The USAID/Malawi Education team is interested in building strong alliances to prepare the next generation of Malawian citizens in the workforce. Proposed activities should be responsive to the National Education Sector Plan goals and targets and should help promote knowledge, skills and self-reliance of in and out of school children and youth. Activities could include clarifying and strengthening the supply and demand linkages between the education system and the private sector or labor market, providing support to relevant institutions to ensure linkages are clear and established, building dialogue, linkages and synergies between educational institutions (including technical/vocational training institutions) and the public and private sector and bridging in or out of school children and youth education including non-formal education with the private sector. Innovative ideas to strengthen primary and secondary education to build vocational and technical skills are also of interest.

CARE Malawi, having recently completed a baseline study for the CRLSP and CRIMP projects, has expressed interest in accumulating lessons learned and best practices associated with the conduct of its baseline and evaluation study methodology. This report is meant to provide recommendations to CARE Malawi in the form of a guide for future studies. The report is based on a careful review of the CRLSP and CRIMP program baseline study as well as on the experience of the authors in conducting similar studies for CARE worldwide.