Social Learning: A Case Study from Syria

By Mike Culligan, Director of Last Mile Learning

In his book The Future of Work, Jacob Morgan observes that “the traditional way to learn and teach was largely guided and dictated by organizations who set out training programs, manuals, and set courses. Technology has connected employees and information together anywhere, anytime, and on any device. This means that learning and teaching can happen between employees without official corporate training programs or manuals. Have a question? Tap into the collective intelligence of your company.”

Morgan’s observations underscore a fundamental shift in the way organizations interpret the concept of “workplace learning.” Nowhere is this shift more apparent than in the work that LINGOs is doing with its partners in the Last Mile Learning initiative. In Syria, for example, we are working with the Syrian NGO Forum to set up a learning platform that supports the staff of over 90 NGOs (local and international) responding to the crisis in that country.  While the platform will serve as a channel to distribute a collection of Arabic-language eCourses, the NGO Forum is equally excited about using the platform’s front-end to establish a system of social/networked learning that helps emergency responders to connect and share knowledge via groups, discussion threads, blogs, wikis and  document repositories.  The Syria context is especially challenging for learning because relief workers  are located in three countries, do not have free passage between the areas in which they work, and often are unable to attend coordination meetings and trainings.  To remedy these constraints, the platform will provide users access to “just in time learning”, but will also provide the “just in time information” that is critical to supporting the people they serve.

Jane Hart recently reviewed Morgan’s book in her excellent Learning in the Social Marketplace blog and concluded by asking ‘How is your organization supporting the ‘learning worker”?’  LINGOs’ work in Syria provides a window into the new opportunities organizations have to promote both formal learning and social/networked learning through the new LINGOs learning platform.

Interested in learning more? Join Mike for a one-hour webinar on Thursday, May 14 as he shares 7 lessons from the social platform launch in Syria. Details and registration here.

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LINGOs: A new look, a new site

10-years ago LINGOs began as a consortium of international NGOs working to reduce poverty and alleviate suffering in the developing world.  LINGOs members joined together to share ideas and participate in world-class learning opportunities provided by individuals volunteers, corporations and learning institutions.  By leveraging the exceptional products and services that have been either donated  or provided at significantly reduced costs to our members, LINGOs has been able to help those doing good….do it better.

Over the past few years LINGOs has expanded its offerings to members and other NGOs through Project Services and Last Mile Learning.  Both of these program units are rapidly gaining momentum as the demand for their trainings, courses and services increase.

Today, LINGOs is so much more than what we started with back in 2004.  We have – and continue to – evolve to reach more and more relief and development organizations and volunteers even in the most remote areas of the world.

This year as we celebrate our 10-year anniversary we are launching new initiatives for our organization, our members and our community.  Included in these initiatives is new branding for LINGOs and its three program units together with the introduction of new websites.

Logos & Websites

We started with one logo: LINGOs.  The familiar star burst logo, with its arm stretching across the world encompassed our entire organization.  Today, we officially introduce the new LINGOs logo together with the logos for our three program units.

The LINGOs website has served us well over the years – and today we are very excited to launch our new site(s) with an updated look and feel; easy navigation, and add user-friendly tools.

The LINGOs logo has maintained the same look and feel of our original logo, but we’ve updated the colors and added a new tag line.  Our updated website now reflects the more comprehensive programming LINGOs offers. You will find the updated LINGOs landing page at the same address:  http://www.lingos.org.  This site has an “updates” section, where you can read news from LINGOs, including the recent announcement of Chris Proulx as our next CEO.   From the LINGOs.Org website you can access the  three program area websites or you may visit them individually.

Membership’s logo represents community coming together to build capacity, knowledge and skill.  The new membership site, http://www.membership.lingos.org is the outward facing site for membership. This is a helpful site for those interested in learning more about the LINGOs membership consortium. For now, Members can find detailed information about member benefits and resources on the long serving member Sharepoint site http://ngolearning.org.

