Monitoring, Evaluation & Technical Assistance

Firelight Foundation employs a variety of strategies to ensure that funds are used responsibly and effectively and to enhance the work of grantee-partners through learning and capacity building. Our Monitoring, Evaluation, & Technical Assistance (META) program is focused on the outcomes of our grantmaking and our partners’ efforts to support children. Our approach strives to remain practical, relevant, and respectful, while simultaneously providing information that cultivates local leadership and community decision making. Building on the groundwork laid in previous years, Firelight continued to develop our META program in 2006.

GROWTH
Contracting Consultants
Firelight engaged Insideout and Otherwise, a collaborative consultancy team from South Africa, to support the development of our META Program. Insideout and Otherwise offer monitoring and evaluation training courses for non-profit and public sector organizations, using a collaborative, people-centered approach. The organizations’ philosophies embrace approaches that are focused on being participatory and building capacity, as well as culturally sensitive to the African context.

In 2006 Insideout completed a critical analysis of Firelight’s information collection tools, a list of potential, relevant indicators for grantee-partners conducting their own META, and an overview of the pilot monitoring and evaluation training workshops. The group also drafted a follow-up plan for grantee-partners regarding technical assistance needs for effective monitoring and evaluation. Insideout will continue to assist Firelight in formulating our META strategies and to provide training and support to grantee-partners over the next two years.

META Coordinator
In November 2005, recognizing the growing need within the foundation to develop the META program, Firelight hired Jennifer Lentfer as Program Officer and META Coordinator. While working as part of the grantmaking team, Jennifer is supporting the foundation as we assess not only the outcomes of individual grants, but also the effectiveness of our overall operations in fulfilling our mission.

ACTIVITIES
Think Tank
In January Firelight invited eight key resource people, staff members from grantee-partners in five countries, and our Advisory Board member Linda Richter to Cape Town, South Africa, for a Think Tank. The event built on previous efforts to draw on outside expertise and to internally direct that knowledge. The feedback elicited focused specifically on aspects of the monitoring and evaluation program proposed by InsideOut and Otherwise. The program included practical exercises for participants to test parts of the proposed training. The Think Tank proved a unique opportunity for key resource people and partners from different countries to meet and share their experiences, while providing critical feedback to Firelight about our META program.

Grassroots Girls Initiative
As part of Firelight’s funding support from the Nike Foundation, in June 2006 staff members participated in a meeting of Grassroots Girls Initiative (GGI) grantees hosted by the Nike Foundation. Through this pilot initiative, Firelight and five other foundations working internationally at the community level are looking at ways to better capture and analyze the quantity and quality of services provided to adolescent girls (ages 10 through 19 years) through their grantmaking programs. Firelight serves on GGI’s Monitoring and Evaluation Working Group, which works with assistance from the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW).

XVI International AIDS Conference
Firelight provided support to representatives of nine grantee-partners, through their affiliated organizations, to attend the Envisioning the Future pre-conference and the August XVI International AIDS Conference (IAC) in Toronto. These META grants were provided as a means of assisting our partners as they:

• Shared their work with HIV/AIDS affected children in an international forum,

• Networked with and learned from other HIV/AIDS service organizations from around the world, and

• Used what they learned within their organizations and in the communities of their respective countries.

For more information on the activities of Firelight and our grantee-partners at the IAC, please see page 33.

Visit from Malawi’s Resource Officer
Firelight’s resource person in Malawi, Howard Kasiya, visited the Firelight offices in August 2006. During his time in Santa Cruz, Howard helped Firelight staff gain a firmer understanding of our Malawi portfolio, including an analysis of realities on the ground for our Malawi grantee-partners. Howard also went away with an enhanced understanding of Firelight. Part of his time was spent developing a Terms of Reference for resource people to formalize their existing relationships with Firelight. For a more detailed perspective on Howard’s contributions to Firelight, please see page 16.