Development programmes are often complex in nature and hence require support for programme management and monitoring.
We have developed a solution which enables:
Defining monitor and track activities in a Project, with dynamic hierarchy of activities by any unit of time across years.
Activities can be assigned to one or more people/groups consisting of internal or external teams to update status periodically.
Activities status is updated by selection of color and percentage by person/group responsible.
Activities are assigned to one or more agencies that are responsible to update the status. If there are multiple status updates from different agencies for an activity, the reviewer approved status will be considered for reporting.
Dashboards give a view on status of activities against different time periods.
Inspired by the Sustainable Rural Livelihood framework, Measure of Livelihoods is a participative monitoring tool for assessing livelihoods.
The tool has three parts:
An iconised reference tool – which lets the community identify themselves with five kinds of persons within their village. The tool is derived from a series of indicators of five capitals, which are locally relevant.
Detailed case studies of select families. Choice of families is based on analysis of data from the iconised reference tool.
Understanding of the vulnerability context,which largely refers to factors affecting people’s livelihood and vulnerability.
The first part provides quantitative data and trends on how the five capitals behave within the project area. The second part provides the qualitative aspects, within the same sample, so that managers can take critical decisions such as re-strategising. The third part provides contextual information which validates the first and second part and also addresses the attributability of changes in livelihoods.
The tool has been used across multiple villages and has helped programmes assess the progress on outcomes easily. Please reach out to us for more information.
Research studies which are carried out in rural setting have contextual issues like illiteracy, and hence written forms of data collection cannot always be used there. While participatory methods like maps, drawings, pictures and diagrams are recommended in these scenarios, the sensitive nature of research queries often render participatory exercises ineffective.
Acknowledging this, we conceived a “polling booth” methodology which balances confidentiality concerns, information requirements and ease of data collection. This methodology uses ballot boxes and coloured cards for recording responses that are mostly of a “Yes” or “No” nature. It thus ensures confidentiality and anonymity of respondents, thereby facilitating uninhibited responses.
In collaboration with PRAXIS, we developed a self-administrable tool with the objective of enabling community-led organisations to measure progress in community mobilisation and its pathway towards sustainability. The COPI tool helps identify key areas related to administrative, programmatic and financial systems that need to be strengthened. It applies a five-step process: Assessment, Analysis, Planning, Action and Monitoring.
The participatory characteristics of the COPI tool help Community Organisations assess their progress from a basic stage to a vibrant stage, which determines the ability of the community to own programmes and influence outcomes of HIV prevention and vulnerability reduction.
3 FOLD – Wealthy, Resilient and Responsible Farmers
3Fold is about developing wealthy, resilient and responsible farmers – making them successful entrepreneurs and sustained job creators, helping them increase their income by three times. It believes in the empowerment of farmers and their entrepreneurship potential.
It addresses the key gaps of:
Lack of integrated services (end-to-end) which is appropriate to the farmers,
Need for ‘diversified options’ (value addition, farm, allied and off-farm), augmented by ‘integrators/activators at field level’ and ‘technology’, and
Establishment of a sustainable eco-system at a Cluster level, that enables collaborative actions for collective impact.
The cycle of ill health and poverty is kept intact by system inefficiencies, episodic treatment seeking behaviour of the poor, and minimal focus on prevention and non-medical determinants of health. The poor lose up to 1-2 months of productive time in a year to an illness of self and family. Almost 50-80% of them live with some form of undiagnosed illnesses and die earlier than those who are economically better off. About 50-60 million people in India have been pushed to poverty, in the last decade, because of health-related expenditure.
Invest for Wellness (i4We) is a system innovation in primary healthcare, which combines health and wealth interventions, and focuses on wellness for the poor in an affordable, quality assured and scalable way. The programme ensures the primary care of members, navigates them through a range of existing secondary and tertiary providers and uses a blended financing model. The model combines medical, behavioural and social science with an appropriate mix of technology and health financing. It is currently delivered in four settings – Urban, Rural, Factories and Sex Workers’ collectives.
In any setting, a household becomes a member by saving a minimum of ~ 0.8-1 USD per week in a local health group. When a family member is ill, they get free, prompt, convenient and empathetic care in the local clinic by a nurse and a dial-in doctor. When they are well, they are screened systematically for 10 high-burden conditions. In the case of chronic conditions, continued support to adhere to treatment and other changes, is provided. When the condition requires hospitalization or advanced treatment, they are referred to a quality assured network of providers and treatment adherence.
The i4We model is guided by the philosophy of “work with what works” and complements the existing network of health providers by making them more effective and efficient, with a customer focus.
Members get health advice, assured screening and treatment for 20 diseases and conditions, and priority access to health services.
Indicators are reinvented, poorly built and do not stack up to larger goals
What
CMS has collated and categorised 2000 indicators from various sources for the following sector/topics:
Health
Primary Education
HIV
Adolescent Health
Social and Behavioural Change Communication
And others
How it Works
Indicators are organised on – Aspect, type, source, frequency, disaggregation, link to SDGs, ease of collection, cost of collection, numerator, denominator, description.
For Projects/Programmes working in this area, the bank has been used to:
Select indicators for M&E for existing proven bank
Understand how they link up to their RA
15 programmes have used the bank successfully to decide on indicators or modify them.
Village-level monitoring can play an important role in fostering knowledge and peer review sharing across villages in the same region (Gram Panchayat, Taluka, Zilla Parishad).
The ADI presents a new method of monitoring village development, because it expands the scope of understanding rural development– going beyond measuring physical infrastructure and livelihoods outcomes in isolation– to embed them within the multi-faceted context of SDGs inspired holistic development. Being able to focus closely on individual dimensions is an important way to find the aspects of village development that need attention, facilitating planning of policies. In other words, at a national level, ADI will provide data for policy planning and intervention.
CMS recognises that a systematic effort to capture, use and share learnings is the cornerstone of effective strategy, action and implementation. Towards this, we bring the following strengths:
We are a learning organisation with 20+ years of experience. Our sister organisations, our strong, diverse and vast partnerships and our breadth of work provide us a 360-degree view of development
We work with the best partners and programmes in the field and are always open to learning from them
We carry our own experiments into our field labs on a range of issues
We have developed a number of tools and solutions over time, across a variety of subject areas, and catalogued them for our partners to use
We facilitate organisations and programmes to learn through:
Designing and operationalising systems for learning and knowledge management
Support and facilitate reflection, documentation and dissemination, using learning lenses through different forums