Project Services logo represents LINGOs helping development professionals work together more effectively in the management of projects.  http://www.projectservices.lingos.org. This new site highlights the many resources our team offers for organizations seeking to build capacity to deliver their projects and programs better. The site includes communities of learning and links to open and closed project management courses.

Last Mile Learning’s logo, which debuted with the launch of the Last Mile Learning site a year ago continues to accurately represent its objective to bring learning to the people on the ground in the most remote and hard to reach areas of the world.  http://www.lastmilelearning.org.
All four logos will be utilized in our communications so you can readily identify its origin.

2014 is turning out to be a banner year for LINGOs and we invite you to keep an eye out for more exciting news as the year progresses!

 

 

Financially Fluent… in multiple languages

Last year, LINGOs Last Mile Learning program launched a financial management learning path in English. This five course learning path based in the Mango (Management Accounting in NGOs) curriculum contextualized to the Global NGO covers planning, accounting records, reporting, and internal controls.

Question 1: Are you fluent?

Available in English since last July, we asked potential learners “Are you Fluent in Financial Management?” (click the image to find out).

The answer was that global NGOs want to build the financial skills of their global staff and they wanted the financial management path available in other languages. We wanted it, too, but just didn’t have the resources.

Question 2: Can you help?

This time we asked our members for help, and thanks to the generous support of a few members, we now offer the Financial Management Learning Path in Spanish, and soon will be able to do so in French. We’re about a third of our way to getting the Financial Management and People Management learning paths translated to Spanish, French and Portuguese.

Translation Funding as of May 1, 2014

 

 

 

 

Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Obrigado ….

Huge thanks to The Nature Conservancy, Samaritan’s Purse, CARE, FHI 360, Habitat for Humanity International, Helen Keller International, IUCN, MSH, Plan International and WWF for the initial contributions that have gotten us on our way.

It’s not too late to help – we have four languages/paths to go right now, and more as new paths are developed in English.

I want to help!

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Email(required)

My Organization/Company

Count on us for $_______ (insert amount below)

Send us an invoice(required)

Yes The check is in the mail!

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“Crowdfunding is the collection of finance to sustain an initiative from a large pool of backers—the “crowd.” Wikipedia

LINGOs deploys Last Mile Learning with NetDimensions

NetDimensions and LINGOs innovate with next generation learning technology for international humanitarian relief and development organizations

Hong Kong and Seattle, WA; February 12, 2014 — NetDimensions (AIM: NETD; OTCQX: NETDY), a global provider of performance, knowledge, and learning management systems, and LINGOs, a global non-profit consortium of leading humanitarian relief and development organizations, announced today that NetDimensions has donated NetDimensions Learning to LINGOs to deliver a wide range of professional development experiences to the staff of its member organizations and others working to improve lives in the developing world.

NetDimensions and LINGOs have built an innovative learning offering that is based on NetDimensions Learning, the award-winning Learning Management System available as Secure SaaS, that can serve multiple LINGOs member organizations via highly personalized and distributed learning portals. The portals are developed on the popular WordPress blogging and content management system and utilize BuddyPress, a WordPress plugin that provides social networking functionality.

With the WordPress front-end, LINGOs can cost-effectively provide learning portals to each member organization that meet the unique requirements of their headquarters and country offices wherever they are in the world. These portals integrate with NetDimensions Learning via the NetDimensions SDK that provides single sign-on authentication and specific APIs and widgets for WordPress.

“We view this new offering as the next generation learning technology for our members,” said Eric Berg, President and CEO of LINGOs. “It allows us to move beyond simply providing traditional learning management functionality so we can now bring community and social aspects to the online learning experience. NetDimensions has been the only company that was able to provide the right product to enable us to build this distributed offering that delivers capacity to staff in the field as they need it.”

