The Building and Construction Improvement Programme (BACIP) was initiated in 1997 under the Aga Khan Foundation Pakistan (AKF-P) in partnership with the Canadian International Development Agency (CIDA) and subsequently supported by other donors. The objective of the programme was to promote measures that will enable the poor and isolated communities of the Hindukush, Karakoram and Himalayan mountain areas particularly in the Northern Areas (NAs) and Chitral region through analysis of people?s problems related to housing and developing realistic and cost effective solutions. The project is evolving from an applied research project to extension and service delivery. BACIP activities and interventions include research and development of products that improve the domestic environment and structural stability of houses; field testing of products for acceptability and functionality; documentation of products and their manufacturing techniques, product promotion through awareness raising and information dissemination and entrepreneur training and training of contractors to carry out product installation. The programme has so far developed and tested 40 home improvement products. Most of the products relate directly to fuel and thermal efficiency (products that conserve fuel wood and forest) whereas 15 of these have been designed to help alleviate conditions of women. BACIP, over the past seven years has been monitoring the performance of its products employing a number of tools/checklists, interviews of the consumers/stakeholders, interviews of entrepreneurs and the like. It has also been able to develop monitoring reports on some villages but it has not been able to maintain an M&E system. Thus a need was felt to conduct a case study to evaluate the impact of 2-3 core products of BACIP in selected villages, through an independent consultant and subsequently develop an M&E system for future monitoring of the BACIP activities.
