Leadership Management and Governance/Afghanistan Trip Report

The project will also continue to support capacity building of the Ministry of Education (MoE). The LMG Afghanistan program is an 18-month intervention starting in September 1, 2012, and extending to January 31, 2014, with a total budget of $25,400,800. An 8-month extension of the project was received, with associated additional funding of approximately $4 million. The program's objectives include strengthening the capacities and skills of LMG National Volunteer Facilitators to effectively facilitate meetings, workshops, trainings, and seminars relating to health workforce competence development in LMG. This is consistent with the MOPH strategic plan, strategic direction nr 2: strengthen human resource management and development. The program also aims to support the Management and Leadership Development Department (MLDD) to acquire the needed skills and practices to manage repeat workshops as needed. A five-day workshop was conducted with the MLDD team to introduce members of the national L+M+G volunteers to the differences between the basic LDP and the LDP+. The workshop aimed to increase the facilitation skills of these volunteers and produce LDP+ roll-out plans for provinces represented. Thirty facilitators were selected and invited, with 24 attending and two dropping out for reasons beyond their control. The remaining 22 participants received certificates of attendance. The workshop showed significant improvements in participants' confidence levels, with an average increase of 5.5 points on a 0-10 scale. The participants demonstrated a better understanding of the LDP+ guide and were able to explain the differences between the LDP and the LDP+. They also showed increased confidence in organizing and conducting LDP+ sessions, facilitating new LDP+ sessions, and dealing with challenging facilitation situations. The final objective of the workshop was to have participants produce a plan for the roll-out of the LDP+ in their province, which was confirmed upon completion. The MLDD team facilitated most of the sessions in Dari and Pashto, with Sylvia coaching the team and daily review sessions. The MLDD team will be able to repeat this workshop as new L+M+G facilitators are brought on board. The next steps for the program include the MLDD staff following up with the provinces/teams assigned to them, with all LDP+ to start no later than March. The MLDD team will also give another workshop like this one to the next batch of volunteer facilitators, which will hopefully comprise a significant number of women. Those who have rolled out the LDP+ will receive official certificates, with the exact requirements for receiving this certification still to be decided. The MLDD team needs to think about its Knowledge Management (KM) strategy and structure to ensure that materials and documents are easily accessible and available in the future. This can be linked to LMG's KM strategy at the current moment but ultimately needs to belong to the MOPH. The plans for roll-out LDP+ in the provinces were in Dari, and participants wanted to review and complete them with their teams back home.