LINGOs’ Last Mile Learning provides free, contextualized learning resources to professionals working in the development and relief sectors. The learning resources are accessible in multiple formats and are designed to serve the needs of individual learners, trainers and organizations.

“We are proud to become a LINGOs partner and to contribute with our technology in helping to address many of the fundamental challenges faced by society today,” explained Alex Poulos, Chief Marketing Officer of NetDimensions. “There is no question that learning can be transformational to communities all over the world and can help better people’s lives with technology playing a key part in that.”

LINGOs will begin making this new learning offering available in the next month and will be able to highlight the technology together with NetDimensions at ASTD 2014 International Conference and Exhibition in Washington, DC on May 4-7. LINGOs members include Non-Government Organizations (NGOs) such as Save The Children, World Relief, Action Aid, CARE, Habitat for Humanity, The Nature Conservancy, Samaritan’s Purse, WWF, and others.

“This is an extremely elegant and powerful architecture to address some unique requirements faced by NGOs and to deliver personalized and collaborative learning at the point of need,” added Poulos.

“NetDimensions has always been true to its mission to make learning, performance support and knowledge sharing more accessible to global organizations,” said Jay Shaw, CEO and founder of NetDimensions. “We are honored to be able to try to do the same for non-profit organizations that have to serve their efforts under very difficult conditions. As a company looking for ways to give back to society, NetDimensions is fully committed to building our relationship with LINGOs and to helping provide a learning technology that has an impact on the world.”

 

About LINGOs

Created in 2005 as a means and community for organizations to share learning resources, LINGOs is continuously expanding as more organizations become aware of the value of membership.

LINGOs also serves as a central contact point for private sector organizations and individuals interested in assisting the sector who want to see their contributions of software, courseware, systems and services be leveraged across many organizations. LINGOs’ Partners, learning leaders in the private sector, donate or subsidize access to their Learning Management Systems, eLearning development tools, synchronous, virtual classroom software, and industry-leading course catalogs through LINGOs to member agencies.

By providing a community for sharing learning resources and experiences, and the latest learning technologies and courses from our partners, LINGOs helps international NGOs increase the skill levels of their employees and therefore increase the impact of their programs. For more information, visit http://www.lingos.org.

 

About NetDimensions

Established in 1999, NetDimensions (AIM: NETD; OTCQX: NETDY) is a global provider of performance, knowledge, and learning solutions.

NetDimensions provides companies, government agencies and other organizations with talent management solutions to personalize learning, share knowledge, enhance performance, foster collaboration, and manage compliance programs for employees, customers, partners and suppliers.

Recognized as one of the talent management industry’s top-rated technology suppliers in overall customer satisfaction, NetDimensions has been chosen by leading organizations worldwide including ING, Cathay Pacific, Hunter Douglas, Chicago Police Department, Geely Automotive, Fugro Group, and Fresenius Medical Care.

NetDimensions is ISO 9001 certified and NetDimensions hosted services are ISO 27001 certified.

For more information, visit www.NetDimensions.com or follow @netdimensions on Twitter.

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Robert Torio
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LINGOs: Reflections on the First Decade and Imagining the Second

Eric Berg, LINGOs Co-Founder and CEO

Ten years! Ten years! It can’t be that long. I just filed the 501(c)3 papers a little while ago – or so it seems. But a check of the paperwork says 2005 which means 2014 will be the tenth year for LINGOs. My plan was very clear – volunteer as a staff person while Linda English from Save the Children, Mike Culligan from Catholic Relief Services, Meg Burns from Care, Mignon Mazique from Mercy Corps and Lisa Ferris from Heifer International decided what they wanted to do with the organization – maybe three years max. Then we would find a capable person from the sector to take over and lead LINGOs into the future. I could then watch from afar as the organization took off. But as they say about “best laid plans of mice and men…..” mine went astray many years ago — and how lucky for me.

