How to: Facilitate capacity building, cross-learning and knowledge sharing

An important feature of DFID, UNHCR and UNICEF’s approach to managing the Humanitarian Education Accelerator (HEA) is how much energy has been put into creating a collaborative environment for innovators — something identified by ALNAP’s Alice Obrecht as a key factor for success in ALNAP research — in order to support peer-learning, knowledge sharing and reflection.

HEA workshops and mentorship

Through workshops and a mentorship model, the HEA has taken a hands-on approach to creating opportunities for innovators to learn from one another’s experiences and challenges. This approach has also been used to identify gaps in internal capacities and address the individual needs of grantees — notably around Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) and scaling activities, such as developing business models.

HEA has convened a series of trainings and workshops over the course of the programme, to build organizational capacity and facilitate cross-learning and knowledge sharing.

The first workshop in 2016 saw the three organizations in the first HEA cohort — WUSC/Windle Trust(Kenya), Kepler (Rwanda), and War Child Holland (MENA/Sudan) — gather for four days in Kenya, together with representatives from UNHCR and UNICEF country, regional and global offices, and the external evaluation team, American Institutes for Research (AIR).

During the workshop, the three innovation teams had the opportunity to share common challenges, exchange advice and collaboratively explore key concepts shaping the HEA, such as scale, evaluation, sustainability and innovation. This process was key to building relationships and trust between the teams, as well as promoting an atmosphere of peer-to-peer support.

Round up of HEA’s first bootcamp, shot and edited by participants, following training by FilmAid Kenya

When the second cohort was selected — adding Caritas Switzerland and Libraries Without Borders to the programme — the HEA took the decision to carry out individual two-day workshops with the two new teams. These focused workshops provided the opportunity to explain the HEA and programme expectations, as well as start the research process, building a theory of change and agreeing key questions that the research would explore.

A second group workshop was then held in Lebanon in 2017, bringing together all five grantees from the first and second cohort, with UNHCR, UNICEF and DFID education officers, M&E mentors from the UNHCR Evaluation Unit and ALNAP, HEA’s scaling mentor, Ian Gray, and the AIR team. The focus of this five day workshop was the presentation of M&E frameworks by the first cohort and the consolidation of research and scaling plans for the second cohort. Again, particular focus was placed on ensuring that the teams were able to work together and share their experiences, knowledge and learnings with one another whilst receiving group training from the mentors.

HEA teams at the second workshop in Beirut, Lebanon in 2017

After feedback on the second workshop and in light of the evolving needs of the teams as they progressed in their scaling journeys, it was decided that a series of smaller, more focused workshops and trainings that were tailored to teams’ specific needs would be the most effective approach going forward.

Stepping up the mentorship piece of the programme, HEA’s scaling mentor began regular check ins with the teams, as well as bespoke working sessions on areas of their scaling plans, and the HEA team organised regular calls and individual trainings.

In addition, trainings on M&E, research, and data management requested by teams were conducted for grantees in Amman, Amsterdam and Rwanda, and tailored based on the specific needs of individual teams. This included two group trainings on developing M&E systems and the effective collection and use of data for programme improvements in October 2017 and May 2018, targeting M&E and research staff from each innovation team.

Another group HEA workshop was held in Hungary in 2018, which brought together the senior managers of the five grantees, along with the HEA’s mentors and experts in scaling and M&E . This four day workshop again took a focused approach, with sessions taking a deeper dive into scaling, partnerships and organisational growth management, providing opportunities for reflection and knowledge sharing.

Teams participating in a group training on M&E systems

What did we learn?

The training workshops and mentoring model have proven an interesting learning experience for the HEA and its grantees. Bringing grantees together who are at different points in their scaling journeys yet are facing similar challenges has been both productive, in terms of knowledge sharing, and sometimes challenging, in terms of ensuring everyone’s needs are catered for. Similarly, the varied needs of the grantees around capacity building and mentoring have provided interesting learnings.

The key theme that runs through our reflections on supporting grantees through their scaling journey has been to strike the right balance between the following four points:

• Being proactive — making demands of the grantees to carry out and complete certain tasks;
• Being reactive — providing advice, whilst enabling the grantees to make their own way and call for support when they feel they need it;
• Being generic — having a one size fits-all support package for all the cohort;
• Being bespoke — providing individualised packages of support.

Any good support programme will need a mix of all four aspects, and the trick is to find the right balance for the cohort that you are supporting. The key is to identify where your boundaries are as the provider of the support, and then, within those boundaries, how flexible you are able to be with the mix you provide.

Based on the above, here are 6 things we have learned about capacity building, cross learning and mentorship:

1. Listen to your cohort — providing regular opportunities for open and honest feedback on the workshops and mentoring, and their value in facilitating cross-learning and capacity building, was key to developing our approach. By listening to our cohort, we were able to respond to their evolving needs and tailor each workshop, as well as the mentoring approach, accordingly.
2. Build in flexibility — a one size fits all approach to the workshops and individual mentoring was never going to be an effective option when working with scaling innovations. As needs evolved, it was important that there was flexibility in our approach. Having learned from the cohort that smaller, more targeted workshops that addressed specific areas of learning were needed in addition to the larger cohort workshops, we were able to adapt our approach, allowing grantees to continue learning from each other in a more focused environment. Similarly, feedback on our mentoring approach led to adaptation on who, how often and what types of mentorship were offered to the teams.
3. Ongoing mentorship— we discovered that an important facilitator of cross-learning within the HEA was ongoing mentorship across grantees by subject experts. The HEA had the same experts mentor all 5 grantees, which enabled the creation of a coherent overview of shared challenges and successes, as well as enabling interesting connections between projects and ongoing knowledge sharing, beyond the annual workshops. Whilst this was extremely helpful for the programme and grantees overall, our approach also demanded balance. We found that introducing individual expert mentors on different subject areas, to match grantees’ specific needs and what stage of the scaling journey they had reached, could also be useful to the grantees at different stages. We learned that in future, these additional mentors should be introduced as and when requests are received from the grantees themselves.
4. Demand-led support — due to the different stages of the scaling journey that the grantees were on, and their individual needs, much of the Scale Mentoring support was led by demand. This meant there were differences in the support that was provided between grantees. For example, we found that there was a significant correlation between the maturity of the innovation and the amount of support demanded by the grantees, with more demand from those who had been on the scaling journey longer, and less from those who were just starting out on their scaling. Taking a balanced, demand-led approach has the benefit of not overburdening teams with ‘support’ that may be less useful, tailoring the support that is provided to their needs. Cons are that it is difficult to plan support prior to engagement with the grantees.
5. Continuous capacity building and mentoring — one off workshops or mentoring sessions will not build capacity, instead, continuous engagement is needed, through different workshop sessions, follow up and tailored mentoring sessions, to ensure consistent learning throughout the scaling journey. Whilst implementing our capacity building and mentoring approach, we learned that the required level of flexibility and a demand-led methodology also means further consideration is needed around cost. We learned that building a team isn’t just about the staff engaged on a daily basis — budget allowances should be made so that external expertise can be brought on board as and when needed.
6. Field visits — providing opportunities for the cohort to see each other’s projects in action can be a really valuable cross-learning exercise, which also builds trust and understanding. However, it is important that these are visits ‘with a purpose’. Facilitating field visits places administrative pressures, as well as time demands, upon project staff and communities. It is therefore important that there is a clear benefit from the field visit, for all parties.