We provide world-class professional, practitioner and organisation-wide learning for people working in development. Our action-oriented, collaborative training and learning are offered in three broad types:
- Specialist short courses for development professionals – for example, Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation for Learning, Contribution Analysis for Impact Evaluation, and Inclusive Trade;
- Facilitated learning for organisations and individuals – bespoke learning activities developed to address a specific need;
- Learning processes embedded in a multi-year development programme, delivered by IDS or with partners.
Our learning journey methodology underpins both facilitated learning and learning within development programmes. A learning journey is a collaborative process designed with organisations to explore and respond to a complex issue, challenge or ambition. Typically, our thematic experts support participants over several months to reflect on research findings and real scenarios, share experiences, and identify ways to apply learning.
IDRC: using Southern-led knowledge in development
The International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has integrated IDS learning journeys into different projects that have helped to enhance its approach to supporting more inclusive, diverse forms of knowledge, particularly from the global South, as well as documenting learning from the IDRC’s rapid response to Covid-19. A recent learning partnership has been established to support IDRC’s Clean Energy for Development Programme.
It has also influenced the funder’s Policy and Evaluation Division and its Corporate Thought Leadership Group.
Adrian Di Giovanni, Team Leader, IDRC, said:
“Several of the specific findings from the learning journey led to mid-course shifts, especially in deepening efforts to build regional leadership among the project cohorts. The learning journey model has since been taken up by IDRC knowledge-sharing colleagues, on a project to delve more deeply into IDRC efforts to support Southern-led knowledge translation.”
Plan International: enhancing organisational effectiveness
The IDS Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning team designed a journey to understand how organisational effectiveness can deliver stronger impacts – specifically how to align Plan International’s approach to performance management with their global strategy, MERL (monitoring, evaluation, research and learning) framework, systems and reporting. The organisation-wide consultation prompted deep reflection on how data was used across Plan International and the power dynamics inherent in global reporting systems. A series of contextualised recommendations, including a proposed systems approach, were well received by the Senior Management Team and have informed new thinking across the organisation.
Jacqueline Gallinetti, Director, Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning, Plan International, said:
“IDS led us in a focused, participatory, collaborative learning journey. They were inclusive in their approach and demonstrated care in documenting and presenting the information that they collected and analysed. The results of the journey were both relevant and practical – so much so that we are now revisiting our strategic results framework and improving our results-based management approach to link our results with performance.”
If you would like more information about our professional development and learning, contact Miguel Loureiro on [email protected]