stand to benefit from improved legal practices
CARE and our partners have influenced. 77 factories have worked with CARE to make changes to theirpolicies, systems, and workplace cultures in order to be more responsive to the rights of women workers,
resulting in more than 154,000 workers gaining more dignified working conditions.
CARE and the SDGs

27

Navy, pictured below, is an infirmary nurse and is part of her factory’s sexual harassment committee inCambodia. She has trained over 200 workers about what actions are inappropriate and is helping women
workers take action if they experience harassment.
Across the regional program, women workers are observing and experiencing less harassment, with proventools developed to address GBV and harassment in the workplace.

© Kate Adelung/CARE

CARE’s work on financial inclusion, through VSLAs, is highlighted under SDG 5, enabling a total of 12.5m people in
57 countries to access financial services, 78% women. Other contributions to SDG 8 include:•

2.5m additional women are accessing financial services and 930,000 have improved their working conditions
for through the US-Government’s Women’s Global Development and Prosperity Initiative. CARE and partners
influenced the program to ensure inclusion of a strong focus on financial inclusion and the enabling
environment (e.g. GBV)•

16,000 additional women are part of groups that enable them to claim their rights through RIDAP in Mali,
implemented in partnership with AMAPROS, ODI-Sahel and Tassaght, and funded by the Danish Government•

1.6m women in 32 countries increased their economic empowerment on other measures, including PROMEESS
II in Niger (increased influence on economic decisions for 150,000 women) and POWER Africa in Cote d’Ivoire(increased employment for 61,000 women)

CARE and the SDGs 28

Masresha Nigussie and Fikeru
Legesse, Piassa area of Addis Ababa,
Ethiopia.
© CARE Ethiopia

Women in Ethiopia say that the results of the H&M Foundation-funded Women For Women project are“personal satisfaction and joy” because they could make decisions. Women weren’t the only ones whochanged. Men like Fikeru—married to Masresha Nigussie, said his main takeaway was: “Get rid of your pride.
Support your wife and take on some tasks.” Masresha notices the difference: “My husband supports me ineverything. He is one of the reasons behind my business success. He can replace me and handle most of thetasks I do. There is no division of labour in our family.”
The Women for Women project reached nearly 270,000 women entrepreneurs in 11 countries, with women
seeing a 91% increase in daily enterprise earnings.
CARE and the SDGs 29

SDG 10: REDUCED INEQUALITIESCARE and partners have helped reduce inequalities for
8.8m people in 49 countries, 61% women and girls
SDG 10: Top 10 Countries

1.2

1

871

830

688

MILLIONMILLION

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

1 India

2 Syria

3 Cambodia

4 Yemen

5 Ethiopia

597

539

574

381

347

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

6 Somalia

7 DRC

8 Bangladesh

9 Zimbabwe

10 South Sudan

2

4
10

5

6

1

8

3

7

9

SDG Target 10.1 focuses on increasing the incomes of thepoorest 40%, and so CARE has recently begun collecting
data from its projects on what proportion of the people
they work with are from the poorest two quintiles in the
country. Overall, we calculate that CARE and partners havecontributed to improvements related to different SDGs for 7.8m from the poorest 40% of societies. 22% of the
projects that have reported contributions to the SDGs were able to report what share of their impact populations
come from the poorest 40%, on average reporting that 78% of those they work with are from these poorestgroups. But this still only represents 6% of the total impact numbers, so needs to be more consistently applied
and reviewed over coming years.
In line with Target 10.2’s focus on leaving no one behindand ensuring inclusion of all, regardless of race, ethnicity, orother status, in many contexts our programs focus on ethnic
minorities and other excluded groups. These projects haveseen progress towards different SDGs for at least 1m people.
This includes the KGBV education initiative in India mentioned under SDG 4, where a minimum reservation ismade of 75% enrolment for girls from scheduled castes, scheduled tribes or other minority communities, andthe remaining 25% priority is accorded to girls from families below the poverty line. The Multilingual education
program in Cambodia is another such example, as well as the EU-funded Kawsay intercultural, bilingual education
program in Peru, or the Cartier-funded Más Mujeres in Ecuador.

