The end of any educational programme marks a major achievement for the students who have completed it, the staff who taught it, and all those involved in administering it behind the scenes. It is thus important that alongside the administrative dimensions of closing up a project (such as doing endline surveys, completing the final budgets, writing up findings and lessons learned, etc. – see below) that thought, budget and time is given to how to mark the occasion. This might be particularly important if students have not yet received any feedback on admissions exams or scholarships. They may then need another event or moment to mark the closure of the education project, which can serve a dual function of also managing expectations about the level of support that they will be provided after the programme concludes. 

As part of the closing period, an opportunity to reflect and feed back on the programme has value beyond monitoring and evaluation purposes, helping students to feel like respected stakeholders and experts in the project. Certificates and a ceremony provide a way of formally and publicly acknowledging the students’ achievements, while providing them with physical proof of their enrollment on the project.

More administrative considerations for the project closing include what to do with the technology purchased for the project: if students have been given laptops, smartphones or other tech for the duration of the programme, are they expected to now return them? If so, what happens if some students no longer have theirs or if they wish to buy them off the project? If learning centres have been established, can they be repurposed or do they need to be sold on?

FFA Closing Preparation is needed to determine collectively how the project will end. For a number of reasons, FFA stopped abruptly. As we write this toolkit (first half of 2022), we are only now beginning to reflect on lessons learned from the project overall and in particular the taught elements of the curriculum which ran in 2021. Such large and long projects need closure meetings, or open days where there is more listening to the accounts of tutors, students, project teams, administrators, and the larger host community.