First “capacity building for your organization” webinar organized for MSM’s project partners

On 12 and 13 May 2020, MSM’s International Projects Department organized a webinar on “Capacity building for your organization” for its project partners. The webinar was aimed at training project partners in monitoring and development of their international projects.

The session was supposed to take place in Kenya, however due to the current pandemic, the session was turned in to a webinar, which led to a good turnout and informative webinar.

The two-day session started with a welcome and presentation on the newly launched Food Security Initiative. The Initiative is being executed in collaboration with MSM’s worldwide project network to map potential changes in food flows and sustain food security. Through regular updates, MSM will bring the latest insights on Covid-19’s impact on food security from the countries (and rural areas) where we operate. The updates will inform on the effects on small- scale and commercial farmers, traders, processors, input suppliers, financial institutions, and will provide useful insights for policy makers, donors, NGO’s and scientists. In doing so, MSM can indicate potential changes in food flows in regions around the world and support decision making on how to counterbalance negative impacts of Covid-19 measures.

Due to covid-19, there was also an interest in crisis communication and to learn about keeping stakeholder engagement high in times of a crisis. A short but to the point presentation was provided where the key takeaway was to be reactive and on point with your communication to your stakeholders. It was stressed that in times of a crisis you need to tailor your communication towards your stakeholder by delivering the right message to the right person at the right time at the right platform. The day was ended with an assignment in which the participants could work on in teams.

The afternoon was reserved for Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) where insights on M&E practices for long-term impact measurement were given to establish a common understanding of the issue at hand and to initiate activities in line with an effective strategy for M&E. The webinar introduced one part of the long-term impact strategy for international collaboration projects to the project partners, namely the development of a panel study. Each project will track a group of indirect beneficiaries associated with the respective panel study for 5-8 years to measure the impact of the project on topics related to the sustainable development goals (SDG’s).

On day 2, the program started with a presentation that gave an insight into the triple helix model (THM), which is imperative for many of the capacity building projects. The presentation elaborated on the conditions required for the triple helix system to become operative, key success factors for a vibrant THM, an approach on how to establish a THM and was supplemented with explanatory case studies.

After a brief Q&A session, the program continued with an interactive forum on the long-term impact assessment tool introduced on the first day of the webinar. Participants were given the assignment to develop a first version of a panel study for their respective projects by filling in a format. The elements related to the panel size, sampling technique, characteristics, etc. Subsequently, the participants discussed their findings in smaller groups (breakout rooms) with other global project partners from MSM. The group discussions gave the participants an option to gain insights from the feedback and differentiated perspectives from representatives of different expertise, project topics and regions of the world. This was followed by a plenary discussion on the impact of COVID-19 on the initiation of the panel study and a final Q&A session which gave everyone the opportunity to discuss the gained knowledge during these two days.