NPI Conference

Last Friday for work I had the opportunity to attend a New Partners Initiative (NPI) conference on behalf of m2m. I felt a little lost since I was only showing up on the last day of the conference, but it was still very interesting to be there. As part of the new Monitoring and Evaluation team at m2m, I went to the conference to take notes on a lecture about M&E under the new PEPFAR guidelines.

The New Partners Initiative is part of PEPFAR (the U.S. President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief) and is designed to help expand more community-based and some faith-based organizations serving in the HIV/AIDS prevention and care field. Essentially, this is part of plan for the USG (United States Government) to enhance HIV/AIDS work and strengthen community-based projects by working within existing local frameworks. m2m has been awarded an NPI grant to partner with organizations in Kenya (Catholic Medical Mission Board), Rwanda (Imbuto Foundation), and Zambia (Development Aid from People to People) to expand its PMTCT work to these new countries with the help of organizations that already work there.

This week the NPI State of the Art Technical Meeting was held in Cape Town, a meeting designed to provide the NPI grantees technical assistance for better grant implementation. Of course I missed most of the meeting (similar to the IAS conference, the m2m office was rotating a few meeting spots throughout the week), but it was really interesting even just to gain minimal exposure to some of the issues that organizations face as they work within the USG grant regulations. The M&E talk I went to was focused on the changes in the new PEPFAR (the new PEPFAR being the president’s HIV/AIDS policies based on Obama’s administration, as opposed to Bush who started PEPFAR) and what it meant for M&E teams. To be frank, I left the meeting feeling fairly overwhelmed. Listening to how extensive M&E data should be, how organizations should integrate their M&E into other local organizations and tailor it to each host government, and how organizations like m2m need to comprehensively train and rely on their peer educators in order to actually collect much of the M&E data – well, it became very clear just how hard it is to actually implement a strong M&E program, especially in resource poor, often rural areas. I certainly advocate holding grantees accountable and want to see data on the number of people reached, the effectiveness and quality of the programs, etc., but when you get down to actually collecting that data, it’s a very daunting task. I’m glad I’m getting to see first hand some aspects of the USG grant world and learn about the practicalities of reporting on NGO work. There is a big difference between having the heart and desire to get something done (e.g. providing PMTCT counseling to women in sub-Saharan Africa) and actually succeeding in doing so. It really makes me admire and respect the m2m founders who have worked so hard to bring an idea into practice – expanding this program from 3 sites in Cape Town to hundreds of sites in seven countries is nothing short of amazing.