Partners and Funders: Segal Family Foundation

Description: Fundi Bots works with schools and communities to provide hands-on, practical STEM and general science education in classrooms and communities. Its mission is to use robotics training in African schools to create and inspire a new generation of problem solvers, innovators and change-makers. Fundi Bots wants to see improved – and equal – access to quality science education, better technology innovation and overall economic growth across Africa as a direct result of exposing students from an early age to better science education, training and tools.

Ichuli was hired to help Fundi Bots develop its theory of change, MEL system and M&E tools. Through a series of hands-on workshops, Ichuli coached the program team to refine their ideas and conceptions about the key changes they create through their programming. The process helped them to make stronger connections and linkages between the interventions they promote and the results they achieve, and to clearly articulate their change process as an organization. The development of the MEL strategy was accomplished through extended engagement with the Fundi Bots team to both design a strategy they could use and a series of processes they could internalize and reproduce in their daily work. Key to the method was deep and ongoing mentoring of the team to understand the fundamental steps involved in program M&E and to gain the skills and confidence to improve their M&E systems and collection and use of data through appropriate tools.