In GRRIPP's January newsletter, we heard from some of the key people behind GRRIPP's work: Dr Kylah Forbes-Biggs (Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator for GRRIPP Africa), Clara Soto Arias (Project Assistant for GRRIPP LAC), and Raisa Imran Chowdhury (Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator for GRRIPP South Asia).
We asked Kylah, Clara and Raisa to tell us more about their role and daily responsibilities, things they've seen and learnt on GRRIPP so far, and what their ambitions are for 2022.
We're delighted to repost here in case you missed it!
But first, if you don't want to miss any news and updates, sign up to receive our monthly newsletter! Email GRRIPP on: irdr_cgd@ucl.ac.uk.
Now, over to our wonderful colleagues...
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Sawubona!
My name is Dr Kylah Forbes-Biggs and I am the Regional Monitoring and Evaluation Coordinator for the GRRIPP Africa. My role involves networking, coordinating with the Regional Advisory Committee, disseminating information and the project management of our commissioned grant activities.
My day-to-day tasks focus on providing oversight and assistance to our grantees as they implement their projects and working with members of our GRRIPP Africa Project Team. A great deal of what I do involves problem solving, planning and communicating with the different stakeholders.
Following our 2021 GRRIPP Commissioning Call, we recognized that while many applicants acknowledged the importance of involving ‘women’ in projects and development activities, there were many instances where women still were portrayed as “add-ons” to community activities or “recipients” of help or training. In my role on the GRRIPP Africa Project team, I want to contribute to redefining the narrative that views Africa women as helpless victims.
Through our work with grantees, organisations, stakeholders and decision makers, I want to help promote the importance of individual and collective ‘agency’ to encourage social action and participation. In seeking to support women’s inclusion in development I want to ask the broader question – “how do we operationalize concepts of ‘gender’, ‘intersectionality’, and ‘resilience’ in meaningful way to help support transformation across a continent as diverse as Africa?”
Transformation takes time and effort, and we are hoping that by listening to voices of our people, supporting their projects and learning from their experiences, we can work towards sowing the seeds of change.
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I'm Clara Soto Arias and I'm the Project Assistant for GRRIPP LAC. My main role is to support research and the communication and dissemination of activities and knowledge from commissioned projects across Latin America and the Caribbean.
In these months that have already passed since GRRIPP began, I gained a deeper understanding and knowledge of the Latin American and Caribbean region. In my daily work I am in contact with many different people, and so I get to see different visions of the world, learn about different understandings of problems, as well as different ways of doing things. This diversity is visible in the tools and methodologies used by the projects.
In order to share and exchange these different experiences between the projects in the region, I hope that this year 2022, we can have a face-to-face event in the region.
This diversity also represents a challenge to create and think about different ways of systematizing and showing the impact that each project is having, which is something that requires working with each project in a specialized way. Therefore, this year I'm looking forward to learning more audiovisual and design skills that will help me show what the projects are doing in different ways.
Saludos!
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Greetings!
My name is Raisa Imran Chowdhury and I’m the Monitoring & Evaluation Coordinator for GRRIPP South Asia.
In my role, I communicate with all the commissioning project awardees on a regular basis to keep track of their progress, upcoming events, and any challenges. This role is fascinating as I have had the chance to meet a lot of interesting people, as well as getting involved with their thought-provoking activities around the globe.
My day to day work with GRRIPP has brought a whole new learning phase in my life which I consider as a blessing. I have passed almost half a year with the South Asian team and, throughout this time, I have had a lot of new experiences and learning that I want to apply in my future endeavours. Especially, I adored the concepts discussed in the “Feminist Cities” events, and the process of bringing a range of scholars, practitioners, policy makers and activists under one umbrella to exchange ideas about building our cities to be more resilient.
For 2022, I plan to organise a series of exciting panel discussions on inclusive humanitarian activities and intersectional practices around South Asia. These events will not only generate discussion around how to take an inclusive approach, but also pave the way for building a community that leaves no one behind. Out of these events, I hope to produce policy briefs that will help transfer the ideas into practices.
My professional goal for this year with GRRIPP is to learn new monitoring tools and techniques to enrich my evaluation skills. I also want to adopt participatory reporting methods to make the validation process more transparent and inclusive.
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