Leadership & Management Seminar 4
24 Mar 2017
Our Leadership & Management Seminars have been envisaged as opportunities for Grantees to share experiences, exchange best practices and tackle constrains. These are also an opportunity to learn something new and improve skills in various sub-areas of Organization Leadership and Project Management, such as Networking, User Engagement, Project Quality, Sustainability, and Innovation.
Our Leadership & Management Seminars are primarily targeting the Grant Project Coordinators and/or persons who have decision-making powers in their organizations, such as Presidents, Executive Directors, etc.
A total of 3 Leadership and Management Seminars have been planned for 2016, and another 3 in 2017.
The seminars have introduced the Word Café Methodology, whereby the participants were divided in 8 thematic groups (World Café Tables), based on the coincidence or similarity of their lines of intervention and/or target groups:
- Roma Women in the Labour Market,
- Rural Employment Opportunities,
- Disadvantaged Groups in the Labour Market,
- Municipality Initiatives,
- Enhancing Employment Opportunities,
- Education and Training,
- Ethnic Minority Women, and
- Social Inclusion.
This division was based on the preliminary assessment of the Grant Projects based on their Grant Applications. If so required, Grantees may be allowed to re-group or re-name their groups accordingly, in due course of time.
The topics that were covered in the 4th Leadership & Management Seminar include:
- General Findings and Common Trends from the First Round of On-the-Spot Visits: progress of implementation; selection and outreach to target groups; indicators, especially process indicators, qualitative indicators, outreach indicators; visibility overall, visibility & communication strategy, social media; partnership & communication, the issue of outsourcing of crucial project activities, the issue of foreign leader organizations; overall project management, secondary procurement; sustainability of activities, sustainability of results.
- Significant Issues 1 – Target Groups: employability enhanced and employment achieved; definitions, what employability is and what it is not; 8 top employability skills; employability soft skills check list; employability of your target group, gap analysis; practitioner competences enhanced.
- Significant Issues 2 – Monitoring Systems: operational databases; indicators follow-up systems; definition, benefits; the difference between monitoring and evaluation; elements of a good monitoring & evaluation system: stakeholder participation, feedback; formative vs summative evaluation; the result chain: inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes, impact; logical framework for monitoring & evaluation; Gantt chart; triangulation method for evaluation.
- Significant Issues 3 – Management and Quality of Results: continuous evaluation of results; visibility of results; impact assessment on target groups; sustainability.
Several practical exercises were completed by participants, following the already standardised division in thematic World Café Tables. One practical exercise was focused on the issue of employability enhancement. However, in response to the varied nature of the Grant Projects, this exercise was elaborated from two different aspects: for projects addressing vulnerable target groups and for projects addressing practitioner competence. Another exercise dealt with the issue of monitoring & evaluation systems established (fully, partially, or not) in the existing Grant Projects.
This seminar, too, was attended by the Monitoring Officers from MLSP. They provided their feedback to the findings from the first round of On-the-Spot visits, and also assisted the small work groups in completing the practical exercises.
The theoretical input was delivered at plenary sessions, with the help of Power Point presentations, whereas the exercises were implemented in the 8 World Café Tables as listed above, with the help of hand-outs and flip-chart presentations.
The seminar was delivered by our Team Leader and Senior Expert, Ms Maria Marinakou, with facilitation from our Expert for EU Grants, Ms Andreja Tonč, and with the support from our Assistant Team Leader, Mr Radomir Trajković.
The seminar was delivered to a single seminar group on 24th of March 2017, in the Porta Hotel in Skopje.