Women’s Rights and Health Project (WRAHP), Managers of Ireti Resource Center, on the 19th and 20th of January 2023, organized a training on basic monitoring and evaluation, as well as information management, for 12 Community-Based Organizations (CBOs) in Lagos State.
The participants in the two-day event, funded by Global Affairs Canada, through ActionAid Nigeria, were 12 CBOs drawn from the three senatorial districts of Lagos State.
Abisoye Ajose, a WRAHP staff member and one of the facilitators, said the event was part of ActionAid’s Women Voice and Leadership (WVL) Project in Nigeria.
She said that the “program is aimed at building and strengthening the CBO’s technical capacities to enable them to develop an effective monitoring and evaluation system and also to ensure that through the training the CBOs are able to improve on their documentation processes within the organizations as well as their information management.”
Meanwhile, on what necessitated the training, Bose Ironsi, WRAHP’s Executive Director, said in a press statement made available at the event that they discovered most CBO’s lacked technical competencies in monitoring, evaluation, information management, and documentation.
Ironsi said, “In the last Quarter, WRAHP during In-Person and Virtual monitoring observed that 70% of the CBOs’ lack technical competencies in monitoring, evaluation, information management, and documentation.”
According to her, an effective monitoring and evaluation system is highly crucial in measuring project results and impact attained.
“As part of efforts towards attaining the ActionAid Women’s Voice and Leadership project’s anticipated outcome of improving management and sustainability of local women’s rights organizations, and enhancing advocacy and programming for gender equality in Nigeria, Women’s Rights and Health Project decided to conduct the two-day training on Basic Monitoring and Evaluation and Information Management for the 12 Women’s Voice and Leadership Project Community-Based Organization partners in Lagos State.
“The training was aimed at strengthening the capacities of the 12 CBOs’ Monitoring and Evaluation Officer/Program Officers’ in effective monitoring, evaluation and documentation.
“Also, the 12 CBOs will be equipped with knowledge and skills in Monitoring, Evaluation and Information Management to enable the CBOs’ objectively measure their progress, identify gaps as they arise and make timely adjustments to achieve the desired results,” Bose said.
She further said that the training would contribute towards improved documentation among the CBO partners as well as enable them to develop a one year annual operational plan and a monitoring and evaluation plan.
“The training was funded by Global Affairs Canada through ActionAid Nigeria,” she added.
Francis Umoh, Program Manager, WRAHP, also said that the program became vital because “as organizations, we are not just doing activities, we want to be able to find out if the activities are making impacts on the beneficiaries. The impact they are making will justify the work.”
“We are also looking at how to look at the processes and outcome and be able to share experiences with others. If you don’t document what you are doing people will not know what you are doing. We want to develop their skills on how to document properly,” he added.
The CBOs, it was learnt, have been working in partnership with ActionAid Nigeria in implementing projects to address women’s rights issues in Nigeria since September 2020.