Share Learn Grow December 2021

Greetings and welcome to our 4th Quarter Share Learn Grow Newsletter. It is nice to be back after an intense period of reaccreditation with the Australian Government. As most of you would have heard, we passed and have been recommend for re-accreditation at the full level for the next 5 years! We couldn't have done this without you, thank you for the wonderful partnerships.

In this quarter's edition, we are shining the spotlight on our departed friend and colleague Christian Stern in whose honour almost 200 walkers gathered to 'Walk the Sterny Way' We have also Shared some project successes from our partnerships in Somalia and South Sudan, and invite you to Learn about the Church Partnership Program in Papua New Guinea. Our Grow promotions are on Inclusive Leadership and Gender Responsive Programming.

Sharing: Program Successes South Sudan

Sharing: Impact Evaluation - Somalia Learn about : Church Partnership Program PNG

Grow: What does the research say?

Introducing: LWF Gender Responsive Programming

WALK STERNY’S WAY

Earlier this year, our friend and colleague Christian Stern passed away.

To honour him and his commitment to helping others, the community where his lived hosted their own ALWS Walk My Way and renamed it “Walk Sterny’s Way”. Almost 200 people gathered to walk 26kms with the sun shining and people smiling.

The Walkers asked friends and family to sponsor them and raised enough to help provide a preschool, water system, kitchen gardens, banana plantations, piglets, training for teachers and teaching resources in Cambodia, Nepal and Burundi

Christian’s 10-year-old son Jasper welcomed Walkers on Sunday morning, with some beautiful words his dad would have loved: ‘It’s amazing to see how many people there are here today, and how many people are excited and ready to walk. ‘I hope your Walk can be a time of reflection and a chance to think about how blessed we are and how we can help those in need most ’

Rebuilding the State’s Educations sectorSustainability success in Somalia

Earlier this year, ALWS commissioned an evaluation of the project – Support for the Ministry of Education of Jubaland (Somalia) to rebuild the State’s Educations sector – a

project implemented by LWF Somalia and funded by ALWS through

Australian NGO Cooperation Program (ANCP)

The evaluation showed some really positive results. The project provided an accelerated learning program (ALP) for children who had never been to school or were being left out The project worked in partnership with the Ministry of Education (MOE), Government of Jubaland. In Somalia, 4.8 million of the nearly 8 million children who are school-going age, are not in school

Highlights from the evaluation:

Including the MoE as a partner, and coordinating monitoring visits for their staff, has meant greater sustainability for the project. 97.3% of respondents surveyed told us that the project had greatly enhanced access to education through the range of interventions. These included a school feeding program, distributing uniforms and training teachers in the ALP curriculum and inclusive education.

The design of the project was targeted to reach women and girls though community meetings and enrolment drives, girls forums, and providing dignity kits – resulting in high enrolment rates for girls. 100% of women and girls surveyed reported access to education was greatly increased. Innovative approaches such as radio lessons and distance learning resources can extend education reach without adding significant cost. Sustainability in this context should not be defined as when the government is able to take over. Sustainability is ensuring that with the demand created, interest is not lost so that reviving the education sector remains a priority in Somalia.

“I had dropped from my previous school due to rude nicknames... teachers who did not understand the difficulty I had in writing because of my physical condition. I will look at the mirror and say to myself a burden, a burden. Here, things have changed. The school is friendly, the teacher knows my limitations, my parents and even fellow students understand me better; there is humanity.”project participant

Photo credit: LWF Somalia

three-year

the

Procurement and Logistic management: Smoothing the way in South Sudan

In November 2020, LWF South Sudan (SS) applied for an ALWS Capacity Building grant, a competitive pool of funds we award to our existing partners each year for capacity building initiatives.

What was the problem?

LWF SS found many challenges in their procurement and logistics processes including unreliable markets and a seriously underdeveloped road infrastructure which becomes inaccessible by road during the rainy season With many challenges outside of their control to deal with, LWF South Sudan proposed a review of processes and structures to identify and strengthen procurement and logistics issues within their control.