CARE and the SDGs 30

© Heidi Natkin/CARE

Equal Value, Equal Rights is a regional program in Latin America supporting the rights of domestic workers
in partnership with the domestic workers’ movement. To date, over 90,000 additional domestic workers areaware of their rights in Colombia, Ecuador and Mexico, with 9.4m potentially able to benefit in the future
as legal protections in relation to ILO Convention 189 on domestic workers and Convention 190 on sexual
harassment in the workplace are ratified by countries in the region and incorporated into national policies
and programs.
Alicia Lanchimba, pictured above, experienced workplace abuse as a domestic worker; now she is an activist
for women’s rights as part of UNTHA, CARE’s main partner and ally in the program in Ecuador. The domestic
worker’s movement enables otherwise isolated women to come together and advocate for change anddefend their rights collectively, from national to regional to global levels.
CARE and the SDGs

31

SDG 13: CLIMATE ACTION
CARE and partners have helped 5.4m people in 39 countries,
55% women and girls, to strengthen their ability to build
climate resilience and reduce their vulnerabilities
SDG 13: Top 10 Countries

376

2.4

361

328

286

MILLION

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

1 Madagascar

2 Ethiopia

3 Ghana

4 Malawi

5 Bangladesh

278

244

217

171

107

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

6 Zimbabwe

7 Mali8 West Bank & Gaza

9 Nepal

10 Niger

8

7

9

5

10

2

3

4
6

1

CARE and partners have contributed to increased abilities to build
resilience to the effects of climate change for over 2.7m people in
27 countries. This includes abilities to plan for climate change, adopt
climate-resilient agriculture strategies, or protect assets against futureclimate shocks. Programs with impacts on resilience include:•

330,000 people increased their resilience through ALP in Ghana, a multi-donor project•

280,000 people (82% of participants) increased resilience through the FARIMBOGNA project in Madagascar,
funded by the EU and working in partnership with Humanité & Inclusion

CARE and partners have also enabled over 3.6m people in 36 countries to actively engage in reducing theirvulnerabilities to the drivers of shocks and stresses that affect them, 49.4% women and girls, including:•

750,000 people have actively engaged in reducing theirvulnerabilities through CARE’s Madagascar Disaster Risk Reduction(DRR) program, supported by the European Commission and US
Government, by influencing Government and others to adopt andadapt proven DRR models•

215,000 people are using climate information or implementing risk-reducing actions in SHOUHARDO III in
Bangladesh, an increase of 32 percentage points (from 27% to 59%). SHOUHARDO III is funded by the US and
Bangladesh Governments, and implemented in partnership with 8 local and international organizations (DAM,
ESDO, IDE, MJSKS, NDP, POPI, RIMES, SKS).
CARE and the SDGs 32

© laif core/Christian Berg

Kien Quang Thi is a human weather app. Not only does she forecast the weather, but she also provides advice
for farmers on what, when, and how to plant. Her objective is to better prepare her community for extreme
weather events.
Kien knows hunger, in 2008 she experienced a total crop failure and had to live on only manioc and maize
for several months. In cooperation with meteorologists, local authorities, and farmers, she wants to avoid
crop failures in the future.
“I trust that our village leader acknowledges the importance of our forecasting and the information exchange
amongst people. The government also needs to listen to those who are most affected by climate change andtake advantage of our knowledge.”
Over 70 percent of the populations of Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos live in rural areas. Harsh climaticconditions are further aggravated by climate change. CARE’s Agro-Climate Information Service Program(ACIS) for women and ethnic minority farmers in South-East Asia enables women farmers, ethnic minority
farmers and agricultural planners in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos to better anticipate and respond torisks and opportunities from changes in the weather, through participatory and equitable agro-climate
information services. In Vietnam, the program helped over 5,000 people in Vietnam to better build resilience
to climate change of which 62% were women and girls.
CARE and the SDGs 33

SDG 16: PEACE, JUSTICE AND STRONG INSTITUTIONSCARE and partners have helped 4.1m people in 44 countries,
49% women and girls, increase meaningful participation indecision-making
SDG 16: Top 10 Countries

947

2.4

186

150

99

MILLION

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

1 Ghana

2 Bangladesh

3 Mali

4 Malawi

5 Zambia

53

40

37

35

30

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

THOUSAND

6 Afghanistan

7 Niger

8 Georgia

9 Zimbabwe

10 Egypt

8

2

10

3

6

7

1

4

5
9

Target 16.7 of the SDGs promotes responsive, inclusive, participatory
and representative decision-making at all levels, and promoting
meaningful public participation, social accountability and systems
strengthening are a core focus of CARE’s Inclusive Governanceapproach. With our partners, we have contributed to over 4.1m
people in 43 countries participating in formal or informal decision-making spaces, 49% women, an increase of
3.3m people, with over 130,000 people assuming leadership positions (41% women), including:•

2.4m people increased their participation in formal or informal decision-making spaces through GSAM in
Ghana. Funded by the US Government, and in partnership with Oxfam IBIS and ISODEC, GSAM contributed tostrengthening citizens’ oversight of capital development projects to improve local government transparency,
accountability and performance in 100 districts. Meaningful participation by service users increased by 46
percentage points (from 13% to 59%), and over 1.8m citizens reported that their concerns on capital projects
have been adressed (59% of those surveyed)•

