Worldwide, Assessments of applications to the International Development Fund – Malawi and South Asia, 2009–2010, Scottish Government.
Focus Areas:

LTS carried out an evaluation of The Scottish Government’s International Development Fund (IDF), which gives grant funds to support collaborations between Scottish and African organisations. The projects supported are very diverse – health, technology, poverty, governance, education – and the evaluation team used included a total of 10 people. The team included world-class expertise in project management, M&E, communication, health sector, education, social capital and more. Our evaluation looked at project performance to guide improved practice in future and also at programme performance to give the Scottish Government advice on its international development policy and approach to the IDF. With such a broad focus, a set of case studies were important in order to develop meaningful lessons and recommendations. We have produced a series of briefing notes to synthesise key lessons for different stakeholders, which have been well used by the client. The IDF grants process has been revised as a result.

 

Worldwide, Darwin Initiative Monitoring and Evaluation / Management of Applications Process, 2003-2010, UK Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
Focus Areas:

LTS is contracted by the UK Department for Food and Rural Affairs to support the management of the Darwin Initiative. The Initiative provides £7 million worth of funds per annum to projects carried out in partnership between UK institutions and developing countries, Overseas Territories of the United Kingdom and countries whose economies are in transition. Services LTS provides under the Darwin Initiative include management of the applications process, financial administration of all projects, project management support services including Secretariat functions and delivery of the monitoring and evaluation programme. This includes a range of services relating to communication, Learning and Knowledge, including: facilitation of lesson-sharing workshops, development of thematic reviews, production of targeted briefing notes and engaging newsletters, and management of an interactive website based on a complex information management system.

 

Worldwide, Development Innovation Fund, 2010-2011, UK Department for International Development.

Focus Areas:

The UK White paper on international development outlines DFID’s approach to working with civil society, including a commitment to help community groups support small-scale, innovative work. To this end, the Development Innovation Fund (DIF) has been launched and aims to provide grants to small organisations involved in providing specific small-scale, one-off support that directly targets poverty in the developing world, and includes a significant development awareness component in the UK. The Fund supports projects which demonstrate that they will make a positive impact on the lives of poor people in the developing world. All projects must show how lessons learnt will be used to raise public awareness in the UK of international development issues. The DIF has a budget of £7m for an initial period of 16 months. LTS’ role is to manage the entire Development Innovation Fund process from inviting and guiding applications, through appraising and assessing applications, managing budgets and distributing grants, and on to evaluating funded projects and reporting to DFID on delivery of the Fund.

The project developed mechanisms for resource use and conservation in the high conservation value forests of Mount Cameroon. The project was based in the Limbe Botanic Garden, which was transformed into a semi-autonomous and viable research, training and information management institution providing services in participatory biodiversity conservation. During the final months LTS facilitated development and implementation of a dissemination strategy. Project staff were supported in a process of reflection on their experience and learning. LTS provided a two-level service, both mentoring staff through the writing process, and editing and writing paper after learning sessions. All outputs were attributed only to the MCP staff and the products had no reference to LTS. The process produced: 5 policy briefing notes to influence policy-change, The Cameroon Mountains Biodiversity and Livelihoods series (5 technical papers, with authorship attributed to project staff), Posters to support key issues (SEE ALSO THE OTHER ENTRY).

 

This national-level sector programme contributes towards improving decentralised forestry governance through building capacity of district-level service delivery, and promoting multi-stakeholder involvement in the management of forest areas. The programme objective is "to improve the livelihoods of forest dependent communities through improved sustainable collaborative management of forests both in forest reserves and customary land." In achieving this objective, the programme is explicit about being people-centred in its approach to sustainable development through recognising their needs, priorities and desired outcomes. This requires real engagement and  significant changes in behaviour, attitudes and perceptions at a number of levels. LTS has facilitated development of an innovative communication and learning strategy within the Forestry Department, with a focus on influencing policy and
behaviour change. This has led to influential activities, such as high profile radio debates that have raise public and policy understanding of key issues (such as illegal charcoal burning), and the development of a simple calendar linking forestry to international development commitments which has really engaged both senior EC officials in Brussels and politicians in Malawi in the plight of forestry there. LTS has worked with a core communications team, and helped them to understand better the ways to get their issues heard in policy and public arena.

The EC-funded pilot project (1997-2003) was designed to develop the capacity of the Malawi Forestry Department to interpret and implement NFP with an emphasis on encouraging participatory social forestry. The project had drafted a dissemination strategy through which to share the lessons learned from implementation of the SFTEP (in the 5 pilot districts) with a wider audience in Malawi. The strategy included: identifying and developing the key project lessons; producing appropriate documents to share these lessons with the right audiences. This all had to be achieved in a short time-frame - before the final end-of-project. LTS implemented this dissemination strategy. A set of policy briefing notes were produced, along with a set of "Practice Notes" to guide district forestry staff/practitioners through current issues. These were complemented by presentation material to support the project's outcomes. These products have been widely distributed and highly valued in Malawi.

 

Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia, Support to Forestry College Curriculum Revision, 2003-2005, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Finland.

Region:   Africa
Country: Malawi, Tanzania, Zambia
Focus Areas:    

The Forestry Colleges Curriculum Development Project aimed to revise the forestry curricula, build the capacity of College teachers to carry out curricula review, update teaching methods and produce new materials. The project objective was to link and build capacity for the national forestry programme in its early stages of implementation in order that lack of skills are no longer a constraint to its success. The Project also aimed to promote female student involvement, establish a monitoring and evaluation system and upgrade College facilities with a view to setting up systems for self -financing of the college in the future. International and regional networking were key strategies for change in this project.

 

The Department of Water Affairs and Forestry (DWAF) is responsible for managing South Africa's water and forestry resources, and for reversing historic patterns of management detrimental to the interests of the poor. As an integrated part of a public sector reform programme, DFID supported the forest sector in South Africa for over a decade. LTS's support (2003-2005) to the WFSP covered four key areas of activity - completion of the restructuring / privatisation process for the plantation resource, consolidation of organisational changes within the Chief Directorate of Forests, identification and establishment of the enabling environment and modalities for an enterprise based approach to achieving improved rural livelihoods from forestry, and review and re-design of an NFP process. Our work aimed to enhance the commercial opportunities and capabilities of previously disadvantaged people. We also facilitated the DWAF forestry team to think through strategic communication needs to support their organisational change process.

The FSPSP has been at the heart of forest sector reform processes in Uganda from 1999-2004. It has produced a number of briefing notes for use within Uganda to inform the stakeholders of issues and reform progress. Towards the end of the Project, it wanted to share the lessons learned from implementation of the reform processes with a wider audience internationally. It was decided that this would best be done through a series of nine 'process learning notes' that would share the real experiences of reform to help others going through similar processes. Each note focused on what particular sub-process (e.g. policy development, planning the new institutions, influencing, sector co-ordination). LTS facilitated the drafting of these notes and to help complete other documents, in recognition of the limited time available to project staff.

 

LTS provided marketing and communications services to Scottish Development International (SDI) to produce promotional materials, with a goal of effectively publicizing the work provided by Scottish educational institutions to international aid organizations. The project involved consulting a wide range of stakeholders from a number of sectors including health, technology, education and science, to produce an effective but clear and readable document – all in a very tight timeframe. It was important to first understand what SDI and the institutions wanted to achieve, what their target audiences would be most interested in, before working to ensure that the outcome would stimulate engagement between them. The document was a success and helped promote engagement between educational institutions and potential partners.

 

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