What did they do?

The team ran training for procurement, logistics and other relevant staff on areas identified through the reviews, on key aspects of the LWF Procurement Manual and on relevant requirements from key donors of the country program.

What came out of it?

The results of the review and training were really impactful! Now 85% of LWF South Sudan assets have fully been tagged and properly recorded in the asset register, a procurement tracking tool is in place, there are stronger procurement processes, better documentation and filing of procurement transactions and a better, fairer procurement process for large transactions including advertising in the Daily News Paper for a minimum of 21 days.

ALWS is happy to have been able to support the initiative to strengthen the capacity of both individual staff and overall process for the LWF South Sudan program. Well done team!

Photo credit: Paul Jeffrey/Life on Earth Pictures Paul Jeffrey

he Church Partnership Program Papua New Guinea

Collective action of churches features in the Church Partnership Program (CPP) in Papua New Guinea (PNG).

The CPP fosters development work of seven mainline churches: Evangelical Lutheran (ELCPNG), Catholic, Anglican, Baptist, United Church, Seventh Day Adventist, and The Salvation Army.

Funded by the Australian Government as part of the PNG-Australia Partnership for Development, the CPP also involves seven Australian NGO partners of PNG churches, including the Australian Lutheran World Service (ALWS).

As one of the CPP partners, the Evangelical Lutheran Church of PNG (ELCPNG) has worked collaboratively with other churches, government and other agencies While most CPP activities are carried out by churches individually, ELCPNG and ALWS highly value the collective work, which often provides opportunities for increased impact and shared learning.

For collective actions, two or more PNG churches agree on a particular action and implement it together One approach is when church partners agree on a shared objective and then implement activities individually through their church networks, following their own methods and approaches, contributing to achieving the shared objective This has been the way of working, for example, for some adult literacy and disaster risk reduction (DRR) activities.

Another approach to collective action is when church partners agree on actions and implement them together through joint activities This has been done, for example, for awareness raising on issues related to gender equality and disability inclusion

While collective actions of agencies in PNG are often bound by signed agreements, collective actions of the churches are more often informal and based on trust and the quality of relationships

Learning from what has worked well in collective actions is helping to inform the joint design of the next four-year phase of the CPP.

Photo credit: ELCPNG

Diverse and Inclusive Leadership

What does the research say?

Diverse and inclusive teams comprise people from a broad range of different backgrounds and perspectives and give space and time to value and respect their contributions.

In partnership with 13 humanitarian organisations, the Humanitarian Advisory Group (HAG) used statistical analysis to look at whether organisations with more diverse and inclusive leadership teams also performed more strongly, focusing on innovation culture and prevention of sexual exploitation, abuse and harassment (PSEAH).

The research found a positive correlation between inclusion and representation of the leadership team and an innovation culture. As inclusion and representation increases so does innovation.

Where there is a strong inclusive and representative leadership, we can predict that staff will report 25% more innovation promotion than in organisations with less inclusive and representative leadership.

As an ever-stronger chorus of voices calls for change, among the different arguments they make, we hope that evidence will be able to play an ever-stronger role.

"Where there is a strong inclusive and representative leadership, we can predict that staff will report 25% more innovation promotion"

Introducing LWF Gender Responsive Programming Fabo Modules

In this online course, you will learn about LWF's commitment to Gender Justice and Gender Responsive Programming and how you can integrate this approach into your work. Once you have completed the activities on this learning site, you will be able to:

Understand basic gender concepts, terminology and their relevance to your work; Explain gender responsive programming and list its key elements; and Take steps to integrate a gender responsive approach into program planning, design, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.

All you need to do to take the training is create a Fabo account and get learning! p.s have you taken the ACT Alliance Child Safeguarding trainings yet? You can find these open access trainings here. Do you have an exciting example of good practice from your program you would like to share with ALWS and our other partners? Let your focal point know and we can try to include this in the next Share Learn Grow!