7,000 people participated in open budgeting and other social accountability processes in the World Bankfunded JATRA program in Bangladesh. As a result, 30% of local government budgets are now allocated forpriorities of women and 25% of local government budgets are now allocated to meet the demands of the poorin these local government areas•

Systems strengthening is critical to CARE and partners’ contributions to all the SDGs, supporting institutions
to increase their capacities to provide inclusive, effective and accountable services. Examples include theBihar health program in India (SDG 3), ESPIG in Somalia (SDG 4), or RANO WASH in Madagascar or SABA in Peru
(SDG 6)
CARE and the SDGs 34

What helps improve good governance? CARE and our partners’ learning is that this involves:•

Models that strengthen civic participation and social accountability, such as Community Score Cards,
community action planning, social audits or citizens’ charters, or accountable governance and planning,such as Local Governance Performance Assessments or Community Action Planning•

Supporting local organizations to generate evidence and advocate for change, for example through
CARE’s Women Lead in Emergencies model•

Using CARE’s Inclusive Governance marker to ensure programs are built on political economy analysis,
convene spaces which enable effective and inclusive relations and negotiation between people andtheir organizations and power-holders, and work from local to national levels•

Promoting CARE and partners’ own accountability, through feedback and accountability mechanisms•

In Fragile and Conflict-Affected Settings (FCAS) in particular, CARE’s learning is that building
inclusive and effective governance requires: mutual capacity strengthening with excluded groups;
civic mobilisation to connect local governance work to advocacy initiatives; spaces for dialogue built
on understanding how sanctions and incentives work for public authorities; and changing norms,
including those that impact public authorities’ responsiveness and accountability

Advocacy and influencing is a core strategy of all CARE’s
programs, at global, regional, national, and local levels,
to ensure policies, laws, budgets, and programs are more
responsive to the rights, needs and demands of people of
all genders. Across 242 successful influencing cases in 57
countries, positive impacts can be already seen for 57.8m
people, including:•

44m people in total received quality humanitarian assistance through the additional $1bn in US Government
global humanitarian funding for famine relief, as a result of advocacy by CARE and allies. This extra funding has
enabled assistance to 20-30m people a year from 2018 onwards (the 44m excludes those directly supported
through CARE’s US Government-funded humanitarian programs)•

Other examples of successful advocacy and influencing include the inheritance law in Egypt, GBV law in
Burundi, or promoting women’s economic empowerment in West Africa

A central part of our influencing and advocacy work involves working with local organizations to generate
evidence and advocate for change. In Niger, we worked to support evidence-based policies for land rights andclimate change protection, while in Bangladesh, local planning and budgeting meetings helped ensure budget
commitments were more pro-poor across 15 Union Parishads (the lowest tier of government). In Uganda, publicforums were also an important tactic which helped revoke illegally-issued land titles in Central Forest Reserves.
What have we learned about advocacy and influencing? Key effective strategies include:•

Partnership, collaboration, and coalition building•

Generating evidence, particularly sex and age disaggregated data, to put women and girls at the centreof our advocacy•

Leveraging that to influence decision makers and mobilize support•

Consistent engagement over time

CARE and the SDGs 35

© CARE Denmark

Denis Tumwesige used to make his living illegally cutting trees inprotected forests in Uganda, until he got arrested. Instead of making
him stay in jail, the local officials connected him with CARE’s FOREST
project, which taught him about the importance of forest conservation.
With the training and some encouragement from the local field officers
from the Mid-Western Anti-Corruption Coalition, Denis decided to write
a song about forests. The song is a huge hit and is routinely playedon national radio. He transformed it into a successful concert series
on the environment. Then Denis went on to open his own recording
studio. He’s proud to be a role model for his community.

© Kiyimba James

FOREST was funded by the Danish Government, and implemented with
6 local partners (ACCU, ACODE, CDRN, Environmental Alert, JESE, andPanos). The project saw a 70% reduction in illegal destruction of forests,
a 68% reduction in the number of illegal farms destroying forests, anda complete end to livestock grazing in forests. Governments have also
increased investments in forests: The Kyegewa district government
increased their budget to the local forest service by 27 times, up to$15,000. The national government is now paying for a consultationgroup the project used to pay for, so civil society can continue toinfluence policies around protecting forests.
CARE and the SDGs 36

SDG 17: PARTNERSHIPS FOR THE GOALS
The contributions to the SDGs in this report were only possible due to thegenerous support of and strategic collaboration with many different donors
and supporters of CARE Members and their partners around the world. The
largest donors, and the contributions to the SDGs they have supported, canbe seen below: individual donors were responsible for the largest impact
numbers, as their flexible funding have supported high impact strategies
such as advocacy and influencing