Reflections and aspirations

Over the holidays I’ve had a chance to reflect on the past nine years and have enjoyed thinking about how our modest aspirations at the beginning – to share some online learning opportunities among international NGOs – has expanded into wanting “to provide world- class learning opportunities at little or no cost to anyone working to improve lives in the developing world.”

With the launch of the Last Mile Learning program this year, we have taken the first steps on that very lengthy journey. And with the launch of the new LINGOs Learning Platform (LLP) in 2014, we are taking a giant leap forward in providing a state-of-the-art, multi-function learning platform – not only for our members but also for local NGOs throughout the world.

More than a learning consortium

LINGOs now includes a community of members that are actively engaged in providing innovative, professional development opportunities to their organizations in ways that constantly amaze me.

The PMD Pro project management certification that LINGOs pioneered in 2010 is taking hold in the sector with over 7000  individuals having taken the PMD Pro exam and more and more organizations incorporating the tools and techniques into their standard processes. We are gathering data now on how professional project management has resulted in more benefits to the individuals and communities being served by PMD Pro certified project managers. Look for an article on that topic in the coming months.

And every day more individuals throughout the globe are accessing content on basic management, financial management and project management from the Last Mile Learning site.

Last week we received an email from Jean Pierre in Rwanda that read in part, “… I thank you very much for the effort you make to help everybody who needs knowledge gain it freely. May God bless you all.”

While we don’t know exactly who Jean Pierre is or how he found Last Mile Learning, we are happy that the message is getting out and look forward to telling you about tens of thousands of Jean Pierres, each of whom is improving his or her skills so communities can get more from the investments being made to improve people’s lives in the developing world.

Grateful to the members of the LINGOs’ village

There’s an oft-quoted African Adage that “it takes a village to raise a child.” In our case, a global village has helped LINGOs to become what we are today (and what we can yet become!). LINGOs would not even contemplate that audacious desire without the generous support of our village.

• Our many corporate partners that provide world class course content, learning development tools, professional development services and state-of-the-art platforms enable LINGOs to provide tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of learning services to each of our 75+ member organizations as well as to have created the Last Mile Learning Program that provides a growing library of learning and training resources for anyone.
• Hundreds of learning professionals have contributed their world-class instructional design and development skills, volunteering thousands of hours and over a million dollars’ worth of professional services enabling LINGOs and its members to create customized eLearning content on a broad range of management, communications, technical and development-specific topics
• LINGOs Members have not only benefitted from the support of our partners and volunteers, but they have built on and shared these contributions so they are not just additive but contribute exponentially to the success of global development and humanitarian efforts. The ideas initially developed by one organization, tweaked and improved by another, can be continuously perfected, and scaled for global deployment at a minimal cost and maximal return for all of us who want to help make the world a better place.
• The LINGOs Board of Directors provides the vision and guidance for LINGOs –allowing us to imagine the vision we so audaciously desire to achieve and helping us ensure we have the assets, including the village of partners, volunteers and members, to achieve it.

From not being able to spell “LMS” to contextualized content creation

We have accomplished more than I ever thought possible when we first started those monthly phone calls led by Linda English at Save the Children in 2004. From modest goals of sharing ideas and experiences to over 150,000 courses completed online — mostly by staff in the developing world. From accessing some corporate eLearning courses on Element K to creating custom content contextualized for individual NGOs and organization-specific processes. From not being able to spell “LMS” to creating custom learning platforms reaching employees around the world, we have come a long way together and we should celebrate what we have accomplished and make sure others know what we have done.

Imagine Ifs

But a Tenth Year review is also time to look ahead at what we can do together in the next ten years. Now is a time to really “dream things that never were and say ‘Why not?’” While I am very proud of where we are, I don’t believe for a minute we have scratched the surface of what we can do.

