The value of peer learning
Our team and grantees group photo
At the start of June I was thrilled to join our grants team in Koforidua to support a 3-day capacity building session on Making Change Happen. We’ve run so many capacity building sessions before as a team across 3 rounds of granting and 20 grants issued. As a programme, Ghana Somubi Dwumadie has always emphasised working in partnership with our grantees, and taking supportive approaches. In particular, because we are working in the disability and mental health space, we’re especially mindful of matters of inclusion, participation and accessibility.
In fact, for our third and final grants round, our “Legacy and Sustainability Grants” we particularly focused on funding Disabled People’s Organisations and Women’s Rights Organisations. As part of this funding round, at least a quarter of each grantee’s award was designated for organisational capacity building, and working with Ghana Federation of Disability Organisations we supported our grantees with a capacity assessment and helped them develop action plans to make their organisations even stronger.
In addition to their dedicated capacity building funds, we also provided nearly a month’s worth of capacity building directly to grantees over the first 8 months of these 12 month grants. Firstly, an introductory week covering everything from understanding your grant agreement to data protection to safeguarding. We then did 3 days of Monitoring Evaluation and Learning. Next we did 4 days of strategic planning and leadership which I wrote about a while ago. And finally, the exciting one (even though I am not supposed to have favourites) 3 days on Making Change Happen. It has been especially nice to hear from some of the participants about the nurturing nature of the support they've received.
Even though multi-day and residential events can be really exhausting, we had so much fun! One thing I particularly loved was the way we found multiple accommodations for the people in the room including personal assistants, sign language interpreters, and a Twi interpreter. The other great thing was that even though my team are really experienced, we took the decision to have the training predominantly delivered by former grantees ABAK and VOICE Ghana, represented by their directors Philip and Francis respectively. Both organisations were part of our 'Evidence and Effectiveness' grants round, delivering social behaviour change projects. They delivered a day of training each and just blew our grantees away with their understanding of the issues on the ground and their creative approaches to overcoming them. The element of peer learning was, I believe, really critical to this approach, and really helped to make the learnings and messages feel achievable. Of course our final day of training on advocacy was still great, but having the support and engagement of ABAK and VOICE really sprinkled a little extra something into the first two days.
Interestingly, not just the participants, but also the facilitators got a lot out of the experience, and they talked about it being a real learning and sharing experience. It was also exciting for the Ghana Somubi team to see how our former grantees had been growing since their funding round, ABAK, who had a 12 month grant, are now looking to expand nationally, while VOICE, who are just wrapping up their multi-year grant, are transforming into a regional organisation - I was so impressed with them both!
Next time I develop a capacity building session, I'll definitely be looking to find ways to share that peer experience. We're hoping to put on a final learning event for our grantees later this year, and it will definitely feature strongly!