Assessing, Addressing, and Monitoring National Care Reform in Armenia

YEREVAN, Armenia—A training held in Armenia in October 2018, with support from MEASURE Evaluation, aimed to strengthen the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) capacity of specialists who are involved in the reform of the national care system that serves vulnerable children. Participants included representatives from partner ministries, governmental agencies, and civil society. The three-day training focused on data use, demand, quality, and analysis. Trainees reported that they found the course to be highly successful and developed skills in data visualization and data presentation, conducting basic data analysis, and identifying and overcoming barriers to data use.

Trainees included specialists from the Armenian Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MOLSA), the National Institute of Labour and Social Research, the National Center for Education Technologies, the Education Inspection Body of Government of Armenia, the Ministry of Health, the Nork Information Center, the National Institute of Health, the Ministry of Justice, the Ministry of Territorial Administration and Development, the National Pedagogical and Psychological Support Center, the Bridge of Hope (a nongovernmental organization), and the Child Development Foundation.    

Zulfiya Charyeva, one of the M&E facilitators at the training, says, “We developed our training materials to address the M&E system gaps that were identified by local stakeholders during the assessment of care reform workshop held in Yerevan in January 2018. Following this training, we will mentor the MOLAS staff in applying the newly learned skills in their daily work.”

MOLSA aims to continue building capacity for M&E of care reform efforts, with technical support from the USAID-funded MEASURE Evaluation project. See a related article by MOLSA titled "Institutionalization of M&E system will improve the targeting of services provided" at http://www.mlsa.am/?p=18919.