• Imagine if all the people working in local NGOs had access to the kinds of professional development tools and experiences that LINGOs members enjoy.
• Imagine what could happen if we could collectively figure out how to translate individual knowledge and skills into organizational impact.
• Imagine if we could harness the entrepreneurial energy of local trainers to build a network of people who possess not only the professional skills but also content and platforms that enable them to work with local organizations to improve the impact of their work and for those local trainers to be able to make a living at it.
• Imagine using technology in new ways so that content could come from the South and be shared across the South without filter or modifications.

These are just some of the things to think about as we look ahead. I am looking forward our Tenth Anniversary as both a celebration and a catalyst for new directions for LINGOs. I hope you will think about what LINGOs might become as you contemplate the year ahead during these first few weeks of 2014. You can be certain that all of us at LINGOs will be thinking about it along with you.

Co-Founder and CEO Eric Berg announced plans to retire from LINGOs at the end of 2014. We will celebrate both LINGOs and Eric’s many accomplishments and contributions at the tenth annual member meeting at Mercy Corps in Portland, Oregon, in November.

LINGOs seeks an entrepreneurial, dynamic leader to succeed Eric. To learn more click here.

Fun “Cosmo Quiz” vs Serious Announcement?

You’ve got a new course or learning resource and it’s a great learning opportunity for your staff. How do you get the word out?

 

[  ] Memo from the boss?

[  ]  eMail from the Learning Coordinator?

[  ]  Flyer in the break room?  (or elevator, stairwell, restroom…)

[  ]  Text announcement on your intranet?

[  ]  “Gamified” approach?

[  ]   Hallway conversations from an internal maven?

[  ]   All of the above

Have Some Fun

Most of us don’t think of financial management as particularly enjoyable. Last Mile Learning launched its new Financial Management Learning Path with a fun Cosmo-style quiz to ask viewers to check their financial fluency  (click here for the quiz).

Market Your Learning

LINGOs’ Last Mile Learning is marketing learning resources more than once and in various ways. For busy development professionals, particularly those who travel internationally and may miss an email that isn’t hugely urgent, so it’s vital to have more than one opportunity for staff to learn about it.

Actively market your learning! For-profit-companies don’t send an email about a new product and then sit back and wait for customers to empty the shelves. They advertise! Not-for-profit charities do marketing, as well. Use those marketing resources to increase awareness of your learning resources.

Multiple Contacts

The “Financial Fluency Quiz” was promoted through a newsletter (click here to subscribe), many LinkedIn Community Groups, the Last Mile Learning Facebook Page, tweets (and re-tweets) and various e-distribution groups.  In fact, you can forward it, too!

5 things you can do now:

If you are with a LINGOs Member Organization*, you can attend the Last Mile Learning session at the LINGOs member meeting next month in Washington, DC.
Click to Check YOUR financial fluency

Register for a Last Mile Learning Account and take a free course

  LIKE Last Mile Learning on Facebook

LINGOs Members, if you’d like the editable file for the financial fluency quiz to use (and direct your learners to YOUR portal), email Marian.

Speed Dating and More at the InsideNGO 2013 Conference

We are at the InsideNGO annual conference this week – learning and sharing with almost 1000 professionals from international NGOs. We had a great time with colleagues from FHI360, Catholic Relief Services and PATH at today’s “Speed Dating for Organizational Learning.”

LINGOs’ Gus Curran leads a speed date on Espresso Shot Learning

We adapted from one of the most popular sessions at last year’s LINGOs Member Meeting for the InsideNGO audience. Each participant at the session had a chance to go on four organizational learning dates. Each “date” was carefully screened for compatibility: All were from the international development/humanitarian relief sector; all were not-for-profits; all shared common constraints and goals: to strengthen their greatest asset – through professional development and organizational learning.

Many of the speed dates are already among the Espresso Shots of Learning mentioned in our previous post, and others are coming soon! Many thanks to Kelli Tubman of Catholic Relief Services, Amanda Zehnder of PATH and Paige Layno Winn of FHI360 for sharing your learning approaches, and to all participants for some great discussion, observations, and ideas.

