NewsLetter November 2007

Result Based Management workshops for Belgian Cooperation

MDF Brussels, in cooperation with MDF Ede, conducted a number of awareness workshops in Result Based Management for the Belgian Development Cooperation. The initiative clearly underlined the willingness of the management of the Directorate General of Development Cooperation within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (DGDC) to put in application the commitments made at the international level, in particular through the Paris Declaration. The management committee as well as the staff went through the process: five workshops and a feedback day for management and staff.

Results compared to objectives of these workshops can be very briefly defined as follows:

• Staff of DGDC was better informed on concepts and principles of RBM and of some practical examples elsewhere, although more concrete and practical examples were requested
• Awareness has been risen on the usefulness and importance of RBM in the context of improved effectiveness of aid, although questions remained on feasibility taken into account the specificities of the Belgian context
• Staff of DGDC was aware of the importance of clearly defined objectives for each department so as to better understand the role of each actor in the results chain

After the staff workshops a feedback day was held with the management committee and the staff in which MDF presented the conclusions and our vision on how to further introduce RBM within DGDC.

Melinda Wezenaar, director MDF Brussels

Outcome Mapping

From 18-20 September MDF hosted a course in Outcome Mapping delivered by Terry Smutylo and Beatrice Briggs. Terry, the lead trainer, introduced Outcome Mapping (OM) in 2001 and is also the co-author of the Outcome Mapping book - IDRC 2001.  Beatrice has served as coordinator of the Latin American Centre for OM, forming a team of OM specialists in the region. Overall coordination was in hands of MDF Trainer Sjoerd Zanen.

24 participants from various international development organisations from 12 different countries attended the course. All were seeking new planning, monitoring and evaluation tools.

Outcome Mapping focuses on one specific type of result, namely the outcomes of behavioural change. As development is essentially about people relating to each other and their environments, the focus of OM is on people. The originality of the methodology lies in its shifting away from assessing the development impact of a programme (e.g poverty alleviation) towards changes in the behaviour, relationship, actions or activities of so-called indirect stakeholders.

The course participants were satisfied and considered the course as "eye opener", "food for thought", "applicable and down to earth", "useful tool for thinking on the conceptual level". MDF is very satisfied with the outcome and intends to repeat this course in the spring of 2008; please keep an eye on our website for more information.

The MDF-course and the Outcome Mapping course that will be organised by Wageningen International in December 2007 are complementary to one another.  For more information on Outcome Mapping, consult www.IDRC.ca and the OM practitioners' website www.outcomemapping.ca.

Sjoerd Zanen, senior trainer MDF

MDF compensates the environmental impact of its air travel

The environment pays for īmoving our brains'. MDF is fully aware of the negative impact of air travel on our climate. Compensation is - apart from not flying - the only way to reduce this impact. As from September 2007, MDF compensates the CO2 emissions caused by its business flights with GreenSeat.  For more information, please consult www.greenseat.com