Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Bootcamp – virtual and in-person

Our leading MEL practitioners will provide one-on-one online support tailored to your MEL needs. Let’s find solutions together, bring us a challenge to work through with you. Sessions will be scheduled daily between 06 – 31 May 2024 to suit your needs. You select your coach from our list of available consultants.

Where: Online

Who should attend? Anyone who has a particular challenge to work through.

Trainers: Tracey Phillips and Sheridan-Lee Mentor (Southern Hemisphere)

Date:  15 May 2024 from 09h00 until 16h00 (CAT)

Where: Online

Level: Intermediate

Who should attend:

Those responsible for monitoring and evaluating programs, managing or commissioning evaluations, users of evaluations, leaders of organisations.

Entry requirements: Participants will need an understanding of Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation, planning approaches, MEL planning, managing, and designing evaluations. If you do not have this, modules 1, 2, 3 and 4 will bring you up to speed.

What this module will cover:

• Key concepts related to gender, intersectionality, and gender transformative evaluation
• How to design, implement and use gender transformative evaluations
• A set of practical measures to inform your evaluation practice to enable gender transformative program assessments

Trainers: Elena Mancebo Masa (Southern Hemisphere) and Dr. Joanne Harding (Social Change Assistance Trust (SCAT) ) and Sinenhlanhla Tsekiso (Wits University)

Date:  16 May 2024 from 09h00 until 16h00 (CAT)

Where: Online

Level: Intermediate

Who should attend:

Those responsible for planning, monitoring and evaluation of social development programs, wanting to mainstream climate change into their programs, managing or commissioning evaluations that have an aspect of climate change, leaders of organisations, evaluators.

Entry requirements: Participants will need an understanding of Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation, MEL planning, managing; and designing evaluations. If you do not have this, modules 1, 2, 3 and 4 will bring you up to speed.

What this module will cover:

This course will provide you with practical guidelines for integrating climate change into the design, monitoring, evaluation and learning of social development programs.

• What is climate change and why is it important within the broader context of vulnerability and inclusion?
• Designing and implementing social development programmes with a climate change lens
• Integrating climate change in commissioning, designing, and implementing evaluations.
• A case study of National Education guidelines from the government of South Africa (DPME)

Value proposition : Learn important process skills that makes a planning, monitoring, evaluation or learning process participatory and engaging. This will help optimize:

• buy in to programme plans and M&E findings,
• communication within program team and with role players,
• a conducive environment for reflection and learning,
• utilisation of programme plans and evaluation results for decision making,
• the value placed on M&E for learning (and not just donor accountability),
• your role and creating a valuable reflective space for program managers, implementers and decision makers to engage meaningfully in a planning, monitoring and evaluation processes.

Trainers: Dena Lomofsky and Wilma Wessels-Ziervogel (Southern Hemisphere)

Date:  30 – 31 May 2024 from 09h00 until 16h00 (CAT)

Where: Johannesburg, Venue TBC

Level: Intermediate

Who should attend:

Emerging Evaluators, Evaluators, Learning facilitators, MEL coordinators, Grantmakers, Fundraisers and those responsible for planning, monitoring, evaluating, managing and implementing programs, leaders of organisations.

Entry requirements: Participants will need an understanding of Results-based Monitoring and Evaluation, MEL planning, managing and designing evaluations. If you do not have this, modules 1,2, 3 and 4 will bring you up to speed.

What this module will cover:

This 2-day training course helps hone the “soft skills” needed for a human centred approach to programme design and evaluation. It looks at the unique role that evaluators play in facilitating evidence-based learning, adaptation, and decision making; a role which cannot be replaced by AI.

• the benefits of using a human centered, participatory approach, particularly in the light of AI.
• engaging role players across the project cycle: from analysis, design, M&E, learning and decision making.
• tools and techniques for facilitating participatory processes.
• hints and tips for learning and adaptive management practices within organisations.