We’re ready for more great sessions tomorrow at #INGO2013, including a couple we’re leading. We look forward to seeing InsideNGO members at “Better planning for virtual classroom training” and a “Lunch and Learn session “LINGOs: a resource for all NGOs.”  We’ll share info and resources on several resources available to those working in learning and development for INGOs:

• the LINGOs Group on LinkedIn a community of practice for over 1000 learning professionals who share  and discuss approaches, challenges and successes in the development and relief sectors,
• Global Giveback through which learning professionals volunteer their highest skills with non-profits working to improve people’s lives in the developing world, as well as our new program,
• Last Mile Learning  – which provides world-class learning opportunities at no cost to anyone working to improve lives in the developing world. Development professionals with better skills deliver better quality services and produce better results for beneficiary communities.  We encourage folks to register and start learning,
• LINGOs Membership for not-for-profit international NGOs that seek to join the community, share innovative learning approaches, access to learning tools, shared content, project services capacity building  and opportunities to work with volunteer learning professionals.

We look forward to meeting you here in DC.

The Power of Volunteers

Posted by Gus Curran, LINGOs Member Services Manager

 What comes to mind when you think volunteers?

Non-profits reach out to volunteers on a regular basis for all kinds of projects and tasks, from stuffing envelopes to helping out at events to doing field work, even building houses.

What could you accomplish if you asked highly skilled learning professionals to volunteer their talents for you and your organization?

If you are Mike Culligan ,Director of LINGOs’ Last Mile Learning Program, the answer to that question is that volunteers can get incredible things done. During the last year, Mike worked with over 80 volunteers to create the Last Mile Learning portal and courses. He recently posted on the Global Giveback LinkedIn Group the following list of accomplishments, completed almost entirely by a team of volunteers.

– 1  website built
– 2 Learning paths created
– 4 Last Mile Learning curriculum guides published (self-led, face-to-face, blended synchronous, blended asynchronous)
– 7 courses translated to Spanish, French and Portuguese
– 13 face to face training packages completed
– 15 eLearning modules developed, and
– 21 additional eLearning modules currently under development

Thanks to the support of volunteers, a library of professional development courses is available, FREE OF CHARGE to anybody working to improve the lives poor communities around the world via http://www.LastMileLearning.org.

No Job is too small!

I recently reached out to volunteers on the Global Giveback Group on LinkedIn, asking them to test Last Mile Learning courses. Highly skilled learning professionals responded quickly, and I was moved and humbled by their generosity. As you can imagine, testing courses is not the most glamorous assignment, but volunteers stepped up and did the testing, offering great feedback on the courses and helping to make Last Mile learning even better. One volunteer took my basic Word document reporting forms and improved them, converting them to forms on Google Docs and setting it up so that all the feedback was aggregated and easy to review.  I hadn’t even thought of this, and a volunteer saw the need and reached out to me and offered to help.

No Job is too big!

Did you know that volunteers help LINGOs members learn on a regular basis? Greg Davis of Precision eLearning volunteers his time and skills quarterly to lead the Virtual Training Mastery Series, a popular and engaging course which is helping staff of LINGOs member organizations to design and deliver better training online. He designed the workshop pro-bono for LINGOs, and LINGOs being LINGOs, asked him if would be willing to also deliver the workshop. He said yes. He’s lead over 500 people through this course.

Pam Thomas, owner and certified coach at What’s Within U, LLC,, is a key volunteer for LINGOs from Coaching Out of the Box®. With help from her colleagues, Pam gives several hours of her time each quarter to guide members through a two part online workshop to help them to develop their coaching skills.

Greg and Pam don’t just donate time and experience- both of these volunteers are giving members their materials, as well.

Learning professionals are willing and ready to volunteer

Learning professionals are eager to help.  They are lining up on the Global Giveback LinkedIn group, seeking NGOs whose needs and projects match their interests and skills. All you have to do is reach out to them.  Visit the Global Giveback LinkedIn Group to review posts by potential volunteers. Review the helpful handouts on the LINGOs Global Giveback site to start planning your project with your volunteer.