CARE and partners’ contributions to the SDGs, by donor
Individual
donors46

MILLION

32.2

MILLION

24.6

MILLION

Mixed institutionaland Other donors

16.3

MILLION

6.8

MILLION

5.5

MILLION

5.2

MILLION

4.9

MILLION

Corporate
donors3.3

MILLION

2.2

MILLION

1.7

MILLION

1.6

MILLION

1.5

MILLION

Others donors(e.g. Foundations)

1.2

MILLION

929

THOUSAND

745

THOUSAND440

THOUSAND417

39% of CARE and partners’
contributions to the SDGs were
supported by Governments:
United States, Switzerland, United
Kingdom, Canada, Germany,
Norway, Netherlands, Australia,
Japan, Austria, New Zealand,
France, Denmark, Luxemburg,
Uganda, Czech Republic, Sweden,
Honduras, Ireland, Romania,
and Kenya
29% were supported byindividuals who donated or left
legacies to CARE Members
24% came from foundations orfrom corporate donors
8% were funded by multilaterals,
such as the European Commission,
United Nations agencies or
the World Bank
Nearly all of the contributions
towards the SDGs come fromprograms where CARE worked
in partnership with others: 92%
overall, and 63% where all or mostactivities were implemented withor through partners. In recognitionof this critical role played bypartners, where possible in thisreport we have included links tothe partners we have worked with.

THOUSAND320

THOUSAND

228

THOUSANDCARE and the SDGs

37

63% of impacts come from projects where all or mostactivities were implemented with or through partners

CARE has extensive and varied collaborations with hundreds of civil society partners; community-basedorganisations, social movements, local, national and regional NGOs, and international NGO peers. We aim tocontinue to develop new strategic and project-based partnerships. But we also recognize that we have a great
deal of work to do to improve our partnership approach and practices, to transfer more power and resources toour local partners, and to consistently listen to and learn from them. We need to consistently support locallyled, but globally-connected approaches to humanitarian assistance and long-term development, in line with ourcommitments to join with local partners in efforts to decolonize aid.
None of CARE’s impact would be possible without strategic and programmatic collaboration with host government
partners. Right across the world CARE has established and cultivated working relations with governments atnational, sub-national and local levels and we will continue to support the development of responsive, accountable,
and rights-based government policy and to ensure effective and equitable implementation of these policies.
Our partnership work with the United Nations is of particular importance where the SDGs are concerned. We haveestablished and cultivated multi-lateral partner relations with the key UN institutions that are tasked with leading
the SDGs and we develop joint programs and technical, learning and policy outputs with them on a regular basis.
CARE’s partnership with the private sector is also extensive and we engage to amplify impact and improveindustry practice.
Finally, CARE’s partnerships with academia and the wider research and learning community are critical for ourcollective work towards realising the SDGs. In the last five years, we have widened our research and learning
partnership base by engaging with platforms, hubs, and communities of practice to engage in learning for influenceand impact. Partnerships with formal academic institutions, independent think tanks and research organisations– in the global north and the global south – have allowed us to pilot, innovate and evaluate our work and engage
with new audiences and collaborators.

CARE and the SDGs 38

WHAT WE HAVE LEARNED
When we developed CARE’s 2020 Program Strategy, we believed that we could collectively contribute to muchgreater impact if we did two things very differently. One was integrating gender, governance, and resilience into allof our programs, at the heart of how CARE works. The other was playing three different roles: humanitarian action
in disaster or crisis-affected contexts; promoting innovative and sustainable development solutions in othercontexts; and across all our work, leveraging the learning and evidence and partnership relationships from ourprograms to influence others, or “multiplying impact”. To some degree, this hypothesis in the 2020 strategy Theoryof Change has been validated: 63% of our contributions to the SDGs come from advocacy, systems strengthening
or work to influence others to scale up models. This has shaped our thinking on impact at scale for the next 10
years, and our strategy for the next 10 years.
Scale is possible when we make the right investments in locally-driven solutions with a range of partners. We
looked at our highest impact programs from 2015-2020 to understand what we need to do to achieve scale moreconsistently. The work that scaled most successfully with the most partners had the following key ingredients:•

Partnerships with a range of actors. Every program that has had impact at scale demonstrates the importanceof partnership — with governments, with civil society, with peers, and with donors — to get a seat at thetable and to influence conversations as they evolve. Having partners with a range of different skills and acommitment to the issue is key. 91% of our highest impact programs noted that partnership was a key successfactor.

•Sustained leadership and funding commitment to a common impact goal over at least 10 years. Programs that
achieved impact at scale were driven often by a small core of staff who focused on working collaboratively withlocal partners and key local stakeholders. Innovative models were co-developed with key scaling partners
from the beginning, to increase possibilities of scaling. Consistent funding and attention from at least one
major institutional donor were also usually critical.

