Drive your Organization’s Vision with Learning Advocates

International relief agency, Samaritan’s Purse, has 20 Learning Advocates around the world inspiring local staff to learn, develop and drive the organization forward. Theresa Decker shares the secret to their success.  

At Samaritan’s Purse, one of our organizational principles is to “serve with excellence.” We believe that Learning Advocates who are empowered and well-resourced will be the drivers for our organization’s vision, not us. Our job is simply to set them up for success by putting the tools, information, and skills in their hands. That’s what we’ve been doing for the last seven years, and we now have Learning Advocates around the world who can identify and meet their office’s unique needs and knowledge gaps.

Curation, Complexity, Collaboration and other Curious Learning and Capacity Building Trends

Last week, we opened the Global Learning Forum at the InsideNGO 2017 conference by discussing the trends affecting learning in international NGOs (INGOs). While many of the 120 participants in the session had specific responsibilities for learning or capacity building in their organizations, it was also exciting to see a diverse group of HR, finance and compliance professionals engaged in the discussion.

‘Inspired and ready to be part of the journey’: Highlights from GLF 2017!

This year’s GLF/InsideNGO was one of the most dynamic and exciting conferences, with many attendees feeling that it was a turning point for the sector. We asked five members of the LINGOs team to share their learning insights and key takeaway messages from the event.

Winners of the LINGOs Awards 2017! A year of impact.

Every year, LINGOs recognizes the outstanding learning contributions and achievements of its members and partners at an awards ceremony. This year’s winners, announced at the Global Learning Forum 2017, are truly inspirational in how they have impacted learning in their own organizations or for the benefit of the wider NGO community.

Making Learning More Scalable with Humentum

Thirteen years ago, a few people representing what would become the six founding members of LINGOs starting holding weekly conference calls. They had been recently thrust into new roles by their organization—challenged to improve their internal learning and training capabilities with a specific emphasis on how to better use technology. Each of them felt excited, unsure about, and unprepared for the task. At the time, most international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) had small or non-existent learning and development (L&D) departments, and the use of e-learning and other technology-enabled learning was even rarer—despite the obvious opportunity of using it to reach the thousands of NGO workers living and working in remote and hard-to-reach locations around the world.

Learning for all in a conflict zone

A guest post by Terver Kuegh, PM specialist at ACF Nigeria

Action Against Hunger Nigeria is using a social learning platform called Curatr to improve the capacity of many of its field staff. Curatr enables organizations to deliver online courses and MOOCs (Massive Open Online Courses). The platform is built around proven gamification principles and allows users to learn from, and with, other people. Curatr also allows the facilitator to monitor individual activity and progress, hence making learning more measurable.

Learning can be a challenge in conflict situations and this case study focuses on north east Nigeria, where Boko Haram attracted international outrage after 276 or so Chibok girls were kidnapped from their school in 2014. The region has witnessed widespread displacement and heinous violations of human rights since 2009, plummeting it into a deepening humanitarian crisis. According the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, up to 2.1 million people fled their homes at the height of the conflict, 1.9 million of whom are currently internally displaced and 200,000 or so who are in neighboring Cameroon, Chad and Niger. In the three most affected states of Borno, Adamawa and Yobe, almost 7 million people are in need of humanitarian assistance, more than 50 per cent of them children.

The fundamentals of financial management: The Guide to FMD Pro

The Guide to FMD Pro (Financial Management for Development and Humanitarian Professionals) is a downloadable manual containing the full body of knowledge on which all of the FMD Pro materials are based. It focuses on the fundamentals of financial management and provides tools and guidance for all team members to manage their project finances effectively.

Creative in Conflict: Project Management Training in Syria via WhatsApp

The war in Syria has created one of the most challenging environments for NGOs to operate in. Financial resources are extremely limited, communication networks are poor and electricity is in short supply. The security situation has forced almost half the population to flee to safety which means there are fewer skilled people left in Syria and those trying to enter the country face numerous risks and problems. As a result, NGOs are in desperate need of project managers but are struggling to recruit or train them.

Marifah for Social Entrepreneurship in Turkey decided to tackle this problem by utilising one of the most reliable free communication tools it has access to: WhatsApp. With the organizational motto, ‘Creative Investment in Creative People,’ they came up with the idea of providing training in Project Management for Development Professionals (PMD Pro) using WhatsApp to engage trainees directly through their phones or computers.

FMD Pro: The rational choice for NGOs

In the NGO sector, there is an increasing demand for financial accountability but at the project level there is a widespread shortage of skills. Most NGO managers are not finance experts, and even those who are have no agreed standard of competency. That’s where FMD Pro comes in.

 

Improving our induction program: A case study from Medair

 

A guest post by Gillian Withell, Talent and Development Officer, Medair

Most organizations know that inductions help new recruits settle in and give them the information and support they need to perform their role. But how long is your induction program, what does it cover and could it be improved? When the HR team at Medair asked these questions, they learned more than they expected.