Optional Competition

In the past, a highlight of Global Giveback has been its element of competition. This year the competition is optional. Non-profits may enter eLearning courses into the competition (with the volunteer’s consent, of course).  A panel of judges for the competition will review courses based on a set of requirements, as in years past. However, it is not required that a project be submitted to the competition. This means that all projects should be considered as potential Global Giveback opportunities, as long as they are related to learning for nonprofit organizations working to improve people’s lives in the developing world. This includes internal courses such as orientations, or converting live workshops into blended courses or elearning.

Learn More at the Global Giveback Webinar

I encourage NGO learning staff to join us for a webinar on May 9 at 11:00AM EDT (click here to register) to learn more about how to use Global Giveback harness the power of volunteers. The webinar will also feature LINGOs members who successfully developed courses with volunteer developers in previous years of Global Giveback, and you can ask them your questions. We look forward to seeing you there.

Read this recent post on the Global Giveback

5 Ways Last Mile Learning will Change the way LINGOS Member Agencies Learn

Posted by Mike Culligan, Director of Last Mile Learning

About a year ago, LINGOS member agencies first heard rumbling of the Last Mile Learning initiative and how it will “change the way their organizations learn.”   Now it’s time to see for yourself!  The Last Mile Learning Open Portal www.lastmilelearning.org is live and ready to share with your staff, your partners, your implementing agencies, your trainers and anyone else that is working to improve the lives of communities around the world.

By now, as a frequent reader of the LINGOs Blog, you probably know the basics of Last Mile Learning.  The initiative provides free learning resources to anyone working in the development and relief sector.  All the courses are organized into learning paths and are available in three formats (self-led e-learning, face-to-face, and blended on-line.)

For LINGOS member agencies, Last Mile Learning provides an especially exciting opportunity to move learning to the next level in five ways:

#5 Content is contextualized to our sector!

The Last Mile Learning catalog is designed specifically for development and relief professionals.  Take for example, the Project Management Learning Path.  Each of the seven courses was designed and developed for development professionals.  The case studies include scenarios of health, conservation and water projects located in rural communities.  The tools examined include log frames, problem trees, monitoring/evaluation plans and other indispensable tools that are critical to our sector.  Furthermore, all the project management content is aligned with the PMDPro certification which, as of last month, over 5,000 development professionals globally have completed.

#4 Resources are available for learners AND facilitators!

Yes, Last Mile Learning will complement LINGOs member agency eLearning libraries with contextualized courses organized into learning paths.  And, for the first time, Last Mile Learning ALSO provides facilitation packages for trainers who would like to lead courses in face-to-face or blended on-line environments.  This means that organizations now have access to resources that allow them to deploy an integrated and comprehensive learning strategy – reaching learners via whatever approach (eLearning, face-to-face, blended on-line) is most appropriate for their context.

#3 Translated content for your global workforce! 

Over 80% of the staff of international NGOs is located outside of the United States.  For most, English is not their first language.  That is why Last Mile Learning is committed to translating its content into multiple languages.  The Project Management learning path is available to LINGOs members in Spanish, French, and Portuguese, as well as English; and available on the Last Mile Learning Open Portal in English and Spanish.  Other learning paths will be translated over the coming year.  These resources will allow organizations to share learning content with the ENTIRE global workforce – not just those who are fluent in English.

#2 It’s time to “expand the we”!

International organizations don’t work alone.  Their work depends on a vibrant network of implementing partners, local NGOs, in-country consortia, government ministries and community based organizations.  Now an organization can develop a professional development strategy for all of the stakeholders involved in its activities.  This can be done via two options:

• Organizations can direct stakeholders to the Last Mile Learning open portal where they can access resources directly;
• Organizations can deploy an LMS Lite where they can directly manage the learning of everyone involved in implementing the organization’s mission.

