COMPASS AFRICA

In the 5 years that COMPASS Africa is being implemented, Pangaea Zimbabwe has the following key result areas;

• To develop and manage a MERL system that ensures that country-level advocacy strategies, impacts, and best practices are better understood, documented, and disseminated.
• To develop and house coalition-supportive resources (data collection tools, training materials).
• To attend to and address requests from COMPASS partners for information, MERL tools, and learnings & other support.

Since the inception of COMPASS Africa, PZAT has made considerable achievements:

1. Setting up a functional MERL hub, designed to meet the needs of partners and to achieve the objectives of the project. It is hosted on AVAC’s already existing Engage Platform. The page serves as an online clearinghouse and learning platform.

2. Development of tools:

• Landscape analysis tool kit & COMPASS quarterly reporting template (Route Finder)
• The Coalition Health Scorecard is an annual internal exercise to COMPASS, developed and managed by the MERL team. The survey is completed by COMPASS Country partners, global partners, and AVAC staff and consultants. The survey assesses COMPASS-wide strategy including communications and partnerships to provide lessons learned and recommendations for improvement of coalition health. Two editions of the scorecard have been conducted so far in 2020 and 2021.
• C-CAAT – A COMPASS Campaign Advocacy Assessment Tool was developed to help to identify, describe, and analyze the progress of COMPASS campaigns. It is a tool that enables partners to assess the significance, influence, and durability of their advocacy win. Through participatory appraisal, COMPASS partners conduct and complete the CCAAT bi-annually.
• SPARC – This refers to the Simple Participatory Assessment of Real Change, a tool designed to draw on the principles and steps of an evaluation approach called Outcome Harvesting and modified to reflect the realities and needs of the COMPASS project. SPARC is aimed at helping COMPASS partners collectively identify what has changed in the field or among stakeholders and whether and how we have individually or collectively contributed to those changes. This is documented in the form of a SPARC story which is developed using a template with guiding questions on analyzing outcomes.

      3. MERL products:

• MERL Handbook for Advocacy Champions – The MERL team developed a MERL handbook for advocacy champions. The toolkit is designed to capture the basics of Advocacy MERL, in a simple format that utilizes language that engages the reader and takes them through an accompanied learning experience. This ground-breaking tool will be used to strengthen the MERL capacity of COMPASS partners and beyond. A complimentary reference book was also developed specifically for COMPASS Africa partners for them to access and learn from experienced examples from the coalition.
• Case Studies – COMPASS case studies have been developed to document unique advocacy approaches.

1. MALAWI-U_U-Case-Study.pdf (206 downloads)

2. Tanzania-COMPASS-case-study-1.pdf (222 downloads)

• Newsletter – the newsletter is a quarterly learning and reflection tool highlighting stories of change across the coalition. Three editions of consolidated COMPASS Africa newsletters were consequently finalized and disseminated across the coalition between 2021 and 2022.

1. Compass-Newsletter-Issue-01_August-2021 (148 downloads)

2. Compass-Newsletter-Issue-2_Feb2022 (95 downloads)

     4. MERL Capacity Strengthening

• MERL Champions– One of the key MERL achievements in 2021 was the identification of and support for MERL champions across COMPASS Africa whose role is to motivate, mobilize and lead MERL activities at the local level as a means to build a cohort of strong MERL resources within the COMPASS Africa coalition and with in-country coalitions. The first cohort of MERLC champions comprised a total of ten individuals working in COMPASS country partners who were identified through country-level consultations and nominations. The MERL team continues to mentor the MERL champions and strengthen their capacity in conducting advocacy MERL.

• Strategy Labs – Country-level coalitions hold mini strategy labs where they update their landscape analyses, workshop their campaign strategic action plans, and collaboratively defined country-level strategies and outcomes for the coming years. Global Partners join remotely for targeted sessions and develop their work plans in response to the strategies and priorities identified by each country’s coalition. At the end of 2021, AVAC facilitated a global-level virtual strategy lab where all partners met over three online sessions to share their top wins and lessons learned from Year 4 of COMPASS and to define the way forward for the next phase of COMPASS. These sessions built momentum for the Year 5 priority of refreshing the COMPASS Africa partner-led governance structure and vision for the coalition.
• MERL Webinars – From March to June 2021, the MERL team led a series of webinars for COMPASS partners to refresh and build on key MERL concepts and tools. The webinars included a review of basic MERL concepts, defining outcomes, building SPARC stories, completing C-CAATs, and using the results of Scorecard 1.0 as learning tools to continuously improve the COMPASS model.
• MERL Roadshows – in-person MERL capacity strengthening workshops held annually across the 3 COMPASS countries. 1 roadshow conducted so far in 2019 before COVID-19, moved to virtual workshops in the COVID-19 context.