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, and the latest iteration will launch in July 2024. 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.

While initially the course was designed as a residential course, the onset of COVID-19 and related restriction led to the team re-imagining it and reworking it to suit an online mode. Interviews were held with the experts in the field to identify the suitability of an online mode of course delivery and appropriateness of course content. The team then ran the first iteration in September-December 2021 with up to 30 participants. An extensive feedback process was designed to review the overall experience of the participants and make the follow-up iterations more effective and engaging.

The team, in the year 2022, reworked on the course and launched the second iteration as a residential course of 9-Days in Delhi. Major efforts were made to create a safe-space where both participants and the team could engage in in-depth discussions without any hesitation. The iteration ended successfully with 27 participants completing the course. The team also mentioned having an enriching experience in the overall process of developing and executing the course.

Here’s the course brochure for you to know more.

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 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.