sdclan

By Manuel Flury
Through the Train4Dev network so called Joint Learning Events are organised. They grew out from training development agencies’s staff on issues such as Poverty Reduction Strategies, Pro Poor Growth and Sector Wide Approaches. There is a deliberate shift from one-moment trainings of individual staff members to placing these events into a process of capacity development of partner organisations such as Civil Society Organisations and Governments. Learning events link up with particular policy reform processes. The demand for a learning event would not anymore stem exclusively from the donor agencies, it would as well reflect partners’ interests. Train4Dev finds itself in a dilemma of promoting joint learning with country partners and in the same time providing the format, the orientation and the resources of the events. The format of the Joint Learning Initiatives need to be negotiated and jointly agreed among al the partners, this is the challenge for Train4Dev and the Joint Learning Events. (more…)

By Adrian Gnägi
This is the third post inspired by the conference “Evaluation Revisited: improving the quality of evaluative practice by embracing complexity” held in Utrecht on 20./21. May 2010.

A few weeks ago, Freiburgstrasse 130 (SDC Head Office) was struck by an earthquake. Work flows stopped, the atmosphere changed, some colleagues shut their office doors and stopped talking, others wandered from office to office and talked for days. Something unprecedented had happened: In one single operations committee meeting, 3 entry proposals for local governance programs were turned down. Millions of Swiss Francs, months of preparatory work, scores of people concerned. Emotions, arguments, alliances, strategies, formal and tacit norms – one huge mess. But one overriding impression – what had happened was not right. Within days, roughly one fifth of SDC Head Office staff had signed a petition to senior management. No one can remember having seen something like this before.

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By Adrian Gnägi
A few days ago, a colleague working in a partner country passed by in SDC Head Office and gave a presentation about his work. He presented frighteningly impressive graphs that show how fast desertification is advancing. Many rural herding families will be forced to migrate to the cities in the coming ten years if nothing happens. Luckily, the Government drew up a state-of-the-art national action plan, based on the international convention against desertification. Donors have aligned with this action plan and support the Government through harmonized aid modalities. The country is moving towards a mining economy with few new jobs outside agriculture, though, the colleague concluded, and the major challenge for the future will be to channel some of the mining revenues to poor rural families. (more…)

By Adrian Gnägi
On May 20th/21st 2010 I participated in a conference entitled „Evaluation revisited – improving the quality of evaluative practice by embracing complexity“. In the lines below I sum up my take on this most inspiring event.

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Why should you bother for participatory methodologies in f2f meetings of networks, if frontal plenary sessions seem to be so much easier to organise? The value added does not only concern the atmosphere and output of a f2f meeting itself, but also the way network-members will collaborate virtually beyond the meeting.
Riff Fullan, knowledge coordinator at Helvetas, shares with us his reflections on the Helvetas experience in network facilitation. (more…)