Summary of the Intervention (Baseline).
The selection process of the grantees started by providing information about the intervention and eligibility criteria. Four districts in each province were specified. The operation teams were assigned to mobilize the communities in these areas. This process lasted for 30 days, and each community was visited twice. During the initial briefing (week 1) and refresher briefing (week 2), information about the objective and selection criteria was also shared with local authorities, such as the governor's office staff, provincial councils, and community leaders.The application form was a three-page questioner containing 19 questions that covered six sections (skills, support, and investment; product/services; price; place; promotion; customers) (Underlying data) (
Considering the low level of literacy within the communities, application forms printed on large banners were also provided in addition to conventional brochures and posters. Subsequently, the applicants were selected based on an evaluation of their initial submitted business plan, which included information, such as education, age, demographic characteristics, income, work experience, business type, and their plans on how they would spend the grant. In many cases, the applicants were assisted by other family members, neighbors, etc., who had a higher level of education and were able to convey the information in the application form. The applications with a higher score than the threshold level of the score become qualified for the lottery process. After the qualified applicants were selected, scheduled meetings for baseline interviews and lottery were announced to be held in each province. At the meetings, professionally trained interviewers conducted the baseline interviews. After which each qualified applicant draws a lottery number that determines the receipt of the cash grant.Given the amount of the cash grant and concern about corruption in the process of choosing the recipients, it was important that all applicants understood that the recipients of cash grants were chosen fairly. Thus, the process of lottery took place in the presence of representatives from provincial councils, provincial governors, the Implementing Partner Agency (IPA), ESCs, and representatives of provincial directorates of labor and social affairs. After determining the recipients of the grant, a three-member panel verified the information provided, and the grant agreement was signed. Finally, the full grant was transferred in one transaction to the grantees' submitted bank account.Regarding the endline, the evaluation teams started to interview individuals among those who participated at the baseline in June 2018 and closed in July 2018. The teams interviewed 3005 individuals. However, due to miscommunication between the Ministry of Labor and Social Affairs and the external teams, the external team did not record the ID numbers for some surveyed individuals in the endline which could match individuals of the endline with those in the baseline. To ensure that correct matching was implemented, we included only individuals whose ID number and national identity number were matched in the baseline and the endline data in the final analysis sample. As a result, the final sample size was 2177 individuals (n=2177) in this study, with the number of the individuals in the treatment group (1146) slightly higher than that of the control group (1031) at the endline (
