PZAT is the country and regional Monitoring, Evaluation, Results and Learning (MERL) hub for the COMPASS Africa Project, since December 2017. COMPASS Africa is an innovative, data-informed and audacious North-South collaboration of civil society organizations working in the global North and in East and Southern Africa. The project is anchored by civil society-led coalitions in Malawi, Tanzania and Zimbabwe. Under COMPASS, these Africa-based coalitions work with partners in the region and in the global North to gather, analyze and use evidence and data to shape strategic activist and advocacy campaigns shape strategic activist and advocacy campaigns focused on barriers to a comprehensive, evidence-based HIV/AIDS response.
In the 3 years that COMPASS Africa is being implemented, PZAT 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 progress in setting up a functional MERL hub, designed to meet the needs of partners and to achieve the objectives of the project. As at November 2018, PZAT has achieved the following;
- Orientation of partners on MERL; during the COMPASS strategy lab meetings
- Development of tools; Landscape analysis tool kit & COMPASS quarterly reporting template (Route Finder)
- Orientation of COMPASS country partners on the landscape analysis tools and worksheets via webinar
- Check-in and refresher side meeting with COMPASS country partners on landscape analysis process during the AVAC partnership forum held in Johannesburg in February 2018
- Facilitation of a 2-day landscaping workshop for ACT Zimbabwe; in which 4 campaigns were identified and preliminary analysis document developed
- Establishing a MERL hub which is set up and hosted on AVAC’s already existing Engage Platform. The page serves as an online clearing house and learning platform. The platform is at advanced stage of development and will be fully functional by the end of the first quarter 2019
- Ongoing technical support to partners on MERL related issues such as reporting
- Conducting surveys to assess utility of meetings
In the next year, PZAT’s focus will mainly be on fully operationalizing the online learning platform (My COMPASS). A large component of the MERL work will be centered on training and supporting COMPASS partners to identify and document advocacy successes, challenges and experiences; through methods such as outcome harvesting, significant change stories and case studies.