During the week of May 14-16, representatives from several countries and agencies participated in a Technical Validation Workshop at the Baobab Towers, in Bridgetown, Barbados. These included, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Barbados, Caribbean Development Bank, the International Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRCS), the CARICOM Regional Organisation for Standards and Quality (CROSQ) and the CDEMA Coordinating Unit.
The Workshop is part of a participatory process to develop M&E policies, guidelines and an online M&E system that will be specific to the CDM Strategy and the CDEMA Coordinating Unit Strategic Plan. This workshop is also intended to define and establish a metric model for tracking the achievements of the expected outcomes of the CDM Strategy 2014-2024.
The Strategy is the CARICOM´s strategic framework for advancing integrated risk management in the Caribbean region. It reflects the vision of the CDEMA system stakeholders and sets out a path to build safer, more resilient and sustainable Participant States. The M&E system will be able to assess the contributions of CDEMA Participating States, the Coordinating Unit and key CDM Partners at the various levels - national level, sub-national level, sector, ministry/institution, regional agencies and program/project.
Executive Director of CDEMA, Ronald Jackson, delivered opening remarks at the Validation Workshop and shared his expectations of the Regional M&E system.
He said, “Based on our experience in implementing the CDM Strategy 2007-2012, we have not been able to plug in any number to our assessment, we still say that things have increased or decreased but there is no data in the analysis to support our assessment. Today we are having this workshop because I truly believe that data will clarify not only our analysis, but our capacity to highlight very clear targets for the region and be able to adapt the targets to each country context recognizing that each country has its strengthens and weaknesses. As Zall and Rist from the World Bank states, this metric model must address development needs, must be very clear and simple, and answer the question: has the outcome been achieved?”
The workshop was facilitated by the IDEA International Institute, which is based in Quebec, Canada. Speaking at end of the workshop, the lead IDEA facilitator, Ana María Fernández, said, “Our expectations are very high because we observe a high level of advocacy for M&E and a commitment to set targets and measure performance for better decision making in the region. The objective of this Workshop was to set the CDM Strategy´s targets for the period 2014-2024, through a validation technical process and they did it. They have a challenge now to be able to communicate and set commitments among stakeholders and we think that the environment is ideal and it is going to happen.”
Representatives from the Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting (MER) Subcommittee of the CDM Coordination and Harmonization Council also participated in the Technical Validation Workshop.
Implementation of the CDM Strategy 2014-2014 is slated for commencement from September 2014.
M&E workshops and diagnostic exercises are being held face to face and virtually between May-September 2014.