•

Local expertise with the flexibility to adapt and operate outside the standard project structure. While themajority of staff time comes from donor funding, having at least some flexibly-funded expertise and time wascrucial to credibly influence government actors for scale. This was especially true in later years of a program
when they had evidence to work towards scale. Flexible resources for local experts—either inside CARE or
supporting local partners to allow their staff to engage in policy processes—help sustain the momentum forchange over the long-term.

•

The ability to read the political moment and connect potential approaches to pressing needs in a specificcontext. While solid evidence and a coherent package of materials and tools can help support scale, they are
only useful to the extent that a diverse team with a coalition of genuine partners and key stakeholders canseize a moment where there is political will to make a change. Investing in the skills and time for local experts
to scan the environment and identify opportunities is essential.

© 2017 Caroline Joe/CARE

CARE and the SDGs 39

© CARE International Uganda

Putting gender at the heart of our work has seen important successes but needs further prioritization: While
many of the strongest examples of contributions to change highlighted under all the SDGs above are programs
that apply gender transformative programming approaches, we recognize that we need to further deepen ourcommitment to putting gender equality at the heart of our programming, and our measurement of impact.
Reviewing CARE’s work on gender transformative programming, and holding ourselves accountable to putting
gender equality at the heart of all of our work, the following lessons show the most promise for future success:•Developing universal metrics: CARE has launched the Gender Marker—a tool that 98% of projects now use
to share a common understanding of the quality of our gender programming and how to use this data tocontinuously improve our work. We also have global gender indicators that projects can use to measureprogress towards gender equality.

•

Holding ourselves accountable: CARE’s global standards now require sex-disaggregated data, and our global
PIIRS system reflects 83% of our projects reporting sex-disaggregated reach data (compared to 60% before
we adopted the standards).

•

Innovating and influencing in Gender MEAL: CARE’s Rapid Gender Analysis (RGA) Tool for emergencies is now
used widely around the world, and is recommended by the Inter Agency Standing Committee. RGAs have beenscaled up to 60 countries as part of the COVID-19 response, feeding into our Women Respond global analysis
platform. CARE’s Social Norms Measurement framework is at the forefront of thinking in how to practicallyunderstand and start to shift social norms.
CARE and the SDGs 40

WHERE WE NEED TO IMPROVE
Four main areas where we need to significantly improve over the coming decade are: partnerships and shifting
power relations within these; adapting faster and more quickly; consistently seeking and responding to the
feedback from the impact groups in whose lives we seek change; and improving our global measurement of impact
and contributions to the SDGs:
Strengthen our partnerships, shifting power and working in solidarity: CARE recognizes that we cannot achieve
our vision of a world of hope, inclusion and social justice alone. The examples above and our data show thatwhen our activities are delivered predominantly with partners our interventions are of a higher quality and more
impactful. The trend is toward more strategic, transformational relationships, toward collaboration between
multiple stakeholders, moving forward from a preoccupation with partnerships just with one organization.
Our commitment to work with a range of actors and in different ways requires us to become more adaptable,
flexible, and accountable to many kinds of partners. CARE needs to pay attention to reciprocity and recognize
the mutuality of what the parties bring to a partnership, the risks they face and what they will get out of therelationship. Further attention is needed to reduce the requirements and administrative burden we create forpartners, building on existing experiences to reduce bureaucracy and nuancing requirements to different typesof partnerships based on the nature and purpose of the relationship and profile of each organization. CARE
must better understand and acknowledge the power imbalance when an organization of its size and positioning
works with smaller organizations; we must manage this proactively to avoid harm, recognizing that a financiallylarger organization should not abuse unequal power relations. This also means that CARE will continue to callfor change more broadly within humanitarian and development assistance to reduce the obstacles to funding
local organizations, particularly women’s rights organizations, and ensure that existing commitments such as theGrand Bargain and Charter for Change are implemented with accountability.
CARE must develop standards that enable partnerships, and ensure that we adhere to the principles of good
partnership, including in engagement with the corporate sector. We can learn from others in the development ofthese standards and ensure that their implementation promotes learning, change and accountability. We haveembarked on a process of simplifying and harmonizing policies, systems and procedures and enabling skills andbehaviours that demonstrate humility, transparency, fairness, dialogue, compromise, co-creation, and ceding
control. We also need to invest in sustained and flexible funding to support mutual capacity strengthening anddiverse relationships with partners, including in local partners’ capacities to measure and report their contributions
to the SDGs. This must be supported through increased unrestricted funding or through the securing of specific
grants that can contribute to this endeavour. We can apply tools like the Community Score Card that promoteaccountability and ensure that we are working in authentic partnership and serving the needs of social justice.

