Pact’s Capacity Development Approach & M&E perspective

1. Pact’sCapacity Development Approach & M&E perspective BROWN BAG FORUM (BBF) Nigeria MEMS ii Presenters: Ebele Achor Program Coordinator, Capacity Development and Knowledge Sharing Pact Nigeria Ibrahim Sanusi Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting Officer Pact-Nigeria

2. OBJECTIVES OF THE PRESENTATION • To share Pact’s Capacity Development approach and provide some M&ERL perspective in terms of what we do. • To stimulate discussion amongst BBF participants towards improving or enriching Pact MERL and CD approach as well as D&G work in Nigeria • To further enrich MEMS understanding of the challenges posed in M&ERL especially implementing partners working for USAID in Nigeria.

3. Pact So who is Pact?

4. Historically • Pact was founded in 1971 as a membership organization of U.S. private and voluntary organizations (PVOs) to facilitate the distribution of small USAID grants to PVOs working in relief and development assistance. From the beginning Pact had as a goal for its members to empower local organizations in order to attain sustainable development. • By the early 1980s Pact had begun directly assisting local NGOs and support organizations with small institutional development grants and in 1985 opened its membership to local NGOs. In 1992 Pact dissolved its membership structure, revised its bylaws, and established itself as a non-profit corporation registered in the District of Columbia. • Currently Pact has offices in over 20 countries in Asia, Eurasia, and Africa. Impact areas include livelihoods, natural resource management, and health.

5. Pact……….. We are a non-profit, mission-driven organization delivering support to those most in need while building the technical skills and capacity of those people to help themselves Pact: a promise People are at the center of our values. We believe that effective stewardship leads to trust and that trust is the foundation for change

6. Our Vision… • Pact’s vision describes “a world where those who are poor and marginalized discover and build their own solutions and take ownership over their future.” We seek to achieve this by ensuring that: • Vulnerable people access the health products, services and information they need to enjoy a healthy life. • People with limited livelihood choices gain the resources needed to be income secure. • Resource dependent communities gain lasting benefit from the sustainable use of the natural resources around them.

7. Pact in Nigeria • Started in May 2005 with the Advocacy Awareness and Civic Empowerment program ADVANCE. (National) • Rapid and Effective Action for Combating HIV/AIDS REACH joined in 2009 (7 target states) • Leadership Empowerment Advocacy and Development also in 2009 (2 states possible expansion to a 3rd) • Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation – short consultancy in 2011 (2/3 states - more to come)

8. ADVANCE Program • Legislative advocacy on FOI: Our partners, MRA and MULAC have been at the fore front of advocating for the passage of the FOI bill at the state level. Pact is currently supporting its partner to ensure effective implementation of the Law and that the implementation meets international minimum standards and best practices on Access to Information laws. • Public Procurement: ADVANCE CSO partner haveadvocated and finally engaged in accrediting procurement observers. Pact-ADVANCE has also supported its CSO partner CITAD at the state level to advocate for the effective implementation of Fiscal Responsibility and Public Procurement Laws. • Fiscal Responsibility: Pact-ADVANCE has supported CITAD in promoting transparent and accountable public expenditure management in Bauchi State through effective implementation of the State’s PPL and FRL. • .

9. ADVANCE Program • Budget advocacy: We worked with its CSO partners in several areas of budget advocacy cutting across critical areas such as Building capacity of networks to advocate successfully, Tracking and monitoring of budget performance in key ministries and at State level. • NEITI: Pact-ADVANCE achievement is the ability to mobilize Civil society organizations to effectively and efficiently engage with, support and advocate NEITI secretariat in ensuring that latest audit Analysis and distribution of latest audit report are released. • Elections:Pact supported eight partners to work in 16 states in all six geo-political zones of Nigeria to observe the 2011 elections. Pact and its partners trained and deployed a total of 500 election observers in March ahead of the April elections.

10. Stakeholders Engaging partners include not only our traditional grassroots groups and local NGO partners, but also government agencies and socially responsible corporations, as well as donors and policy makers. • Support Civil Society Groups in promoting good governance, transparency and accountability in oil and non-oil sector • Increase cooperation between the Civil Society and Government of Nigeria. • Expand the participation of women and youth in making informed input to good governance and democratic issues. • We Support marginalized groups (People with Disability – PWD) as they develop issue-based campaigns and advocacies

11. What we do • Capacity Development: At the heart of Pact's work is developing the organizational capacity of community-based local organizations. Our approach combines training, technical assistance, mentoring and small project grants, ensuring strengthened institutions. • Investment: Pact invests in some form of developing the organizational capacity of our partners, who include community-based organizations (CBOs), nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), and governments • Networking: When people reach out to others and unite as a network under a common goal, leveraging knowledge, talent, and resources, anything is possible. • Advocacy: We help partners identify issues of common concern, plan effective advocacy messages and campaigns, build coalitions and networks that can articulate these messages.

