Forum Syd is a Sweden-based human rights organisation with offices in seven countries. Its core funder is Sida, the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency, which had been demanding better planning, monitoring and evaluation and reporting of results.
In 2014/2015 Forum Syd decided to develop an alternative to one-off face-to-face trainings as a way of strengthening the capacities of its national and international partners in monitoring and evaluation (M&E). It also wanted to find a way to support its partners to better integrate a human-rights-based approach into the design and implementation of M&E.
The result was the design, piloting and roll out of an integrated human rights-based M&E training programme using a combination of webinar-based training with offline group and individual reading and exercises over a six weeks’ period. INTRAC recognised that to be sustainable, Forum Syd trainers and support staff would need to be able to run the programme in future and a ‘Training of Trainers’ element was built into the piloting and roll-out phase of the consultancy.
INTRAC’s team included two M&E trainers with a background in human rights-based approaches, and a ‘Training of Trainers’ specialist. The training content was planned and designed together with Forum Syd staff, and drew on practical challenges identified through a pre-training needs assessment as well as real case studies from its partner organisations across the world. The process took place over several months and involved:
- Design of webinar-based synchronous tailored training delivered in three 2-day sessions over a period of six weeks, with accompanying course materials and exercises to be completed offline.
- One-to-one coaching with all participants following the webinars and submission of course work, to support practical application of the learning and talk through any M&E challenges being faced by participants in their day-to-day work.
- A final webinar ‘check in’ with all participants to reflect on the training and identify options for peer support, communities of practice and other forms of support to enhance application of the learning, post-training.
Potential future trainers from Forum Syd participated in the initial pilot training and following a number of ‘Training of Trainer’ sessions via webinar, jointly facilitated a second round of training with the INTRAC trainers, with another group of participants. They have since rolled out the training a third time.
Alongside the INTRAC training, Mango piloted an e-learning asynchronous training for Forum Syd’s finance managers and staff.
Extremely well performed and adapted M&E training…all participants [agree] that you really listened in to what Forum Syd as an organization and each single individual participant expressed in terms of needs and wishes to learn for their day-to-day work as well as to push the boundaries of possibilities further….Hope to collaborate with you soon again
Crister Sahlén, Quality Controller