Monitoring the partnership between ABVV Metaal and the Kenyan Engineering Workers’ Union (KEWU) with the TUDEP tool

ABVV Metaal, an affiliate of the Geneneral Federation of Labour of Belgium FGTB – ABVV representing the metal workers in Flanders, started a partnership with KEWU, representing the Kenyan Engineering workers in Kenya, in 2006. In 2007 a joint cooperation project was set up with co-funding of the Belgian Development cooperation. This project was set up using the Project Cycle Management’s tools, including the monitoring. This monitoring focused mainly on the output and outcome of the project.

For the monitoring of 2014 the partners and the project manager from ISVI – ABVV, the institute for development cooperation, decided to use the TUDEP tool . We believed that the tool would expand the focus of the monitoring from the project to the partnership. Furthermore it was an opportunity to test the tool learn from it and measure the effectiveness of the partnership
The response was promising. Without going into details about the observations and the recommendations that came out of the tool, I’d like to comment briefly on the tool itself.

First of all we went through the learning process together since all partners used it for the first time. Investing in training saves time afterwards. It was clear that everybody understood the benefits of this tool and the fact that it is helpful to monitoring the partnership, and not only the project. Now there is a tool that can monitor the dynamic that trade union partnerships might set in motion, often outside the logical framework, but contributing to the realization of it. This is exactly why it is relevant to monitor it.

First conclusions, we still have to evaluate more, it was in general easy to use. We also could see that both partners perceive the project almost completely the same way. The illustration below shows that instantly. This visualization also helped the group involved in the participative monitoring to focus during discussions and the conclusions. This resulted in very concrete recommendations to improve where we needed to improve.

The effectiveness of the tool will probably increase once it is integrated in the monitoring, we get more experienced and once we can compare the results in time.
Overall, the first experience was a good one.


Article by Stefan De Groote, Project Manager ISVI – ABVV