The International Budget Partnership (IBP) has released It's our money. Where's it gone?, a new documentary film on the work one of its partners, Muslims for Human Rights (MUHURI), is doing to involve communities directly in monitoring the Constituency Development Fund (CDF) in Mombasa, Kenya. The CDF allocates approximately one million dollars annually to each member of Parliament to spend on development projects in his or her constituency but provides for no meaningful independent oversight. This is the story of ordinary Kenyans stepping in to do something about it. MUHURI uses social audits to involve communities in monitoring and holding their government accountable for managing the public's money and meeting the needs of its people, especially the poor and most vulnerable.
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What can be done to ensure that the poorest Africans have access to a healthcare system that charges user fees? A team of researchers from the University of Montreal has produced a thorough compilation of all existing knowledge on this subject in four bilingual policy briefs. The briefs present options that have been shown to promote access to care: abolition of user fees for healthcare services, case-by-case exemptions for the worst-off, health equity funds, and health insurance that includes coverage for the poor. The objective of this project was to give leaders a comprehensive overview of actions that have already been undertaken to evaluate what options are best suited to their context. With the assistance of an international NGO (HELP – Hilfe zur Selbsthilfe e.V.), consultations were carried out in Burkina Faso to strengthen the relevance of these policy briefs. Starting in November, these four documents will be distributed in Burkina Faso as part of a HELP project that will test a trial of user fees abolition.
The World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Knowledge Translation and Health Technology Assessment in Health Equity is currently in the process of updating and expanding its Equity-Oriented Toolkit for Health Technology Assessment (HTA). The toolkit is based on a needs-based model of health technology assessment. It provides tools that explicitly consider health equity at each of the four steps of health technology assessment: burden of illness, community effectiveness, economic evaluation, and knowledge translation and implementation. The Centre has recently received seed funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research to update the toolkit via a series of workshops targeting both academics and policy makers. This will allow a debate on the tools to be included – or not – at each step. The Centre is exploring the plausibility of incorporating health impact assessment within the toolkit.
The UK Department for International Development (DFID) works with a wide range of partners from long-term arrangements with partner governments and multilateral organisations to short-term humanitarian aid projects funded through non-governmental organisations. DFID's interest is in ensuring that each is devised and delivered in the most efficient and effective way and links to identified objectives set out in a Divisional Performance Framework or Country/Regional Plan. This guide has been written for DFID project workers and DFID partners, and focuses on helping to make the best use of the Logical Framework (logframe) in designing and managing projects. The new designed format aims to address those weaknesses by encouraging the identification of objectives at the right level, more robust specification of indicators, increased coverage of baseline and target information and better quantification of results. The guide applies to any one involved in the design approval or active use of the logframe and all DFID projects of a value of one million pounds and above. Additional guidance in annexes has been provided to help the reader form a broader picture of what is involved in putting together a logframe.
While written with United Nations Development Programme staff, stakeholders and partners in mind, the handbook provides a useful overview of why and how to evaluate for development results which can be used in other contexts. This handbook concentrates on planning, monitoring and evaluating of results in development and is designed to be used as a reference throughout the programme cycle. The handbook covers the following areas: the integrated nature of planning, monitoring and evaluation, and describes the critical role they play in managing for development results; the conceptual foundations of planning and specific guidance on planning techniques and the preparation of results frameworks that guide monitoring and evaluation; how to plan for monitoring and evaluation before implementing a plan and issues related to monitoring, reporting and review; and an overview of the UNDP evaluation function and the policy framework, including key elements of evaluation design and tools and describe practical steps in managing the evaluation process.
Health Links partnerships have the capacity to make a significant contribution to health system strengthening but only if they are well planned, managed and aligned to needs. Governments and health managers in many countries, including the United Kingdom (UK), Uganda, Malawi, Zambia and Tanzania, are now beginning to look more actively at how these types of partnerships can contribute to health system development in their countries. This manual provides guidance, shares experiences and offers examples of good practice from those directly involved in Links. It aims to help both UK and developing country Link partners to think more strategically about their work. As a reference document for Link partnerships, this manual is aimed at those seeking to form a Link, or already involved in an established Link, such as health professionals, policy makers, health advisors, NGOs and others from the UK or a developing country interested in finding out more about what Links are and what they can offer.
The Municipal Service Project (MSP) has just updated its website. MSP is an inter-disciplinary project made up of academics, labour unions, non-governmental organisations, social movements and activists from around the globe. The project is guided by a Steering Committee, made up of representatives from project partners and coordinated by the project co-directors, David McDonald (Queen’s University, Canada) and Greg Ruiters (Rhodes University, South Africa). It is a five-year inter-sectoral and inter-regional research project that systematically explores alternatives to the privatisation and commercialisation of service provision in the health, water, sanitation and electricity sectors. Having spent the first two phases of the project (2000-2007) criticising privatisation, this phase of the project (2008-2013) will analyse service delivery models that are successful alternatives to commercialisation and to understand the conditions required for their sustainability and reproducibility.
This manual outlines some of the practical and organisational considerations required to set up support groups for survivors of domestic violence in a way that enhances their safety and self esteem. It also presents three possible models, any of which can be used as basis for running such groups. Two of these models are facilitated support group programmes and the third model is that of an un-facilitated self-help group. It looks at some of the practical and organisational considerations required to set up support groups, the roles and responsibilities of the facilitator and the co-facilitator skills, knowledge training and experience that are needed to run support groups for survivors of domestic violence, how to plan, promote develop and manage a support group, group policies and protocols and how these can contribute to maintaining the proper environment necessary for survivors of domestic violence. It provides ‘how–to’ guides for running sessions for the two different facilitated models that are known to work effectively.
This manual is a free online guide that provides very basic guidelines for small non-governmental organisations (NGOs) in the developing world regarding fund-raising, focusing on the importance of adhering to the basic principles of good governance. The first impulse of many such non-governmental organisation (NGO) seeking funding is to request the contact information for possible funders, and once such information is received, these NGOs often write immediately to the potential funder, stressing how desperately funds are needed. Sadly, this approach often harms the NGO, rather than garnering support. Not only does it rarely attract funding, it can turn funding sources against the NGO altogether. This manual intends to discourage that behaviour and, instead, encourage simple activities by small NGOs that help continually cultivate and attract support. It is, instead, a set of guidelines on how to prepare an organisation to be attractive to donors, how to search for potential donors that support organisations in the developing world and how to approach such potential donors.
Planning, monitoring and evaluation in development requires a focus on nationally owned development priorities and results and should reflect the guiding principles of national ownership, capacity development human development. This handbook is aims to enhance the results-based culture within the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and improve the quality of planning, monitoring and evaluation. While written with UNDP staff, stakeholders and partners in mind, the handbook provides a useful overview of why and how to evaluate for results that can be used in other contexts. This handbook concentrates on planning, monitoring and evaluating of results in development and is designed to be used as a reference throughout the programme cycle. It deals with the integrated nature of planning, monitoring and evaluation, and describes the critical role they play in managing for development results, as well as the conceptual foundations of planning and specific guidance on planning techniques and the preparation of results frameworks that guide monitoring and evaluation.