From Mercy Corps: BUILT TO (IM)PROVE — Leveraging Realtime M&E

This article was published by John Skelton, former program manager at Mercy Corps. 

Prospects is a youth empowerment portfolio implemented in Liberia by Mercy Corps and funded by the Swedish Embassy in Liberia and Chevron which seeks to equip young Liberians with the skills, information, and opportunities to find meaningful and sustainable employment or self-employment. The Prospects Employment and Entrepreneurship program provides 8,000 youth with a range of demand-driven services, including trainings, coaching, information about jobs, apprenticeships and entrepreneurship support.

In order to enable real-time analysis and management, the program leverages an innovative M&E system applying Dimagi’s CommCare case management software combined with Excel dashboards. Through utilizing case management, the program is enabled to track each individual beneficiary. This has multiple benefits, including the ability to track activities delivered while avoiding double counting of beneficiaries, understanding user behavior, and identifying early impacts. The process, learnings, and challenges of implementing this system is documented in a new paper, which you can access by clicking below: