The Council of Voluntary Social Services (CVSS) will be hosting free capacity building workshops to strengthen Civil Society Organisations (CSOs).

Slated to take place on June 8 and 15, the workshops will, according to CVSS, improve the ability of CSOs to deliver outputs that contribute to national development plans and increase their ability to represent marginalised groups so they can impact policy at the national level.

“Civil Society Organisations have positively impacted Jamaicans through numerous types of programmes and interventions for which they seek funding from local and international donors,” said Ann Marie Kirlew, programme manager at CVSS.

“However, some CSOs are less able to demonstrate effectively that their social interventions align with the goals they intend to achieve, that the linkages are plausible and that the money budgeted are spent is justified. These monitoring, learning and evaluation workshops will help increase CSO’s ability to utilise data, monitor, evaluate and communicate their programme effectiveness,” she added.

Monitoring and evaluation expert, Zahra Miller, will conduct the workshops in person at the National Volunteer Centre in Kingston.

CVSS has shared that the workshop on June 8 will be done in modules. The first model will focus on ‘hacks to becoming a learning organisation’ where participants will be exposed the principles of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and learn practical approaches to recalibrate learning to become data driven.

The second module, according to CVSS will look at ‘managing results, not activities’ and will help participants to understand results-based management and how it differs from typical management. Participants will also learn how to showcase their results through storytelling with data visualisation.

Support for the workshops is to be provided by the Caribbean Policy Development Centre (CPDC).

In February 2023, CPDC awarded the CVSS grant funding towards enhancing Caribbean Forum’s (CARIFORUM’s) civil society capacity to participate in national and regional development programming and policymaking.

Interested persons or CSOs may register for the workshop by contacting the CVSS at 876-906-0065 or by email at [email protected].

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