RWI recently held a workshop in Turkey to help human rights educators in civil society organisations and universities boost their skills in monitoring and evaluating how they educate others about human rights.
“The human rights movement is dependent upon the activism of the civil society sector,” says Felisa Tibbitts, the core facilitator at the workshop. “Individual organisations within this sector are organised according to varying degrees of professionalism. Being able to develop, manage and monitor/evaluate your own project activities is central to survival.”
The workshop participants are part of the Human Rights Education Network, which is composed of civil society organisations and a group of academicians aiming to develop quality human rights education in Turkey.
“RWI’s Turkey Program, as part of the network, provides technical support to the network to develop capacity in human rights education monitoring and evaluation,” says Seda Alp, Programme Officer at RWI.
The first human rights education monitoring and evaluation workshop was held in November 2014 and the second in May 2015 in Ankara. Both workshops have been facilitated by Felisa Tibbitts.
These workshops offer practical guides for participants to design and develop their own evaluation process for their own human rights education, as well as monitoring and evaluation techniques for other human rights education programs implemented by state institutions, the National Human Rights Institution, and international organisations.
Tibbitts says these workshops on data collection methods and analysis focusing on measuring and evaluation are an important support for NGOs that are weak in this area.
She says, “They can then improve their possibilities for getting funding and, as a result, carry out more work that improves the human rights of people. Moreover, developing and measuring and evaluation plan helps you to understand “theory of change” – how your project is intended to improve the human rights of people. Evaluation should also help in the understanding of results.”