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FORECAST: Strengthening Institutions with Systemic Approaches

Leadership and Institutional Development  | 
FORECAST: Strengthening Institutions with Systemic Approaches.

For the past five years, an AED project called FORECAST—or Focus on Results: Enhancing Capacity across Sectors in Transition—has been partnering with governments and organizations to create flexible, functioning, and sustainable systems that address critical social needs. In countries such as Indonesia and Georgia, the program’s benefits continue to unfold.

In Georgia, FORECAST focused on improving systems in the Civil Registry Agency, or CRA. During the country’s 2008 conflict with Russia, thousands of internally displaced persons needed assistance, and many did not have the identification they needed to obtain it.

Before and AfterKANGAROO CARE: AED helped create a network of health workers who could teach mothers this safe, easy method of warming and comforting their babies.

Fortunately, though, before the emergency FORECAST was already working closely with the CRA, which issues essential civil documents such as birth certificates and passports. In 2006, FORECAST helped the agency create a strategic plan using performance assessments and workflow analysis, and provided technical as well as IT support for the plan’s implementation.

As a result of the intensive process—which involved hundreds of employees across eight different departments and 75 regional offices—the CRA was much better positioned to respond to the crisis and assist in providing the needed services.

“The CRA was a year or two ahead of other offices in terms of management, internal communication, and outreach capacity” because of its partnership with AED, said Larry Held, AED’s chief of party in Georgia. The agency currently staffs 75 regional offices, and citizens can receive services quickly, he added.

A Model Agency

Giorgi Vashadze, who heads the CRA, says his agency has become a model for other entities within the Georgian government, and for provincial governments in places like the autonomous region of Adjara. “We already have some examples of other government agencies learning from us,” he said. “When you have good planning, you have good results.”

Vashadze points to human-resource management as a critical area that was addressed in the CRA’s strategic plan. “We’ve fully changed our HR style, and our new HR department really knows how to train people. They research which skills are important to develop, plan training appropriately, and create job descriptions—all things they didn’t know how to do before.”

AED’s staff person in Adjara, Vakho Gordeladze, says the FORECAST efforts led to more citizens contributing to the regional government’s efforts to address important issues—a new concept for residents of this distant, mountainous region of Georgia.

“Under the project, AED facilitated two town hall meetings with Adjara government ministers and citizens,” he said. “In addition to the 300 attendees, citizens called in to ask the ministers how

Armenia

ANOUSH YEDIGARYAN is AED’s Armenia Country Director and HICD Chief of Party.

In the 16 years since we started working in Armenia, we’ve partnered with many, many local institutions. We began with two training programs and gradually expanded our work to include both human and institutional capacity development. We’ve provided training in good governance to government leaders, and most of the NGO and business leaders have also received professional development through AED.

The Chamber of Advocates, an institution that supports the country’s lawyers, is a good example. Through its work with AED, the group studied international models, devised its own development strategy, and has grown into a strong, countrywide association.

Through FORECAST we’re still working today—full speed—with large-scale and high-profile initiatives including some at Technology City, a planned technology cluster, which will showcase and use information technology to incubate businesses, strengthen their economy, and encourage more foreign investment.

The beauty of FORECAST is that it is cross-cutting. We provide assistance in all of the sectors that USAID supports, which include everything from banking to health care, from energy to media, from NGOs to social welfare, and in the government as well.

they planned to solve problems like poverty, unemployment, increasing agricultural exports, and improving education.”

Activities under FORECAST target the right actors for sustained development solutions: organizations and the individuals who work in them, according to Mark Ketcham, vice president and director of the AED Center for Enterprise and Capacity Development.

“We as international program implementers facilitate and provide expert input into this process,” he said. “This results in stronger local capacity to address challenges that constrain ongoing social improvement.”

A Network of Health Workers

In Indonesia, FORECAST works in almost every sector, from democracy and governance to education to health.

One program focuses on maternal and infant health. More than 15 percent of babies born in the country have low birth weights because of persistent issues such as infections, pre-eclampsia, and prematurity. Incubators and health care personnel are at a premium, which is why AED facilitated the development of a network of health workers who would teach mothers an easy, accessible, and safe method to reduce infections. The practice, called “kangaroo care,” teaches mothers to provide skin-to-skin contact and exclusive breastfeeding to their babies.

Kangaroo care provides a safe alternative to some common practices of warming and comforting babies, which may involve hot bottles of water that can scald or smoky fires that can damage tiny lungs, said Dr. Bernie Medise, a pediatrician from Jakarta’s major teaching hospital.

But adopting kangaroo care requires people to change long-held habits, explained Kay Ikranagara, FORECAST’s chief of party in Indonesia. “Health care providers are trying to spread this method because it’s so successful, but it will take time for people to get used to it because it’s new,” she said.

To get started, AED coordinated training for 14 Indonesian doctors, nurses, and midwives. Among the trainees was Dr. Medise, who returned from the training ready to teach health workers the techniques she’d learned. “Now we have a network, so we can refer a baby to another hospital,” she says. “And kangaroo care offers many benefits: it requires less manpower, reduces infections, and shortens a baby’s hospital stay.”


For more information, contact Mark Ketcham.

FORECAST is a project in the AED Leadership and Institutional Development Group which supports effective leadership for change by developing individual and institutional capabilities; promoting enterprise development and microfinance programs; supporting sustainable energy development; fostering collaboration and the exchange of ideas; and promoting social responsibility.

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