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About the webinar

We are happy to welcome you to another webinar session dedicated to information management and monitoring and evaluation for organizations working in the development sector. This time we will be hearing from two organizations working in international development, ACDI/VOCA and IREX. During the session speakers from both organizations will present how they approach Monitoring and Evaluation and Information Management at global level across their organization. They will share insights, lessons learned, and best practices as well as their experience in introducing ActivityInfo into their processes.

This webinar is particularly useful for Information Management and Monitoring and Evaluation professionals who wish to better understand the challenges and solutions for managing information at global level, especially in settings where there are multiple project teams and diverse information management challenges across different countries.

The agenda of this session is:

• Introductions
• ACDI/VOCA presentation
• IREX presentation
• Discussion and QA

View the presentation slides of IREX.

View the presentation slides of ACDI/VOCA.

Read a Case Study about ACDI/VOCA.

Is this Webinar for me?

• Are you managing M&E at a global level within your organization?
• Do you work with multiple project teams which are located in different countries and you need to tackle diverse information management challenges?
• Are you responsible for leading M&E in your organization, or is that a role you would like to take on and you would like to get a deeper understanding of the challenges and solutions available for large organizations working with diverse projects?

Then, watch our webinar!

About the Panelists

Mr. Charles Guedenet has worked internationally for over 15 years, designing and implementing evaluation, learning and adaptation practices to support greater impact. In his role as Senior Technical Advisor for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning in IREX's Center for Applied Learning and Impact (CALI), Charles Guedenet leads initiatives to advance strategic learning and evaluation across the organization and in diverse programs. Since 2021, Charles has led the development and rollout of ActivityInfo to support cross-program strategic evaluation and for individual programs to improve data management and data-informed decision-making. Charles was the Team Lead of a learning and evaluation contract for a Global Fellowship program from 2020 – 2023 and continues to provide technical assistance to programs across IREX’s diverse program portfolio from education to information and media and leadership development

Prior to IREX, Charles was a program manager and technical advisor supporting primarily civil society and governance programming through training, program evaluation, and data management and visualization. Charles received his master’s degree in international development studies from the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University and his bachelor’s degree from Kenyon College in international studies. He is fluent in French and has, over the course of his career, lived in Chad, Guinea, and Zimbabwe.

Dr. Emmanuel Dormon is currently Managing Director and Head of the Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting and Learning department at ACDI/VOCA’s Home Office in Washington DC. He has over 20 years’ experience working on various large agricultural programs and projects and has undertaken various assignments relating to agricultural productivity enhancement, smallholder farmers’ innovation development, monitoring and evaluation. Emmanuel’s interest is to promote effective and efficient data management and utilization for evidence-based programs and project development and implementation. Emmanuel holds a PhD and MSc both from the Wageningen University and Research Centre in The Netherlands with specializations in managing agricultural knowledge systems.

Dr. Jennifer Himmelstein is the Director of Corporate Analysis, Monitoring, Evaluation, Reporting & Learning Division at ACDI/VOCA. At ACDI/VOCA Jennifer focuses on supporting collaboration, learning and adaptation activities as well as providing MERL systems support to a portfolio of projects. Over the course of eight years she has seen ACDI/VOCA’s projects transition from excel to Microsoft Access to ActivityInfo (ACDI/VOCA’s Learning Evaluation & Analysis Platform 2.0). Jennifer has worked for four different government agencies, including USAID and USDA. Prior to ACDI/VOCA Jennifer was the Assistant Director of Virginia Tech’s Sustainable Agriculture and Natural Resource Management Innovation Lab.

Mr. Robert Sackey is the Regional Systems and Technology Specialist at ACDI/VOCA. Robert supports all projects of ACDI/VOCA in the setting up of project databases and reporting dashboards. He also provides guidance and support on all Technology Integrations; both hardware and software for ACDI/VOCA Projects across the globe. Robert has over 17 years’ experience in Information Technology; Database Management, Systems Support , M&E Systems Design and Data Analytics. Prior to joining ACDI/VOCA, he worked with organizations such as Vodafone, Tigo, Newmont Gold etc. Roberts career journey with ACDI/VOCA started in 2014 in Ghana with the USAID ADVANCE II Project where he worked as the M&E Systems and Technology Manager. In this capacity, he led the successful integration of Smart Card Data Collection Hardware into the M&E database which won the USAID Digital Award in 2017.

Ms Sharon Lang'at is a Data Management and Learning Specialist at IREX supporting Monitoring Evaluation and Learning for the USAID-Youth Excel project & Technical Information management and reporting for the Center of Applied Learning & Impact (CALI). She is a Data professional with expertise in developing and implementing effective data management strategies, ensuring data accuracy and integrity, and utilizing data analysis to drive business decisions. At IREX, Sharon supports the rollout of ActivityInfo as IREX’s data management solution for its programs. This includes the design and implementation of MEL data systems, and data migration projects, collaboration with program teams to develop and implement effective data management approaches and utilizing data analysis to drive business decisions and measure program impact. Sharon holds a BSc in Statistics and Programming from Kenyatta University and an MSc in Statistics (Bio) from the University of Nairobi in Kenya.

Mr. Alexander Bertram, Executive Director of BeDataDriven and founder of ActivityInfo, is a graduate of the American University's School of International Service and started his career in international assistance fifteen years ago working with IOM in Kunduz, Afghanistan and later worked as an Information Management officer with UNICEF in DR Congo. With UNICEF, frustrated with the time required to build data collection systems for each new programme, he worked on the team that developed ActivityInfo, a simplified platform for M&E data collection. In 2010, he left UNICEF to start BeDataDriven and develop ActivityInfo full time. Since then, he has worked with organizations in more than 50 countries to deploy ActivityInfo for monitoring & evaluation.