Last week, Mr. Derek Wolf arrived to the LSN BiH office to introduce the staff to the new Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system. Just to give you a brief background on him, Derek is Canadian and grew up in Halifax, Nova Scotia (on the east coast of Canada). He holds a B.Sc. in biology and environmental studies from Saint Mary’s University in Halifax. At his university, Derek conducted research projects that studied bats, leeches, and green roofs. Once he is done with training, he hopes to complete a Masters degree in environmental biology and international development studies in 2009 in Canada, possibly with field work in Vietnam.

Derek became an M&E intern with LSN-Vietnam shortly after he graduated. For 8 months (from August 2007 to April, 2008), he lived and worked in Dong Hoi, Vietnam. He was hired by the main LSN office in Washington D.C. (now known as Survivor Corps) after finishing his internship to help train the Jordan, Ethiopian, and BiH LSN networks…so here he is in Tuzla!

The M&E system that Derek is introducing consists of 13 questionnaires and a database. For instance, there is the Individual Employment Plan (IEP) questionnaire that was given out at the training. The purpose of the IEP is to gather information about the survivor’s work history, skills, and possible barriers to employment. When survivors fill this questionnaire out, it helps LSN to determine whether employment or self-employment is an appropriate and viable option for them. While Derek focuses on the questionnaire aspect of the training, another Survivor Corps staff member, Brent, is also coming to assist with the training. He’ll show LSN BiH workers how to operate this new database.

What is the purpose of the new M&E training you ask? Well, when LSN BiH’s outreach workers make their peer support visits to survivors, they can collect information about them with the questionnaires and input this information into the new database. Once this is done, LSN BiH and the other LSN networks will be able to produce statistical tables using the web-based database. This new system summarizes the information that can be used to manage the outreach worker’s caseloads. It also monitors and evaluates the network’s activities.

The new M&E system is the same structure as the old M&E system, except that it has more detailed forms that are easier to apply to the survivors. In addition, this is an improved database that allows network staff to easily analyze various statistics. With this new M&E system, the network will be able to measure the actual impact their activities are having on survivors (for instance, whether the survivors’ health-related quality of life is improving, whether their knowledge of health care is improving, whether their income is improving, whether they perceive that they are connected to their community, etc). This is also something that donors want to see. The old M&E system the network was using did not measure the program’s impact.

Derek pointed out that overall, this new M&E system should assist the network in improving the quality of services it provides to survivors. In addition, this new system should improve their chances of obtaining additional funding in the future (since it demonstrates the program impact to donors). Here are some pictures from the training that day.

Derek begins the training.

Derek, Nina, the economic opportunity officer and Sacira, the social worker.

BRENT AND THE M&E SYSTEM

Today Brent gave me an even more detailed overview of the new M&E system. He went over each of the 13 questionnaires with me. Brent also mentioned that it took 3 years to develop these questionnaires for this plan. Here’s what the whole new M&E process looks like: Flow Chart