Background

Following the successful implementation of a first online tutored workshop on “Integrating Food Security Impact Assessment into Program Design” (25 October-29 November 2011), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Training Centre of the International Labour Organization (ITC-ILO) joined forces again to support of the design, development and delivery three additional online versions of the course, in English (two courses) and French (one course), to selected Anglophone and francophone participants in member countries.

For the English courses, the partners worked again with the subject matter expert/tutor from American University who was part of the team for the pilot course, in order to update and improve the original course curriculum in response to participant feedback. The curriculum maintained its primary focus on quantitative methods for impact assessment, with improvements such as allowing participants to focus on their own case study for their weekly assignment (the development of the impact assessment program for their chosen project or program), introducing additional videos and multimedia elements, and simplifying to the discussion forum activity. In March 2012, the course was awarded the Open ECB Check Quality Certificate, based on the peer review of an international community of e-learning professionals.

For the French course, the partners teamed up with a new subject matter expert/tutor from Euréval, France, to design and implement a new version of the course and its three modules, based on the model of the original course but taking an increased focus on qualitative methods of impact assessment (quantitative methods were still covered in the French course though in less detail).

For both courses, through an intensive and participatory program, and with the guidance of a tutor, a subject matter expert, and a team of e-learning specialists, participants engaged in group discussions and activities to share experiences and develop, step-by-step, an Impact Assessment Plan for a food security program. An Impact Assessment Plan is a document that provides the overall strategy for assessing impact for a given programme as well as the manner in which that strategy will be implemented.

As a result of either course, participants should be able to help their institutions to design and implement such assessments, in order to improve the efficiency of food security interventions, and enhance ability to report on results achieved.

Based on the successful implementation of the previous courses, a fifth course is envisaged. This course is initiated at the request of the FAO Sub-regional Office for Southern Africa (covering 16 countries), in order to build the capacity at country level of Government and FAO staff in Monitoring and Evaluation of FAO country programmes. One of the concrete outcomes of the training would be that country offices are capable of developing an M&E plan derived from their country programme results matrix.

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