Project Details.

Save the Children is conducting an ECHO-HIP Need Assessment across five refugee-dominated districts of Balochistan—Quetta, Pishin, Killa Saifullah, Loralai, and Chaghi—to identify urgent gaps in Food Security & Livelihoods (FSL), Protection, Education in Emergencies, WASH, and Disaster Preparedness. The assessment targets refugee and host communities in selected UCs and villages to understand barriers faced by children and families, prioritize immediate needs, and generate evidence to inform ECHO-HIP 2025 program design. 

The study further explores gender dynamics, disability inclusion, risks to children, accountability mechanisms, disaster-preparedness gaps, and the extent to which children’s voices are meaningfully integrated into program design. The assessment uses mixed methods, including household surveys, KIIs, FGDs (adult and child-participatory), and stakeholder consultations, ensuring disaggregation by refugee/host status, gender, age, and ethnicity. 

HIMAT Consulting led the end-to-end implementation of the ECHO-HIP need assessment in all five target districts. The team conducted a comprehensive desk review of ECHO-HIP documentation, previous assessments, proposals, and tools, followed by an inception meeting with Save the Children. 

HIMAT reviewed and refined SCI’s assessment tools, translated all instruments (household survey, KIIs, FGDs), and developed consent forms tailored to adults, youth, and children. The firm facilitated all required field approvals/NOCs from district authorities. 

HIMAT deployed trained enumerators to conduct quantitative household surveys and qualitative KIIs and FGDs with boys, girls (10–17 years), men, women, teachers, community members, and government stakeholders. Child-friendly, participatory approaches were used to ensure meaningful participation of children in low-literacy contexts. Data collection covered Food Security & Livelihoods, Education, Protection, WASH, Disaster Preparedness, and cross-cutting themes. The team ensured rigorous data quality through daily supervision, field validation, and structured protocols for child protection and safeguarding. 

HIMAT entered, cleaned, and analyzed the dataset using SPSS/Excel and developed an analysis framework that enabled disaggregation by gender, age groups, refugee/host status, district, and ethnicity. Qualitative and quantitative findings were triangulated with the desk review, and a draft report was submitted for SCI feedback. After integrating comments, HIMAT prepared and delivered the final need assessment report along with all cleaned datasets (hard and soft copies).