USAID COMET Monitoring and Evaluation Plan and Performance Indicator Reference Sheets (PIRS)

The activity brings together public and private sector partners and uses information technology to deliver accessible training in key sectors. Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) is the lead implementing partner of USAID COMET. The ultimate objective of USAID COMET is to improve economic integration and global competitiveness through human resource development in the Lower Mekong sub-region. The project seeks to improve skills of young people in the Lower Mekong sub-region in STEM+AT by connecting multi-national and national firms with vocational centers and higher education institutions and other local stakeholders to bring in demand-driven skills and competencies. The activity has three main components: Curriculum Development and Skilled Workforce Portal, Training Today's Workforce (vocational), and Developing Tomorrow's Leaders (higher education). The Curriculum Development and Skilled Workforce Portal aims to develop an interactive online portal that houses training curricula, promotes regional networking, and shares job forecasting information for the LMI partner countries. The Training Today's Workforce component provides regional training and technical assistance to vocational centers engaged in STEM+AT. The Developing Tomorrow's Leaders component helps strengthen the delivery of courses under the STEM+AT umbrella at higher education institutions in the Lower Mekong sub-region. USAID COMET's theory of change is that improving the skills of the current and future generations of the STEM+AT workforce will increase global competitiveness and economic integration of the Lower Mekong sub-region. The project is guided by the Mekong Skills to Work (MS2W) approach, which focuses on developing high-quality instruction and industry engagement within the Mekong Learning Centers (MLCs). The Monitoring and Evaluation Plan serves as EDC's tool for planning, implementing, tracking, and documenting progress toward achieving the objectives and expected outcomes of USAID COMET. The plan puts in place a system for ensuring the quality and validity of data collected on each of the performance indicators, generating up-to-date information that is useful for assessing performance, and identifying gaps and strategizing for improvements in activity design and delivery. The plan provides guidance to the activity team on tracking the activity results and ensures a common understanding of the activity monitoring and evaluation structure, functions, and capabilities. The plan also serves as a guide for systematically tracking activity outputs and outcomes and for documenting good practices as well as unintended consequences that will be shared with key stakeholders for learning purposes. The activity has undergone adjustments to its implementation approach, shifting emphasis away from expanding to Mekong Partner Institutions (MPIs) in Year 3 to allow more time for the development and growth of high-quality instruction and industry engagement within the MLCs. The project is proposing the revision of existing indicators' targets as well as the inclusion of new indicators to better track and report on the project's progress.