General+info

Audience: FAO staff and government officials in Southern Africa (maximum of 40 participants) Language: English Tutor: Thomas Delahais Curriculum: Adaption of French impact assessment course, translated into English, with revision of the curriculum to focus more on M&E Outcome: Participants are capable of developing an M&E plan derived from their country programme results matrix. Course Dates: 1 July - 2 August 2014 5-6 June: 1-day writing workshop in Rome and one day F2F work- Amelie, Thomas, Haley, M&E colleagues from FAO
 * Course title: Monitoring and Evaluation of Food and Agriculture Programmes**

There is a growing focus in the international development community on the need to monitor and evaluate the results of our work. This is not only because M&E is a management tool that allows project and programme officers to be more efficient, but also because M&E is about learning and achieving better impact at the country level. Setting up a good M&E system, either for a project or a programme, requires careful thinking about management and, particularly, how to manage the linkages between different project elements and partners at country level. Through an intensive and participatory programme, and with the guidance of a tutor with expertise in the subject matter and a team of e-learning specialists, participants will engage in group discussions and learning activities and have the opportunity to share experience with FAO staff and government officers from different countries. They will learn to define how progress and impact should be assessed, how to gather and analyse information, and how to make the best use of this information to improve future actions, in collaboration with partners in a country. As a result of the course, participants will have developed, step-by-step, a monitoring and evaluation plan for a food and agriculture programme. They will have strengthened their understanding of M&E basic concepts, fundamentals and principles, and will be in a position to enhance their institutions’ ability to report on results achieved and learn from its experience.
 * Overall concept:**
 * Overall learning objectives:**

1. To create the capacity to review the results chain for M&E needs. 2. To develop an understanding of how to define and apply methods to gather, manage and report information on output, outcome and impact 3. To foster the ability to plan for M&E activities during a programme’s lifetime

It is expected that the course will follow the same flow/learning architecture as previous courses, with content adapted to meet the needs of the target audience.


 * 1) Completion of relevant pre-existing FAO self-guided e-learning module as background
 * 2) Completion of a tutored model on integrating impact assessment into program design, and response to discussion questions. This material will include interactive quizzes to assess participants’ understanding of the material, and discussion questions to give them an opportunity to apply the concepts to their own work and learn from the comparative experiences of their peers. The tutor will intervene with periodic interventions and summary responses.
 * 3) Weekly assignments: Participants will be required to individually complete an assignment at the end of each week of the course, through which they will build, step by step, the required components of a monitoring and evaluation plan for their chosen FAO country program case study. The tutor will post general feedback on the assignments on the case study discussion forum, and also share feedback individually with participants. By the end of the course, successful participants will have delivered complete M&E plans.