From Training to Transformation: How DOT’s Organizational Development Program is Empowering Local Organizations with Knowledge in Going Beyond

Over the past several months, Neema Walter and her colleagues have seen their community transform. Working with the Digital Opportunity Trust and the Mastercard Foundation’s Going Beyond project, their organization, Sheria Kiganjani, has overseen the training of hundreds of young people in Tanzania in digital business skills. Before Going Beyond began, Neema observed how demoralized the youth around her were by their professional prospects. “Many of them had given up on life,” she says. But after completing the training, “they reignited the fire again, and saw a future they didn’t think was possible.” That metamorphosis was moving to witness, but it was made even more powerful by the fact that Going Beyond also provided Neema with the skills to measure it. Through the project’s Organizational Development Program (ODP), Neema recently completed a course in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) – professional tools that organizations like hers use to collect and assess data on their work. “Having these skills is a boost in our organization’s growth journey,” she explains. “I love to be able to measure the impact we’ve created.” 

Sheria Kiganjani and Going Beyond’s five other partner organizations have been working behind the scenes on one of the project’s most visible success stories—the training of over 3,000 young business owners in Malawi and Tanzania. But Neema’s professional leap forward is not incidental to the project’s success either. As part of their collaboration with DOT and the Mastercard Foundation, each of Going Beyond’s partner organizations is receiving significant support for its own internal development. The goal is to help youth organizations scale their ability to deliver youth-led, gender-inclusive digital livelihoods programming, enhance their sustainability, overcome challenges, and realize their vision—creating a lasting impact that extends beyond the Going Beyond program. To that end, representatives from each organization recently completed a series of ODP courses on Gender, Inclusion & Safeguarding; Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E); and Partnerships & Sustainability. These included the M&E training that Neema completed, as well as curricula on gender and safeguarding, and partnerships and sustainability.

For many of the young people who participated, the ODP was life-changing. They reported that the courses contained valuable, usable content that they could immediately apply to their day-to-day operations. “This training wasn’t castles in the sky – it was practical and down to earth,” explains Vincent Mbisa from Emerge Livelihoods, a partner organization in Malawi. He completed the ODP course in partnerships and sustainability, which taught participants how to network with donors, fellow nonprofit organizations, government officials, and others in their professional space. It also provided tools for how to tell their story and pitch their work in ways that maximized their audience. “I learned to speak the language everyone else in the development community is using,” he explains. And he says it didn’t take long for his training to pay off. Just a week after Vincent completed the ODP, he had a meeting with an important potential partner from the Malawian government. It proved a major success. “The ODP allowed me to go much deeper with them in the conversation,” he says. 

Vincent’s experience is not unique. Many ODP participants reported that one of the most valuable aspects of the ODP was the assurance it gave them that they had the necessary knowledge and authority to advocate on behalf of their communities. “It helped build my confidence,” explains Nusura Myonga of Her Initiative, a partner in Tanzania. That kind of permission to be a leader is particularly important for people and communities who may have been told in the past that they don’t belong in such spaces, explains Happiness Manjuu of Songambele in Tanzania, which advocates for the rights and economic empowerment of women and girls with disabilities. “For myself as a young leader, this course gave me new hope and new confidence in how to present myself and communicate,” she says. “At the end of the day,  I realize now that I have knowledge to impart.” 

ODP participants also spoke of the lasting impact that knowledge would have on themselves and their organizations. “This will not just end when the Going Beyond project ends,” says Lydia Ibrahim of Hakizetu in Tanzania, who completed the M&E course. “It will last forever in my life.” Elijah Lumbani Mkandawire, the CEO of mHub in Malawi, says his organization is already “harnessing the lessons learned from this ODP” to shape their strategic plan for the next five years. Happiness of Songambele is thinking even further. “Our future staff will inherit this knowledge,” she says. “It will stay with us forever, so that we can keep securing funds and doing work that benefits the society we live in.”