How you see IMM playing a role in Abalobi's success maybe you can elaborate a little on that
okay let me try so first and foremost let me give you a little bit of a picture of of how
we approach this so we we we have our theory of change and that's a living document that changes
and gets re-evaluated regularly sometimes weekly at least at a micro level and then and then you
know that theory of change you know breaks things up into obviously our activities our outputs
our more short-term outcomes and our longer-term outcomes. We've spent together with Sopact
considerable time really articulating what are the indicators? What are the indicators that link to
all these different components what are meaningful indicators what are realistic indicators what are
indicators you know that we can actually measure about half of them are relatively straightforward
they link directly with with our platform and the way people use the apps in the marketplace etc
the other half of them are these more complex ones these more difficult ones and so again how
do we really articulate them how do we unpack them how do we deconstruct them how do we
how do we bring them closer to to to the fishery and and the dynamics in in in the fishery and and
and and our fishers engage with with this program and and want to raise obviously
their their their learnings along along the way so so we've done that as a organization
we felt quite strongly that even though we are partnering with Sopact
we need to make sure that impact measurement is firmly embedded in in everything we do in all the
different work streams and that's easier said than done we have definitely been quite guilty
to making this somebody else's problem and outsourcing this to a M&E company very often
a consultant's company and hoping you know that they would detect and make us look good
that's something that you know i see many organizations do and we've learned a lot from that
but and but the most important thing that we've learned from that is that you can't
outsource this it's impossible you know there might be certain aspects and i do firmly believe
in the idea of external evaluation and the idea of auditing your impacts absolutely but from a
kind of a data collection point of view from a from a deploying a particular process that allows
us to carefully listen to our stakeholders that's something you you you have to own
and that's something we've learned along the way with with the Sopact team and so that's what we
do now we we we we have a team around this we have key team members that focus on this
you know as part of their job and at the same time we've really tried each work stream in
Abalobi so think about the marketplace community development and training our international work
the marketplace we've really tried to make them live the indicators really engage with indicators
on on almost daily daily weekly basis in the way they they report in the way they think about
about their activities they think about about outcomes and and what's helped for us is aligning
a lot of our theory of change elements from outcome to indicators with our project management
tools and and using objective key results OKRS in organization and making sure those two talk very
closely to one another and then we were deploying technology thinking that hey we can tell a story
with you know what comes out of this these apps that we that we run with fishers with with with
with the market and and very quickly realized that there's a whole bunch of there's a whole
dimension that doesn't flow through the app that you know that that needs to be that needs to be
needs to be collected or needs to be detected through through through focus groups through
through surveys and surveys that are not once off but but surveys you know that happen on
an ongoing basis so that's a big body of work that that is now you know unfolding
within within ability and and and we need to bring that together how do we make sure
that you know indicators or or or responses from from a survey from a particular individual
within a particular community at a particular time in their journey of fish from using the
fisher app to the marketplace how do we make sure that we can query this against
their usage in the app or or their position in in the marketplace or or the revenue or their role
within within the marketplace or how they engage with training or how they onboard other fishers
along along the process so building this kind of three-dimensional model where you know there's app
data which is all about the fishery and the traceability in the economics
combines with with with survey data that dives much deeper into perceptions attitudes proxies
around food security proxies around well-being that's that's what we we're trying to really
puzzle together now and frame in such a way that it's it's it's it's scalable and it's scalable
not just for ourselves here in South Africa but it's a package that that partners that we work
with can can can piggyback on can can utilize and adapt for sure but but deploy in their in
their own in their own engagement with with the fishers and most importantly of course
how do we how do we ensure that that data is although that information doesn't remain
information for Abalobi staff or our funders or our partners overseas but that information is
fed back directly to the fisheries we work with and who are partners in this co-design process.
Thanks a lot Serge and i'd like to add a couple of points here from from a technology standpoint what
Serge was explaining which is you know all of this data coming from different sources such as surveys
and app usage they have their you know training modules that they do on on the fishers that
fishers go through there's data being collected there so all of that data is it it's a very
complex undertaking taking to actually bring in all of the data together in order to learn from
that data as in a Serge was you know clearly explaining you know you need to be able to
correlate data from let's say the learning modules that they are doing for the fishers the app usage
that the fishers are doing and then correlate it with the survey data that they're collecting
on let's say some of these outcomes that they're trying to understand for example food security so
all of that needs to be pulled in and you need to be able to extract you know information or
insights from that and you know learn from that so it's a it's a pretty complex undertaking and this
is this is the part of work that you know Sopact and Abalobi we are doing together in order to make
this more efficient in order to make this more continuous more nimble and so that you know a lot
of efficiencies can come in in terms of technology that helps you learn from the data efficiently.