GREENWICH TOWN FISHERMAN GIVES BACK

Seven months after receiving an outboard motor for his boat from the JSIF, Greenwich Town fisherman Garth 'Silver' Bowers made good on his Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) commitment to donate fresh fish to schools in his community His first stop was to the Maxfield Park Children's Home where he delivered 100 lbs of jack fish and snapper

Bowers was a beneficiary under Cycle 1 of the popular ICDP ll Enterprise Development Grant programme 230 micro-businesses received $50 million in support under Cycle 1 ICDP ll is funded by the Government of Jamaica

The grant programme, which includes a strong business development training component, aims to support microbusinesses while strengthening community economies

Corporate Social Responsibility is not just for big businesses Micro-business operators also have a responsibility to give back, so we're building out the CSR component of the programme in earnest

We are heartened by Mr Bowers' wonderful example - especially to the children

Mona

Senior Manager Social Development

The role performed by the Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Unit has helped to burnish JSIF's reputation as a highperformance agency and to distinguish us with our international partners

This is in large part due to "M&E being a continuous management function that allows us to measure whether outcomes are matching planned results," explains Rhian Holder, Senior Manager, Social Development/Monitoring & Evaluation "It allows the organization to spot bottlenecks in implementation and to self-correct in good time," she added

Monitoring and Evaluation involves the tracking, assessing and reporting of the progress of the organization's activities against targets While there is a unit responsible for coordinating the M&E activities, all members of the organization contribute to this is various ways

"M&E is about looking with a clear eye at our performance with a view to learning from it," Rhian emphasized, "Where we have done well we share or transfer the knowledge and this has been a large part of JSIF's success

Our Objective

In short, the M&E Unit s aim is to make JSIF better, says Holder "We are about learning and sharing knowledge as well as showcasing the great things we ’ re doing which the M&E process can prove "

Donors

M&E has also helped JSIF earn points with a critical partner - our donors, all of whom require us to have a robust M&E system in place to monitor and report on Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as number of beneficiaries, the achievement of project development objectives and completed projects The Unit is involved from the project planning stage, right through to final evaluation "During implementation, the M&E process is never abandoned, even if things have to be tweaked as a project is a live thing," Rhian noted

Repository Of Data

In addition to its core functions, the M&E Unit maintains a repository of references and documents for social officers It is also regularly approached by PhD candidates and members of academia for whom JSIF s reports and database is gold

Contribution To National Publications

Data from the M&E Unit feeds into national plans in a number of ways JSIF falls under the Office Of The Prime Minister and the Unit feeds into their strategic plans

The Unit contributes to presentations made at PIOJ’ s Best Practice Symposium by JSIF staff and provides input to its Economic & Social Survey and UN Sustainable Development Goals document It also contributes reports to the National Poverty Reduction Programme Secretariat and shares findings with the Caribbean Development Bank (which has adopted some of JSIF's processes from our maintenance manual and project management information system), as well as other stakeholders

Crucial to the unit's success has been its ability to help staff members to appreciate the role of M&E in our mission to deliver outcomes that are in sync with plans The engagement of teams in the M&E process has also accelerated the pace at which JSIF has raised its game

Development/Monitoring

IN THEIR OWN WORDS...