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Session Title: Promoting Organizational Learning to Increase International Development Effectiveness: Examples From Three Catholic Relief Services Field Offices, Europe; Middle East; Southern Africa; and El Salvador

Panel Session 839 to be held in International Ballroom C on Saturday, November 10, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM

Sponsored by the International and Cross-cultural Evaluation TIG

Chair(s):

Carlisle payday loan  Levine payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  clevine@crs.org

Discussant(s):

Guy payday loan  Sharrock payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  gsharroc@crs.org

Abstract: In international development, a field that aims to achieve long-term and often intangible positive change in people's lives, determining whether an international non-governmental organization (NGO) is doing the right things and whether it is doing things right is both critical and hard to do. To help international NGOs understand what differences their interventions are making, identify and replicate good practices more quickly, and reduce unintended negative consequences, many are establishing systematic approaches to learning from their interventions. In this panel, representatives of three Catholic Relief Services field offices - Europe and Middle East, Southern Africa, and El Salvador - will share their experiences institutionalizing learning, highlighting factors critical to their success, challenges they have faced, and benefits they have gained from their efforts. Since many organizations are similarly institutionalizing learning to increase effectiveness, this panel will create a useful forum for discussion of good practices for accomplishing this.

Promoting a Participatory and Local Approach to Organizational Learning in Catholic Relief Services' Europe and Middle East Region Velida payday loan  Dzino-Silajdzic payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  vdzino@eme.crs.org Meri payday loan  Ghorkhmazyan payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  mghorkhmazyan@eme.crs.org This presentation focuses on the advantages of taking a participatory and local approach to organizational learning, as opposed to a more global approach. This choice is based on lessons learned from measuring and analyzing progress toward achieving regional strategy objectives. The global approach successfully reveals overall regional achievements against regional objectives. However, it presents challenges for undertaking locally meaningful data analysis and interpretation, suggesting that it is difficult to use general, global findings and recommendations to inform local, program-level decision making. A monitoring and evaluation system grounded in strategies developed for smaller, sub-regional administrative units and integrated within project-based monitoring and tracking systems brings not only more accurate and timely data collection, analysis and reporting, but also increases the relevance of the learning and enhances ownership of the responses required for further improvement and aimed at maximizing the effects of the larger strategy.

Managing Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning within Catholic Relief Services' Southern African Regional Office Christopher Michael payday loan  Reichert payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  creichert@crssaro.org Driss payday loan  Moumane payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  dmoumane@crs.org Guy payday loan  Sharrock payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  gsharroc@crs.org Catholic Relief Services' (CRS') Southern Africa Regional Office (SARO) has embraced CRS' mandate to promote organizational learning to improve agency effectiveness by encouraging learning at the regional and country levels. Five years ago, SARO's program value expanded over tenfold, the vast majority in food security and HIV & AIDS programming. The rapid expansion was accompanied by the realization that the region needed to increase its knowledge in order to simultaneously maintain high program quality. Thus, SARO created a learning agenda around food security and HIV & AIDS, raised the profile of monitoring and evaluation, and increased its investment in its monitoring and evaluation capacity. Building on this monitoring and evaluation foundation and its learning agenda, SARO's organizational learning focuses on monitoring and evaluation to promote change. This presentation will share how SARO is piloting various learning approaches, describe the challenges of learning for change, and suggest some replicable good practices.

Institutionalizing Learning in Catholic Relief Services' El Salvador Program Carolina payday loan  Castrillo payday loan ,  Catholic Relief Services,  ccastrillo@crs.org.sv Since 2004, Catholic Relief Services (CRS)/El Salvador has strived to institutionalize learning. Obtaining management commitment, developing a conceptual framework, establishing a learning system and a team to lead the effort, identifying cross-cutting themes relevant across program sectors, and developing an implementation plan have been fundamental to institutionalizing learning. Strategies include sensitizing staff to the utility of organizational learning, conducting evaluations and feeding findings into the learning system, selecting priority learning themes in a participatory manner, and systematizing innovative and high-impact projects and processes. A variety of priority learning topics have emerged from the process: Are we really targeting the poor? Are we contributing to justice and social change? Do our services fully address people's need for integral human development? Are we honoring CRS principles in our work with local partners? Systematizing experiences is a learning and innovative process. The knowledge is enriching CRS and partners' learning agenda and program quality.