Developing Monitoring and Evaluation Frameworks

By Bunmi Afolabi

Hello!

I’m Bunmi Afolabi, rounding up my first year as an MDP student. I am completing my domestic field placement through the University of Winnipeg’s Inner City work-study program. This program involves 450 placement hours and a 6-credit course examining Winnipeg’s inner-city challenges and community-based initiatives.

My placement organization is Newcomer Employment and Education Development Services (N.E.E.D.S Inc.). N.E.E.D.S. is a non-profit, charitable organization that supports the integration of newcomers into Canadian society by providing employment, mentorship, education, and social and recreational programs to assist clients in developing life skills, confidence, and positive social support networks.

I am currently working with the in-house Research and Development team to monitor and evaluate the Settlement Workers in School program (SWIS). This holistic program provides a range of activities to promote the successful settlement and integration of newcomer children and youth in the Winnipeg community. So far, I have developed a Logic Model and an Evaluation Matrix to measure the program's effectiveness in achieving proposed outcomes. I’m currently working on creating evaluation tools to gather data from the field.

This project is vital because Monitoring and evaluation can be used to demonstrate that the programme efforts have been implemented effectively and have had a measurable impact on expected outcomes.

The findings from the evaluation process will be beneficial in identifying the strengths and limitations of the program since its implementation. The results will provide the necessary data to help inform changes that can be made to the program design and delivery to ensure that the program effectively provides the needed support to newcomers in Winnipeg.