© Josh Estey/CARE

CARE and the SDGs

41

Adapt faster and more proactively: While CARE has a longstanding practice on adaptive management, theincreasingly complex and dynamic contexts in which we operate require us to build the agility to adapt more
quickly, the systems to adapt with others and based on feedback from communities and partners, and the rapid
data to be more proactive in our adaptations. For massive global shocks like COVID-19, teams were able to adapt
very quickly. However, this can be a challenge for more slow-onset or localized changes in circumstances. We needto build our learning and evidence more quickly into changes in practice and create space for others to participate
in adaptation decisions that meet local needs.
More consistently seek and respond to the feedback from the impact groups in whose lives we seek change:
CARE has developed detailed guidance on ensuring programs have feedback and accountability mechanisms, but
we have not yet ensured that these are applied in all programs, are developed with full participation of those who
would use them, and we are consistently responding to and acting on the feedback we receive.
Continue improving our impact measurement systems and capacity across the organization: Building on what
we have learned over the last 5 years, we need to adapt our global measurement system over the coming decade.
This includes continuing to adopt SDG and other indicators systematically at a global level, improving methods
and tools to collect data, facilitating learning dialogues, ensuring donor engagement and funding for impact
measurement in contribution to SDGs, and opening channels for greater dialogue on SDG impact measurementwith other actors. We will put measurement of impact on gender equality (SDG 5) and how gender equality
contributes to impacts in all other SDGs at the front and centre of this adapted measurement system.

CARE and the SDGs 42

INCREASING SDG PROGRESS: OUR PLANS TO 2030
Drawing on our learning from the last five years, and the key areas where we need to improve, CARE’s neworganizational strategy - Vision 2030 - outlines six impact areas where we will continue to focus our efforts tocontribute to the SDGs:
•
•
•
•
•
•

Gender equality (SDG 5), including education (SDG 4) and gender equality and women’s voice as a core approachto contribute to all other SDGs
Humanitarian assistance (SDG 1, along with SDG 5)

The right to food, water, and nutrition (SDGs 2, 5 and 6)
Women’s economic justice (SDGs 5 and 8)
The right to health (SDGs 3 and 5)

Climate justice (SDGs 5, 7, 11, 13 and 15)

We will deepen our focus on equitable partnership, and expand our work to contribute to impact at scale, along six
main pathways across Riddell and Moore’s three areas of scaling: scaling up, scaling out and scaling deep.
1. Scaling and adapting proven models, both directly through CARE and our partners, and indirectly withgovernments or other allies. Examples of proven models are Village Savings and Loans Associations (VSLA),
Community Score Cards, Rapid Gender Analysis, and Social Analysis and Action
2. Advocacy to influence changes to the policies, programs and budgets of governments and other power
holders, and how those are implemented
3. Promoting norms change by addressing harmful norms in the economic, social and political spheres, throughcommunity dialogue and other norms-shifting interventions, as well as through broad media campaigns
4. Systems strengthening and social accountability, to increase the capacities of institutions to provide inclusive
and effective services and fulfil their obligations to the rights of the poor
5. Supporting social movements and other representative organizations of excluded groups in line with our
vision and mission to contribute change through their collective actions, as conveners, allies, resource
partners and amplifiers
6. Inclusive market based approaches that mobilize the power of markets to contribute to broad scale change
in ways that are economically and environmentally sustainable, uphold labor rights and are inclusive of thepoor and marginalized

CARE and the SDGs 43

ANNEX: DETAILED METHODOLOGY
The data in this SDG report covers the impacts or outcomes from our work, not just the reach or those touchedby our programs5. CARE’s global impact numbers come from external evaluations, showing changes primarily
against 21 global indicators, mostly taken from or aligned with the indicators of the SDGs. For some indicators(such as access to informal financial inclusion, or crisis or disaster-affected people obtaining quality humanitarianassistance, or being satisfied with quality of that assistance) we also include data from project Monitoring,
Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL) systems. Nearly all of CARE’s external evaluations are available
online. Data has been compiled for all projects reporting impacts between July 2014 and June 2020, the period of
CARE’s 2020 Program Strategy.
Impact/outcomes data is gathered in the annual PIIRS process, which has been carried out globally by all CARE
country offices and members since 2016. Numbers are supported by evidence from CARE’s MEAL systems and/or external sources to demonstrate changes in people’s lives. They are not estimates or projections. Figures arechecked for reasonableness by global MEAL advisors working in CARE’s Outcome and Approach teams (such as
Gender Justice, Sexual and Reproductive Health Rights, or Humanitarian Assistance). Numbers reported are also
double-checked against evaluation reports or other sources to prove the data is valid. Advocacy impact numbers
are particularly checked to ensure there is reasonable evidence of CARE’s contributions to change. Where projects
report negative outcomes, a worsening of food insecurity for example, we subtract those numbers from otherpositive impact numbers on that indicator, to determine our total contribution to that SDG.
In many cases, the indicators CARE uses are exactly the same as those used to measure progress against the SDGs;
in other cases, the indicator is a good enough proxy to be able to report progress towards an SDG target given thecore concepts expressed in that target (SDG 2.1: end hunger and ensure access…to safe, nutritious and sufficientfood). Where a concept in the SDGs appears in multiple SDGs - such as resilience and the impacts of disasters,
which appear under both SDG 1.5 and 11.5, we report the change under the SDG where we felt it best fitted (in thiscase, SDG 1, given SDG 11’s focus on urban areas). The mapping of CARE indicators to SDG indicators is shown in thetable on the following pages. Further details can be found in this Frequently Asked Questions document.

