Monitoring, Evaluation & Technical Assistance

The Firelight Foundation employs a variety of strategies to ensure that funds are used responsibly and effectively. Our approach to monitoring, evaluation, and technical assistance (META) strives to remain practical, relevant, and respectful, while providing information to guide our decision-making and describe our impact. Our META program informs how we do our work and whom we fund. It also strengthens our grantee-partners’ capacity to assess, document, and build upon their own work.

Assisting with Application, Documentation, and Reporting Requirements
Firelight funds a wide range of programs and organizations serving children. Many of the smaller organizations we fund have not previously received outside support and are unfamiliar with the reporting requirements of international foundations. Firelight has created a set of clear and straightforward application and reporting guidelines that provide us with the necessary legal and evaluative information. We also offer assistance with the application and reporting process. During country visits, Firelight staff holds New Applicant Meetings for groups interested in submitting proposals. Individual site visits also allow us to review and provide feedback on grantee-partner financial and programmatic recordkeeping. We work with groups to assist them with the final report process as needed. In addition to meeting our own information needs, we aim to enable effective groups to refine their internal systems for monitoring, evaluation, and documentation. In so doing, they become better able to secure funds from other donors.

Organizations working at the community level effectively address the needs of children and families made vulnerable by HIV/AIDS. Unfortunately, too few of these groups have an opportunity to share their work. Organizations that document their programs, strategies, and results can share with peer organizations, policy makers, and donors. Firelight uses several strategies to facilitate documentation and dissemination. During Grantee-Partner Meetings, we encourage groups to discuss their approaches to documenting their work with each other. Recognizing that documentation requires time and resources, Firelight initiated a new program to provide Documentation and Dissemination Grants to selected organizations in 2004. Nine grantee-partners were awarded funds to develop tools to describe and share their work. This first round of Documentation and Dissemination Grants will help identify strategies for supporting documentation needs more broadly in the future.

Conducting Site Visits
During fiscal year 2004, Firelight staff traveled to Africa five times, visiting grantee-partners, observing their programs, and building relationships with local experts and resource people. Site visits are one of the best ways to learn about the work of community-based organizations. Especially in view of our grantee-partners’ limited capacity to report in English (often their second or third language), site visits provide an opportunity to observe programs in action. Staff can engage in dialogue with organizations’ staff, board, volunteers, youth, and community members. For grantee-partners, site visits demonstrate Firelight’s personal interest in their work and offer an opportunity to address key issues with an outside resource. Given our limited staff resources and our growing number of grantee-partners, it is difficult to visit every organization that we fund. Firelight works with local consultants to assist our staff with the first-hand observation and support that is critical to our grantmaking.

Working with Local Resource People and Consultants
We continue to expand our network of consultants, who are individuals with an extensive understanding of their region and its response to HIV/AIDS. This growing cadre of local experts serves as our “eyes on the ground,” assisting Firelight in evaluating local needs and organizations. These individuals support our monitoring, evaluation, and technical assistance goals by conducting site visits, evaluating new applicants, and carrying out baseline assessments. In November and December 2003, Firelight consultants conducted the first baseline assessments of new Firelight grantee-partners in Malawi, Rwanda, Uganda, and Zambia. These assessments provide a snapshot of an organization’s administrative and programming capacity at the outset of their relationship with Firelight.

Providing Networking Opportunities
Many of the community-based groups we work with, especially those located in rural areas, have never had the opportunity to network with other organizations. Providing opportunities for different organizations to come together and share their work reduces isolation, increases learning, and enables collaboration on many levels. During staff country visits, Firelight sponsors national and regional Grantee-Partner Meetings in which participants share lessons learned and exchange ideas about programmatic and operational issues. In 2004, meetings were held in Lesotho and Rwanda. Topics addressed during these meetings include documentation, privacy and confidentiality in reporting, and strategies for effective networking.

The Firelight Foundation provides additional opportunities for networking through sponsoring grantee-partner participation in regional and international conferences. Firelight sponsored the participation of Siphelile Kaseke (see page 69), founder of Youth for a Child in Christ (YOCIC), as a youth representative at the XVth International Conference on HIV/AIDS held in Bangkok in July 2004. The Global Health Council chose Beatrice Chola, Executive Director of Bwafwano Community Home-Based Care Organization also a Firelight grantee, to present a paper on Bwafwano’s community mobilization work. Firelight sponsored Beatrice’s travel to Washington D.C. for this conference.

Sponsoring Organizational Workshops
Firelight has funded workshops to help organizations develop their programmatic and management skills. Designed to address the technical support needs identified by the grantee-partners themselves, Africa-based non-governmental organizations experienced in training and support conduct these workshops. These gatherings provide groups with the opportunity to reflect on their growth, develop new skills, and identify future directions.

In October 2003, Firelight co-sponsored a five-day organizational development workshop led by the Grassroots Alliance for Community Education (GRACE) in Kenya. Participants included 14 Firelight grantees from 5 countries. The training covered a variety of topics, including governance, personnel, financial management, documentation, monitoring, evaluation, and program strategies. Firelight funding also supported GRACE to follow up with participants six months after the workshop. Similar workshops are planned for grantee-partners in southern Africa in 2005.

Enhancing Information and Communication Exchange
Organizations share their work through Firelight’s newsletter, which is produced both in English and Kinyarwandan. Each bimonthly issue targets a particular theme, such as “working with children with disabilities” or “youth participation,” and features the programs and strategies contributed by our grantee partners. The newsletter includes information about online (or easily accessible) tools and alerts readers to other funding opportunities and information sources.

Firelight funds the distribution of exemplary materials developed by or for grassroots organizations addressing the needs of children orphaned and affected by AIDS. In 2004, Firelight distributed several publications developed by the International HIV/AIDS Alliance, including Building Blocks: Resources for Communities Working with Orphans and Vulnerable Children. These resources provide organizations with materials designed to inform their programming and assist their organizational development. For groups lacking internet access, these written resources are especially helpful.