Client and Partners: Segal Malawi

Description: The Social Impact Incubator (SII) Program in Malawi brings together outstanding Malawian development organizations receiving support from the Segal Family Foundation to develop the skills of their grassroots leaders, or Champions. The SII Programme attempted to find local consultants in Malawi to deliver Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) training and support to their Champions, but their efforts were not successful. The Segal team in Malawi sought the services of an external consultant to support training and development of their Champions in M&E.

Ichuli was contracted to design and deliver an intensive week-long training and capacity development program for over 50 SII Champions from a range of development organizations spanning the entrepreneurship, business development, agriculture, social protection, human rights, health and education sectors. Ichuli helped the SII Champions achieve their M&E goals through the following processes:

• Building Foundations: Introduce and familiarise SII Champions with program M&E approaches, strategies and tools.
• Reviewing Progress: Provide technical leadership for a strategic review of each SII Champions’ current M&E system to strengthen their data collection processes and tools, reporting, and use of data and information internally and externally.
• Developing Simple Monitoring and Evaluation Plans and Basic Tools: Provide technical assistance to develop SII Champions’ M&E plans and tools.

In addition to group sessions, one-on-one coaching and mentoring meetings were held with individual SII Champions to help them refine their understanding of program M&E and provide individualised support to improve their data collection processes, strategies and results-sharing approaches. Following the week-long program, additional coaching sessions were conducted with each Champion to ensure their new learnings were embedded into their organizations as part of their new M&E culture.