Impact is different from the reach of CARE’s programming. People reached include the individuals that a CARE program connects withas it implements its activities, while people impacted refers to individuals who experience positive, measurable change, as a result of
the materialization of the goals of a project or initiative supported by CARE. Reach, for example, might be numbers of farmers trained inclimate resilient agricultural practices; impacts or outcomes would be the number of farmers who have adopted and are applying two or
more such practices (Outcome), or who have improved their food security as a result of having done so (Impact)
5

CARE and the SDGs 44

SDG Goal and Target

SDG Indicator

CARE Indicator

Goal 1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
1.1 By 2030, eradicate extreme poverty
for all people everywhere…

1.1.1 Proportion of the population
living below the international povertyline…

1: Proportion of the population below
the international poverty line

1.2 By 2030, reduce at least by half
the proportion of men, women andchildren of all ages living in poverty…
according to national definitions

1.2.1 Proportion of population living
below the national poverty line…

2: Proportion of the population below
the national poverty line

1.4 By 2030, ensure that all men andwomen, in particular the poor andthe vulnerable, have…access to basic
services…

1.4.1 Proportion of population living
in households with access to basic
services

3: Proportion of the population living
in households with access to basic
services

1.5 By 2030, build the resilience ofthe poor and those in vulnerable
situations and reduce their exposureand vulnerability to climate-related
extreme events and other economic,
social and environmental shocks anddisasters

1.5.1 Number of deaths, missing
persons and directly affected persons
attributed to disasters…

4: # and % of disaster/crisis-affected
people supported through/by CARE
who obtained humanitarian assistancethat is fully in line with CARE’s andother global standards (shelter/
housing, WASH, food & nutrition, SRH)
5: % of disaster/crisis affected people
in areas of CARE responses who reportsatisfaction with regards to relevance,
timeliness and accountability ofhumanitarian interventions

Goal 2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition and promote sustainable agriculture
2.1 By 2030, end hunger and ensure
access by all people…to safe,
nutritious and sufficient food all year
round

2.1.2 Prevalence of moderate orsevere food insecurity in the
population, based on the Food
Insecurity Experience Scale (FIES)

13: Prevalence of population withmoderate or severe food insecurity,
based on the Food Insecurity
Experience Scale (FIES)

2.2 By 2030, end all forms of
malnutrition…

2.2.1 Prevalence of stunting…

14: Prevalence of stunting amongchildren under five years of age

Other targets, including 2.3(agricultural productivity) & 2.4(resilient agricultural systems)

Supplementary FNS indicators

Goal 3. Ensure healthy lives and promote well-being for all at all ages
3.1 By 2030, reduce the global
maternal mortality ratio to less than70 per 100,000 live birth

3.1.2 Proportion of births attended byskilled health personnel

7: Proportion of births attended byskilled health personnel

3.7 By 2030, ensure universal accessto sexual and reproductive healthcare services, including for familyplanning…

3.7.1 Proportion of women of
reproductive age (aged 15–49 years)
who have their need for familyplanning satisfied with modern
methods

6: Demand satisfied for modern
contraceptives among women aged
15-49

Other targets, including 3.3 (AIDS, TB& malaria) & 3.4 (non-communicablediseases)

3.7.2 Adolescent birth rate (aged 10–14
years; aged 15–19 years) per 1,000
women in that age group

8: Adolescent birth rate
(disaggregated by 10-14; 15-19 years)
per 1,000 women in each age group
Supplementary SRHR indicators

CARE and the SDGs 45

SDG Goal and Target

SDG Indicator

CARE Indicator

Goal 4. Ensure inclusive and equitable quality education and promote lifelong learning opportunities for all
4.1 By 2030, ensure that all girls
and boys complete free, equitableand quality primary and secondary
education…
4.5 By 2030, eliminate genderdisparities in education and ensure
equal access to all levels of educationand vocational training for thevulnerable, including persons withdisabilities, indigenous peoples…

4.1.1 Proportion of children and young
people (a) in grades 2/3; (b) at theend of primary; and (c) at the end oflower secondary achieving at least
a minimum proficiency level in (i)reading and (ii) mathematics, by sex