#1  Adapt resources to your context…  …and your brand!

And, finally, LINGOs members can access the source document files for all of the resources in the Last Mile Learning catalog.  These resources, regardless of whether they are self-led e-learning, face-to-face facilitation packages, or blended on-line content, can be edited to address the unique needs of your organization and the context in which it works.  All LINGOS member agencies have full access to the source files so that they can swap out logos, insert new case studies, revise the learning objectives, or include organization-specific policies for their staff members.

So what’s next?  Help us share the news of the Last Mile Learning  launch!  Visit the open portal, access the resources, and (most importantly) be sure to help us get the word out!

LINGOs is asking that each of its member agency contacts to identify ten people you feel will benefit from free, hi-quality learning resources for professionals in the sector.  This could include:

– Individual Learners – Who can access eLearning courses on topics like Project Identification and Design, Project Planning, Delegation,  Performance Management and much more;

– Trainers – Who can download facilitation guides that allow them to lead face-to-face workshops on all of the topics in the Last Mile Learning catalog;

– Organizations – Who can acquire a Learning Management portal and manage the learning of their stakeholders… …assigning courses, tracking completion status and managing learning paths.

LINGOs Member Agencies desiring to add Last Mile Learning self-paced courses to their existing Learning Management System Catalog may do so. Designated LMS Administrators can request addition of Last Mile Learning Course titles.

What’s LINGOs got going at the Learning Solutions Conference?

LINGOs will be at Learning Solutions Conference and Expo on next week in Orlando – and has lots going on.  In addition to spending quality time with our members, partners, volunteers and several of our board members at the eLearning Guild’s always interesting event, we will be announcing the return of the competitive element to the Global Giveback and representatives from International NGOs and eLearning volunteers will join LINGOs staff members at the SolutionFest 2013.

Back by Popular Demand

The eLearning community’s high level support and volunteerism is bringing back the popular Global Giveback Competition. LINGOs Executive Director Eric Berg will announce the fifth Global Giveback at the Learning Solutions Conference General Session on March 7^th.

Any course created on a volunteer (pro-bono) basis for any non-profit working globally to improve people’s lives in the developing world in 2013 can be entered in the competition.

This is bigger than past Global Giveback events in that participation is not limited only to international development non-profits that are members of LINGOs.  Stay tuned for Eric’s announcement at the Conference and future posts here on an updated Global Giveback site and in the Global Giveback group on LinkedIn.

Solution Fest 2013™

Representatives from several of our member agencies will be participating with us in the first Solution Fest, helping us to demonstrate key learning solutions for people working in humanitarian relief, health, development, conservation and social justice.

We believe that the better they do their jobs, the more the most vulnerable people on earth will have enough to eat, have access to health care and education, have a chance at a secure livelihood and be able to live in a safe and clean environment.

The Challenge: How to make world-class learning opportunities available at no cost to anyone working to improve lives in the developing world?

 

The Solution:

Last Mile Learning – a LINGOs initiative using the latest instructional technologies, the collaboration of the public and private sectors and the creativity and energy of volunteer learning professionals to create and deliver world-class learning in multiple formats and multiple languages contextualized to the development sector.

LINGOs Staff and Members including Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, ACDI/VOCA, InsideNGO, Management Sciences for Health, Samaritan’s Purse and others will demonstrate explore five enabling solutions from Last Mile Learning:

1. Last Mile Learning: Multiple Delivery Modes

2. Last Mile Learning: Creating a Certification System

3. Last Mile Learning: Learning Paths for Motivation

4. Last Mile Learning: Scenario-Based Performance Management

5. Last Mile Learning: Blended Learning Nodes (HoTspots)

We look forward to seeing you there. LINGOs Volunteers and Members attending Learning Solutions are invited to contact Marian (at) LINGOs.org in advance of the meeting.