Building MER capacity across Africa
Recently the monitoring and evaluation and reporting (MER) team at the African Palliative Care Association (APCA) began building the MER capacity of its partners. This programme of work has started with the national palliative care associations to enable them to track and utilise their resources efficiently and evaluate their own effectiveness.
This work has currently involved three national associations in Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia, and one partner organisation in Cote d’Ivoire, with a total of 34 trainees attending. An MER champion has also been identified in each association who has the responsibility to lead their organisation’s MER activities.
Many national associations, comparable to most growing organisations, find themselves without a full-time staff member dedicated to MER. It is also very common for associations to view MER as time-consuming, expensive, and sometimes of minimal internal importance.
As such, this MER capacity building work is intended to provide national associations with an appreciation of MER and its value to their organisation, and also with the skills and knowledge necessary to help them develop quality MER plans, indicators, data collection tools and reporting templates that are straightforward, affordable, efficient, and most importantly, useful in their daily operations and management decision-making process.
The training methodology
Staff and members of national associations participate in a highly interactive and participatory five-day training workshop. The training methods include a combination of mini-lectures, group discussions, sharing sessions and informal presentations. The trainees are involved in assignments aimed at developing and reviewing key components of their organisation’s MER systems. Group sessions allow participants to share experiences from their work and learn from the facilitators in managing day-to-day MER challenges.
Way forward
The local MER champions and trainees will work closely with the MER team at APCA to ensure continued support and mentorship so that they are fully able to conceptualise MER and support their own associations in the long run. APCA has additional plans to continue rolling out this capacity-building work programme to other national palliative care associations in the short-term, and ultimately to front-line palliative care clinical providers in the medium- to long-term.