12. Pact’s Approach toCapacity Development

13. What is Capacity Development ?

14. Pact defines capacity development as: “a continuous process that fosters the abilities and agency of individuals, institutions, and communities to overcome challenges and contribute towards local solutions in health, livelihoods and natural resources management. Though often developed in response to an immediate and specific issue, capacities are adaptable to future opportunities and challenges.”

15. At Pact…………….. • We have been at the forefront of CD for several decades. We are distinctive as we apply a capacity development lens to all that we do! Our unique approach to capacity development is: • Local: We facilitate solutions that are created by the people we serve; • Shared: We broker partnerships that deepen impact; and • Whole: We seek lasting impact through the changing of systems and structures

16. Pact’s Capacity Development Framework WHO HOW WHAT Capacity Development We believe that the right combination of interventions tailored to any given context will lead to local actors (1) overcoming challenges, and (2) contributing towards local solutions

17. Whose Capacities are we developing?

18. What Capacities are we developing?

19. How are we developing these Capacities?

20. Principles of good CD Underpinning all of Pact’s capacity development work are four key principles:

21. Quality: • Pact employs and nurtures highly qualified personnel to develop practical skills and competencies of partners, so that they can improve performance, develop local solutions, enhance impact and achieve development goals. Approaches are researched, tested, documented and packaged, and this is coupled with training of staff for effective scale-up.

22. Partnership: • Pact creates trust-based relationships with partners where capacity development is facilitated for mutually agreed results. Capacity development needs are determined jointly with partners/clients who actively engage in and own the process. Pact intentionally links partners for networking, mentoring, information sharing and joint action.

23. Customization: • Capacity development responses are tailored to the specific values, challenges and opportunities of organizations within the context that they work. Interventions are designed based on the results of participatory assessments and on-going monitoring of progress.

24. Learning: • Capacity development includes a deliberate process of reflecting on the interventions and results to better respond to organizational challenges and adapt to change. Continuous learning is baked into programming as both a process and result of capacity development.

25. Phases of a Pact CD Intervention

26. How we do it

27. In summary • Pact’s theory of change for capacity development can be summed up as follows: • (a) Stronger local organizations and networks (b) do better work and, (c) as a result, have greater impact (on health, the environment and livelihoods) in their target communities. • In order to know if our capacity development activities are succeeding……….

28. M&E PERSPECTIVE

29. M&E PERSPECTIVE What do we measure?

30. We measure!

31. M&ER PERSPECTIVE Since we work mostly with Civil society Organizations we measure from the onset. We conduct OCA Purpose • To ascertain the capacity to which an organization can engage its local communities. • The organizations’ strength in terms of its personnel. • Its structure and systems in place and how effective and efficient they are.

32. M&E PERSPECTIVE • We deliver top-level technical assistance in multiple fields such as HIV/AIDS, economic opportunity, D&G and peace building. • Pact conducts several trainings to enhance CSO partners strength in different areas e.g resource mobilization, MER, SP, Adv. Skills, community Mobilization etc . • Pact mentors from time to time either by physically being on site or virtual mentoring (phone, skype etc). This is to gauge their knowledge and also to ensure compliance- core of monitoring activities • Pact Conducts routine Data Quality assessment to verify and validate data submitted by partners.

33. Pact strengthens the capacity of grass root organizations, coalitions and networks and by forging linkages among government, business and the citizen sectors to achieve social, economic and environmental justice.

34. CHALLENGES/LESSONS LEARNED

35. Challenges • Getting the stakeholders to understand and abide by Pact’s procedures. • At the beginning of the project extension, it was a struggle to get CSOs invited to the public procurement bidding processes being organized by the MDAs but this was later overcome as a result of perseverance by ADVANCE partner. • Challenges using the M&E Documents - PMP – Performance Monitoring Plan/ PIRS – Performance Indicator Reference Sheet

36. Challenges Cont’d…. • The delay from the partner CSOs in responding to the key issues raised in their project proposals resulted in delay in finalizing their proposals and subsequent late issuance of subgrants awards for some partners. • Programming for the first time in oil rich Bayelsa State, where there was kidnapping was initially very challenging to ADVANCE partners but was latter overcome by dialogue and persistence, this challenge later turned to a success as lots of people within the communities realized the importance of Partner intervention.

37. Challenges Cont’d…. • The PIND partners did not complete their project activities as at the end of February 2012. This is a challenge that has resulted in granting them “No Cost Extension” to enable them complete their projects. This will in turn necessitate the need for a “No Cost Extension” too for the ADVANCE program beyond the initial end date of March 31, 2012. • Compliance to reporting timeline.

38. Targets & Results