Monitoring & Evaluation

The Peacebuilding & Development Institute is focusing this week on highlighting our Monitoring & Evaluation course within our Summer Professional Training Program in June. Why? Because it’s such a good opportunity. Gain and hone your M&E skills while networking with fellow students, local DC professionals, and international peace builders and practitioners.

The Details:

Building Monitoring & Evaluation into Program Operations

Instructor: Sarah Cohen Wood

Dates: Monday, June 16 - Friday, June 20, 2008

Location: American University

Cost: $735 for practitioners and professionals, two credits for AU students (includes materials!)

Here’s what people have said about the course and M&E in general:

“If you know your way around M&E, you will never be out of a job.” - Donna Read

“A great skill to have an and excellent workshop to take; the course presents you with perspectives and knowledge from academia, on the ground and within the prevailing development agencies.” -Shezaad Dastoor, SIS MA

“This theoretical and practical course exceeded my expectations and will allow me to do better work for my NGO.” -Ali, Tanzania

“M&E courses are very important, but a conflict-sensitive M&E course like ours will ensure that practitioners “do no harm” to their beneficiaries in the field.” -Saji Prelis, Peacebuilding & Development Institute

“A constant theme throughout the week, and one of the most valuable topics addressed were conflict sensitive approaches to development. This workshop helped highlight the crucial need to include these concepts in any program abroad, in attempts to do as little harm as possible.” -Jennifer Kurtinitis, SIS MA and PDI intern

The Course Description:

This training will provide participants with the opportunity to analyze and understand the role that M&E plays in shaping three projects in conflict affected countries. Participants will work with these projects and design their own M&E framework. At the end of the course participants will have the opportunity to compare their work with donor funded projects and successful M&E frameworks currently used in conflict contexts. The course will focus heavily on participatory approaches to M&E and will also address the complexity of measuring change in conflict dynamics, identifying reasonable measures of impact, and working with local populations to achieve results. A special emphasis will be placed on conflict sensitive M&E approaches and the importance of conflcit analysis and information when designing work in conflict zones.
This training course will be highly interactive in nature and incorporate “real-time” interventions that may be impacted by some of the decisions participants make. Participants will also have the opportunity to meet with some folks from the implementing Agencies and talk about the challenges on the ground related to M&E.

And if all that wasn’t enough, wait till you read about the instructor:

Sarah Cohen Wood is currently the Strategic Planning and Learning Coordinator for the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance at USAID.
In addition to her role as the Strategic Planning and Learning Coordinator for OFDA at USAID, Ms. Wood works in the Bureau for Democracy, Conflict and Humanitarian Assistance and in the past has worked in the Office for Conflict Management and Mitigation and also served as the USAID liaison to the State Departments Office for the Coordinator of Reconstruction and Stabilization. She also worked from 2003-2007 on a USAID funded program called, the NGO Sector Strengthening Program , which is a program that works to enhance the institutional capacities of local NGOs and Civil Society organizations many of them in fragile and post conflict countries. She has worked in several countries in Africa , and specializes in the role of civil society in post conflict and transitioning environments.
She is a specialist in Monitoring and Evaluation and designed the first workshop for local and international NGOs and USAID Mission staff on Conflict Sensitive Monitoring and Evaluation for USAID, which was held in West Africa and focused on the Mano River Region. She has worked extensively with participatory methods for program and planning design, and has applied these to several field settings to enhance the participation in planning with local groups and stakeholders.
Ms. Wood has over 15 years of experience with development planning, project design, monitoring and evaluation systems, training, and community mobilization programming. Areas of expertise include; organizational development, training of trainers methodologies, field methods and data collection, grant and proposal writing, civil society research and conflict resolution, management and mitigation. Ms. Wood is formally trained in field methods, data collection, and evaluation and monitoring for impact.
Ms. Wood is currently also an adjunct faculty member at American University, teaching Conflict Sensitive M&E to graduate level students as well as practitioners working in peacebuilding and development in conflict affected countries. Ms. Wood also has conducted regional trainings in Sri Lanka and West Africa.

Who might take advantage of this opportunity?

2007 non-credit participants include practitioners and professionals from a dozen countries and conflict affected areas of the world, including:
Karin, Program Officer for UN Development Programme in Ecuador
Alfred, Media Specialist for Search for Common Ground in the Democratic Republic of Congo
Maha, Protection Officer for UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs in Sudan
Barward, Program Officer for Liberia Democracy Watch, Liberia
Christopher, Programme Officer, Mines ADvisory Group in Iraq
Luckshmi, Associate Program Officer for International Relief & Development in Washington, DC

Sound good? Visit http://www.american.edu/sis/peacebuilding for more information.