Background
The integration of Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Systems in all facets of project planning and implementation has become a prerequisite for donor support. This is against the backdrop that M&E provides an efficient budgeting system, focuses on results beyond just implementing the activities and promotes organizational learning amongst others. Driven by the desire to ensure that all ACDEP member stations/projects have the requisite knowledge and skills to implement projects effectively and in a result oriented manner, ACDEP has been in the process of building the capacities of its members since 2000.
To ensure that there is a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system in place in all the stations/projects and all the staff being part and parcel of it, a resource team was put in place to provide relevant and efficient technical backstopping to member stations. Currently, there are about twenty four (24) ACDEP member NGOs implementing agricultural, health and community-based rehabilitation programmes have been trained in M&E systems. A fourteen-member resource team drawn from the three regions of northern Ghana (Northern, Upper East and Upper West) has been constituted to provide technical support to the ACDEP members.
Between 2001 and 2006, ACDEP has organized a series of training courses on Monitoring and Evaluation with the assistance of external consultants from I/C Consult of the Netherlands and CHF of Canada for the M&E Resource team, programme managers and officers and staff of ACDEP Secretariat. Indeed, M&E within the ACDEP context has over the past five years metamorphosed from Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (PM&E) to Result Based Management (RBM). The resource team and project managers/officers have all gone through this transition and are currently incorporating RBM in all programmes, projects and activities.
Programme Purpose
To improve the organizational effectiveness, efficiency and capacity of the church development programmes as effective and important agents of change in northern Ghana.
Programme Objective
To facilitate the development, integration, internalization, and use of M&E mechanisms amongst the church development projects for effective and results-oriented grassroots development.