Women`s Health Center

BCDF and the Center for Regional Development at the Autonomous Popular University of the state of Puebla (UPAEP) are collaborating in order to build a Women`s Health Center in La Preciosita, a community located in the municipality of Santa Rita Tlahuapan. The goal of the Women`s Health Center is to catalyze the community to work together to ensure access to timely basic medical attention and education on disease prevention. The medical attention will consist of primary physician as well as specialists such as dentists, gynecologists, ophthalmologist, among others. Some of the topics for education services include nutrition, food preparation, organic farming, disease prevention, domestic violence and hygiene habits.

Monitoring: BCDF will monitor to ensure the community`s involvement in the construction process as well as administration of the center. We will get constant feedback from community members to ensure that they feel engaged in the entire process and are involved in critical decision making processes such as the types of medical services and educational courses offered.

Evaluation: BCDF will design an evaluation system that measures certain characteristics prior to the construction of Women`s Health Center and then after the center has been operating between one and two years.

In the short term we will measure the following results indicators:

ü Number of people attended by the Center

ü Timely access to medical attention

ü Knowledge of specific topics such as nutrition, disease prevention, etc

In the long term, we will measure the following outcome indicators:

ü Number of deaths prevented

ü Number of disabilities prevented

ü Frequency of illnesses in the community

Business training strategy

Strategy 1: Integral business training strategy

BCDF is launching an integral business training strategy in San Andrés Azumiatla, a marginalized area of the city of Puebla. BCDF is collaborating with a saving cooperative, Caja Depac Pobalna, in order to target the cooperative members who take out small loans through the cooperative. Caja Depac Poblana provides access to an array of financial services in rural marginalized communities. In this partnership, Caja Depac Poblana provides BCDF access to its members in order to detect their business skill needs, offers critical input to ensure relevance of the training, and lends BCDF its space to carry out the training sessions and coaching. BCDF and Caja Depac Poblana aim to replicate this training strategy in other marginalized communities where the savings cooperative has branches.

The main goal of the business training strategy is to strengthen the capacities of micro business owners to run and manage profitable and sustainable businesses. We believe that profitable businesses will generate economic development not only for the business owners but for the larger community through job creation. The training consists of two stages: first stage is a 50 hour class that provides basic business skills such as marketing, sales, management and accounting and the second stage is personalized business coaching to different business clusters in order to apply the skills learned in the class. We will work closely with the savings cooperative to facilitate access to credit for these businesses to grow as well as facilitate access to additional government resources available for low income business owners.

Our theory of change is that by focusing on the capacities of the business owners, we will catalyze more profitable businesses which in turn will have positive impact on the community.

Monitoring: We will monitor the participants` satisfaction with the training through constant feedback on its relevance and applicability in their businesses in order to make necessary changes in real time.

Evaluation: How will we know if we have made any impact? We are currently exploring different diagnostic formats to apply to all of the businesses that participate in our training sessions. We will apply this diagnostic prior to enrollment in the training sessions and six months to one year after the training is over. The business diagnostic will rate the business on the following aspects: management, accounting, suppliers, product quality, customer satisfaction, corporate governance, and human resources. In order to measure the impact of business strategy on the larger community, we will also document the business ‘annual revenue and number of people employed before and after the training. As businesses are more profitable, the owners will spend more money within the community and therefore generate impact on a community level. Job creation allows community members to improve their standard of living.

What does 2011 hold in store for BCDF?

We are excited to welcome 2011. It promises to be an exciting year full of challenging opportunities and meaningful service work. After six months of planning, BCDF is armed with a clear direction and an action plan to fulfill our mission and work towards realizing our vision. We aim to contribute to the breaking of cycle of poverty through integral community development: catalyzing economic development, improving community infrastructure and investing in people`s individual and collective capacities.

Our first challenge this year is to design a monitoring and evaluation system for our two main projects: construction of women`s health center in La Preciosita and integral business training strategy in Azumiatla.

What are monitoring and evaluation and why are they important?

Source: http://www.toolkitsportdevelopment.org

Monitoring is the collection, analysis and use of information from projects in order to learn from the experiences acquired, to account for resources used and results obtained and to make decisions regarding the future of the project.

Evaluation is the assessment of an ongoing or completed project in order to decide their relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, impact and sustainability.

Monitoring and evaluation must be done systematically and objectively in order to provide relevant information necessary for decision making.

BCDF is committed to measuring its effectiveness not by the amount of resources invested into a project but by the impact of the results obtained.