Education indicators, including
retention, completion andachievement

Goal 5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls
5.2 Eliminate all forms of violenceagainst all women and girls in the
public and private spheres, including
trafficking and sexual and other typesof exploitation

5.2.1 Proportion of ever-partnered
women and girls aged 15 years andolder subjected to physical, sexual or
psychological violence by a current orformer intimate partner…
5.2.2 Proportion of women and girls
aged 15 years and older subjected tosexual violence by persons other thanan intimate partner…

11: % of ever-partnered women andgirls aged 15 years and older subjectedto physical, sexual or psychologicalviolence by a current or former intimate
partner, in the last 12 months
12: % of women and girls aged 15 years
and older subjected to sexual violenceby persons other than an intimate
partner, in the last 12 months
19: # and % of women and girls who
have meaningfully participated informal (government-led) and informal(civil society-led, private sector-led)decision-making spaces

5.5 Ensure women’s full andeffective participation and equal
opportunities for leadership at alllevels of decision-making in political,
economic and public life
5.6 Ensure universal access tosexual and reproductive health andreproductive rights…

10: % of people who reject intimate
partner violence.

5.6.1 Proportion of women aged 15–49
years who make their own informed
decisions regarding sexual relations,contraceptive use and reproductive
health care

9: Proportion of women aged 1549 who make their own informed
decisions regarding sexual relations,contraceptive use and reproductive
health care

5.a Undertake reforms to give womenequal rights to economic resources,
as well as access to ownership andcontrol over land and other forms ofproperty, financial services…

16: # and % of women who are active
users of financial services

her SDG 5 targets, including 5.3 (child,early & forced marriage), 5.4 (unpaid
care & domestic work), and 5.c(policies to promote gender equality)

Supplementary WEE and GEWV
indicators

17: # and % of women who reportthey are able to equally participate inhousehold financial decision-making

Goal 6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
6.1 By 2030, achieve universal
and equitable access to safe andaffordable drinking water for all
6.2 By 2030, achieve access to adequate
and equitable sanitation and hygiene
for all and end open defecation…

safely managed drinking water
services
6.2.1 Proportion of population
using (a) safely managed sanitation
services…

3: Proportion of the population living
in households with access to basic
services (safe drinking water, safely
managed sanitation)

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SDG Goal and Target

SDG Indicator

CARE Indicator

Goal 8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment
and decent work for all
8.10 Strengthen the capacity ofdomestic financial institutions toencourage and expand access tobanking, insurance and financial
services for all

8.10.2 Proportion of adults (15 years
and older) with an account at a bankor other financial institution or with amobile-money-service provider

8.3 Promote development-oriented
policies that support productive
activities, decent job creation,
entrepreneurship…

16: # and % of women who are active
users of financial services

18: # and % of women with union,
women’s group or cooperative
membership through which they canvoice their labor rights
Supplementary WEE indicators

Goal 10. Reduce inequality within and among countries
10.1 By 2030, progressively achieve andsustain income growth of the bottom
40 per cent of the population at a rate
higher than the national average

10.1.1 Growth rates of household
expenditure or income per capita
among the bottom 40 per cent of the
population and the total population

10.2 By 2030, empower and promote
the social, economic and politicalinclusion of all, irrespective of age,sex, disability, race, ethnicity, origin,religion or economic or other status

SDG impacts from impact populations
from bottom 40% of the population

SDG impacts from impact populations
from ethnic minority or indigenous
populations

Goal 13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts
13.1 Strengthen resilience andadaptive capacity to climate-related
hazards and natural disasters in all
countriest

15: % of people better able to build
resilience to the effects of climatechange and variability.
21: % of people that have actively
engaged in reducing theirvulnerabilities to the shocks that
affect them

Goal 16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justicefor all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels
16.7 Ensure responsive, inclusive,
participatory and representativedecision-making at all levels

16.b Promote and enforce nondiscriminatory laws and policies forsustainable development

16.7.2 Proportion of population who
believe decision-making is inclusive
and responsive, by sex, age, disability
and population group

19: # and % of people of all genders
who have meaningfully participatedin formal (government-led) andinformal (civil society-led, private
sector-led) decision-making spaces
20: # of new or amended policies,
legislation, public programs, and/or budgets responsive to the rights,
needs and demands of people of all
genders

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SDG Goal and Target

SDG Indicator

CARE Indicator

Goal 17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalize the Global Partnershipfor Sustainable Development
Target 17.1 (domestic resource
mobilization) and 17.3 (mobilizing
additional resources)

20: # of new or amended…budgets
responsive to the rights, needs anddemands of people of all genders

17.3 Mobilize additional financial
resources for developing countries
from multiple sourcesr

Contributions by donors to SDG
impacts

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CARE

AND THE SDGS:IMPACT AND
LEARNING ANALYSISJUNE 2021