Agency assessment frameworks and methodologies

Agency Assessment: NGO in the Health Sector

In determining the agency or organization that will be assessed in this paper, I choose to discuss a non-government organization that specializes on child sponsorship, but also engages in different projects involving different sectors in the society. During my short engagement with World Vision, I had the chance to work with the organization's health project, which aims to mobilize communities to increase awareness and develop behavior change among community members towards a healthier living. To promote increased awareness and drive behavior change among community members, the primary strategy of the Health Project is community mobilization through the formation of Task Forces.

The Task Forces will be composed of members of the community, volunteers who would like to play a socially significant role in their community and at the same time, help promote the Project's objectives and improve the health status of each member of their community. As recognition of the volunteers' commitment to the Project and its objectives, they are given trainings on community organizing, health education, and organizational development. These trainings will equip the Task Force members in their health promotion activities, which involves developing advocacy activities in their respective areas of responsibility in the community, conducting health classes to specific groups in their respective areas, and collaborating with existing groups or institutions, and even politicians, to further popularize the Project not only at the local, but also at the state or national level.

Internally, the Project staff is composed of two main groups: the field staff and the support staff. Since the Project's thrust centers on community mobilization, bulk of the task of accomplishing the Project's objectives is assigned to the field staff. The field staff is given the task of recruiting volunteers who will become members of the Task Force. The field force is also responsible for ensuring that the Task Force members receive the required trainings in order to make them eligible to promote their advocacies through health classes, meetings with community groups and politicians, and developing programs to increase awareness on healthy living.

The support team, meanwhile, manages both the administrative and field needs of the Project. It is composed of the project manager, coordinator, advocacy and communications specialist, monitoring and evaluation specialist, research specialist, training specialist, and administrative assistant. The team ensures that committed targets to the funding agency are met, and it regularly monitors the progress of Task Forces and performance of the field force in their respective areas of responsibility.

Structurally, the Project's functions and the roles of each member seemed to be clear and well-defined. However, taking part into the daily activities and interactions of the Project staff made me observe specific irregularities on how the Project is being managed and how objectives are met and delivered to the funding agency. Ultimately, the Project has long-range issues, both internally and externally, that makes management difficult and delivery of targets a challenging task not only for the staff, but also for its partners, the Task Force members.

Internal long-range issues involve the seemingly slow progress in the recruitment of individuals to critical positions in the support team, specifically, the M&E and training specialists. Most critical among these positions is the M&E specialist, since this position is responsible for the implementation of the Project's evaluation program, in addition to the responsibility of ensuring that the endeavors of the Project are in line with the proposed objectives given to the funding agency. During the time I was with the Project, monitoring and evaluation is being handled solely by the M&E associate, sometimes with the help of the research specialist. Task Force members also received late trainings because of the lack of a training specialist to develop and implement training programs. Field staff is forced to assume the role of trainers just to accomplish the committed number of trainings held and to make the TF members equipped for the tasks they need to accomplish -- ultimately, achieve the Project's committed targets to the funding agency.