Capacity building

With years of experience in development research, capacity building through online and offline courses was thought of as an impactful way of creating change and taking the organisation's experience and learnings forward. The organisation launched its first course on Facilitating Gender Transformative Evaluation in 2018 and since then have continued with multiple iterations of the course as well as new courses on Women and Work: Making it Count and FGTE for Senior Professionals.

FACILITATING GENDER TRANSFORMATIVE EVALUATIONS 2.0

The online course on Facilitating Gender Transformative Evaluations (FGTE) was introduced by ISST in 2017-18 as a self-paced, module-based program, which ran three iterations between 2018 and 2019.

FGTE 2.0 built on the first version of the course, incorporating fresh perspectives from the field of evaluation that address issues and challenges arising from the pandemic. FGTE 2.0 ran its first iteration in 2021 with participants from South Asian countries, representing diverse backgrounds. There have been two more iterations in 2022 and 2023. In 2024, the FGTE course was divided into two parts: Early to Mid-Career Professionals (EMP), targeting individuals with less than 10 years of experience, and Senior Professionals (SP), for those with over 10 years of experience. The course structure and content have been customized to align with the professional experience of each group. The FGTE EMP stream ran from July 20, 2024, to October 25, 2024, with 46 selected participants. Of these, 32 successfully completed the course, achieving a completion rate of 69.56%. To date, over 200 participants have completed the course.

The course introduces participants to the concepts of both gender and evaluation, enabling them to apply a critical gender transformative lens when conducting evaluations. In particular, it covers feminist evaluation ethics and principles, as well as a range of evaluation approaches. The course draws upon diverse frameworks, methodologies, and tools such as the Change Matrix, Outcome Mapping, Utilisation-Focused Evaluation, and participatory tools that emphasize equity and inclusiveness, key principles of gender transformative evaluations (GTE).

To download the Course brochure, Click here.

WOMEN AND WORK: MAKING IT COUNT

The course, ‘Women & Work: Making It Count’ was developed with the intent to bring forth the trajectory of women’s work in the larger discourse of economy as well as to reflect on how research and data can be critically used to teach, show and question the presence and absence (inclusion and exclusion) of women workers in the economy.

Following the success of the first two iterations, the Institute of Social Studies Trust (ISST) is gearing up to present the third iteration of the Women and Work course. This program is designed to explore and critically analyze the trajectory of women’s work within the broader discourse of the economy and demonstrate the interlinkages with other social structures. Drawing on extensive research and data, the course will examine both the presence and absence of women workers in economic narratives, providing a comprehensive overview of the critical trends, perspectives, frameworks, developments, and debates related to women and work.

This course is offered in three progressive stages, each providing a graded certification and tailored for different levels of engagement:

Stage 1: Introductory Self-Paced Course
A Flexible and introductory, self-paced course that allows participants to learn at their own pace. This course will help to equip the participants with elementary and foundational concepts required to understand the story of women and work.
Stage 2: Advanced Online Course
An 8-10 week facilitated online course that delves into complex issues through interactive learning and guided discussions. Ideal for those looking to build a comprehensive understanding and apply insights in real-world contexts.
Stage 3: Immersive Residential Workshop
A 2-3 day residential workshop featuring hands-on activities, discussions, and networking. This final phase synthesizes learnings from earlier stages, helping participants integrate the Women and Work approach into personal and professional settings.

FACILITATING GENDER TRANSFORMATIVE EVALUATIONS (FGTE) FOR SENIOR PROFESSIONALS

The course, a continuation of our flagship course FGTE, has been designed in response to the demand that came from the community. During the six iterations of the FGTE course, we received numerous applications from professionals with 10+ years of experience who wanted to learn more about Gender Transformative Evaluations. It is in response to this clear demand emerging from the field that ISST decided to develop a new course that would cater to the needs of professionals with some experience of working in the field of evaluation or in the field of gender. The FGTE SP stream, scheduled from October 2024 to January 2025, currently has 46 enrolled participants.

The objectives of this course are:
• To sharpen the gender transformative lens to development
• To enhance gender transformative evaluation knowledge and skills
• To strengthen implementation of gender transformative evaluations.

The course will introduce the participants to advanced concepts of gender and evaluation and will draw upon diverse frameworks, approaches, methodologies and tools to conduct gender transformative evaluation like Utilisation Focused Evaluation, Outcome Mapping, Real time Evaluation, Principle Focused Evaluation, Local Wisdom Evaluation, Equity Focused Evaluation, Developmental Evaluation, System-based Evaluation. The course will further help participants think about the elements, nuances and critical stages in designing, planning, implementing gender transformative evaluation and also understand the dynamics and accountability mechanism.

Here is the course brochure for you to know more.