Malaika blogs from the ECB2 Advisors' meeting in DC
A year is a long time in the ECB project. After all it was this same time last year that ECB2 had its first face to face meeting in NY city just as fall was starting to gust through the streets. The only thing that was newer than the faces around the table was the workplan, summoned into existence because the advisors felt the original Gates-approved workplan would not help them achieve the real accountability and impact measurement needs of their agency. Brave souls that they were, they decided to try something else. None of us knew what we were in for!
Naturally, a year’s worth of hindsight provides much room for contemplation—and overall, it seems that the news is good. Updates from each agency show that indeed, things are happening. ECB2 brings that extra shoulder against the wheel of organizations’ progress on accountability and impact measurement. Some have hired monitoring and evaluation staff (Save and Mercy Corps) or adopting or developing M&E policies (CARE and Mercy Corps). This is of course a blatant overstatement but it seems as though the guide is on its way to celebrity status in some field locations and has so far made appearances in four languages. We cannot get deployments together fast enough for standing team members, their eagerness in itself being a success story, and the two we have had so far have garnered, in the case of the first, positive though largely absent feedback, and in the second case, fairly enthusiastic reviews from the field. And let’s not forget that we helped Jock Baker achieve his workplan (sorry, inside joke to ECB2).
Of course the trials and seemingly impenetrable organizational obstacles dog every success – lack of staff, lack of staff time, lack of skilled people –how many times did we hear these and other staff capacity refrains (help us out, ECB1). Getting the organizations to treat accountability and impact measurement with the gravity and fervency of commitment that they deserve and the million dollar, pound, question of how we get the field engaged.
What was different this year ( at least in my limited perspective) was a sense of having crested or nearly crested a wave of daring, creative and highly speculative ideas. Starting out as a group of strangers not much more than a year ago, we did things that hadn’t been done – created a standing team that helped us wade through difficult brainstorming sessions and emerge with bright ideas. The group dynamics were much different – this was a group of people that had built interpersonal relationships. We had buckets full of lessons learned under our seven-stranded belt (again, permit me to exaggerate) and we had some nice shining successes to be proud of. As one of small group put it, gettng seven large complex agencies to agree on anything is an accomplishment! Look how far we’ve come.
Naturally, a year’s worth of hindsight provides much room for contemplation—and overall, it seems that the news is good. Updates from each agency show that indeed, things are happening. ECB2 brings that extra shoulder against the wheel of organizations’ progress on accountability and impact measurement. Some have hired monitoring and evaluation staff (Save and Mercy Corps) or adopting or developing M&E policies (CARE and Mercy Corps). This is of course a blatant overstatement but it seems as though the guide is on its way to celebrity status in some field locations and has so far made appearances in four languages. We cannot get deployments together fast enough for standing team members, their eagerness in itself being a success story, and the two we have had so far have garnered, in the case of the first, positive though largely absent feedback, and in the second case, fairly enthusiastic reviews from the field. And let’s not forget that we helped Jock Baker achieve his workplan (sorry, inside joke to ECB2).
Of course the trials and seemingly impenetrable organizational obstacles dog every success – lack of staff, lack of staff time, lack of skilled people –how many times did we hear these and other staff capacity refrains (help us out, ECB1). Getting the organizations to treat accountability and impact measurement with the gravity and fervency of commitment that they deserve and the million dollar, pound, question of how we get the field engaged.
What was different this year ( at least in my limited perspective) was a sense of having crested or nearly crested a wave of daring, creative and highly speculative ideas. Starting out as a group of strangers not much more than a year ago, we did things that hadn’t been done – created a standing team that helped us wade through difficult brainstorming sessions and emerge with bright ideas. The group dynamics were much different – this was a group of people that had built interpersonal relationships. We had buckets full of lessons learned under our seven-stranded belt (again, permit me to exaggerate) and we had some nice shining successes to be proud of. As one of small group put it, gettng seven large complex agencies to agree on anything is an accomplishment! Look how far we’ve come.
posted by Emergency Capacity Building Project Team Blog at 7:41 AM
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