West African Development Practitioners Equipped to better Monitor and Evaluate Projects
Accra, Ghana – 34 civil society practitioners from civil society organisations (CSOs) and a government institution have benefitted from a 3 – day training on Results-Based Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) organised by the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) in Accra, Ghana. Organised from October 21 – 23 2013, the training benefited practitioners from 17 CSOs comprising international non-governmental organisations, community based organisations, faith based organisations from Nigeria, Liberia, Senegal, Benin and Ghana, and one state institution from Nigeria.
WACSI organised this training to help beneficiary organisations to assess how well they are promoting development initiatives through the projects they are implementing, and to help them enhance their development interventions. The training enabled participants to share experiences, clarify doubts and seek strategies to resolve challenges they face with monitoring and evaluating projects their organisations are implementing.
“The training was practical and provided a good mix of ideas from participants from CSOs and government organisations like ours”, said Ismail Y. Ilu, the Executive Director of the National Agricultural Extension Research Liaison Services of the Ahmadu Bello University (NAERLS/ABU) in Zaria, Nigeria.
According to Ogunyemi O. Kayode, the Senior Programme Officer of YMCA Lagos, Nigeria, who is attending his second training organised by WACSI in 2013, “the training was practical and very valuable like that on Proposal Writing and Resource Mobilisation which I attended in June [2013]. It provided me with an understanding of how to better monitor and evaluate the projects we are working on at YMCA Lagos. The practical lessons shared by other participants and the rich interventions of the facilitators were very valuable”.
Participants were equipped with tools to effectively deliver development projects and engage in results-based reporting to better represent their project’s achievements. They gained an understanding of how to identify and select indicators and use the logical framework – a project development tool. They also learned the process involved in the development of an M&E System, how to collect and analyse data and how to plan and report on your M&E activities among others. These tools and techniques would help participant at this training to seek to understand what has happened and why, what is and what is not working in the project delivery cycle; thus enabling their organisations to implement development projects to create lasting impacts in their target beneficiaries.
Participants at the training
Results-based monitoring and evaluation enables CSOs to have an in-depth understanding of their interventions, identify lessons learned in the process of implementing projects, identifying challenges encountered and using this information to ensure successful implementation of the project to create lasting impact.
The lead facilitator, Daniel Andoh of Cicada Consult in Ghana and a WASI trainer since 2010, emphasized the need for participants to apply the principles and best practices they have learned. He called on participants to collaborate with their colleagues to develop, monitor and evaluate development projects to achieve life-changing results.
For more information about the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) and its interventions to promote participatory governance in West Africa, please visit www.wacsi.org
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