Comic Relief commissioned Zimbabwe-based Muthengo Development Solutions (MDS) to work with funded partners in our Levelling the Field (LTF) 2 programme which is using sports to address social issues experienced by the most minoritised women and girls in Malawi, Rwanda and Zambia. In considering their approach to learning, MDS’s starting point was to engage with the previous LTF1 funded partners to reflect on their challenges, successes, impact and learnings to inform their approach.
The findings:
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An impressive amount of context-specific learning on sports for change approaches and programming took place during LTF1, although this learning was less organised and intentional in the absence of a dedicated learning partner.
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In the absence of clearer guidelines, funded partners took different approaches to articulating learning questions and planning structured learning activities to answer them. This meant that some key learning opportunities were sometimes missed, for example, more nuanced consideration of gender in LTF1’s data collection and interpretation.
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Comic Relief’s grant management and MEL approach reflected a commitment to prioritizing meaningful, internal learning for funded partners, over burdensome external accountability. However, our process of supporting learning could be more systematic in supporting funded partners to better enable more intentional learning.
Learn more about the project here https://www.comicrelief.com/news/learning-about-learning-in-sports-for-change-programmes-and-beyond/