Over the last few months we have been focusing a lot on what it takes to help the helpers, to inspire the inspiring. We want to strengthen the groups that are creating social justice in all areas where it’s still needed.

How do you capacitate and upskill individuals within organisations that are at the coalface and trying to exact change? Often these are young and passionate people working in complex environments and on critical issues that sit at the core of the polycrises we face as humans.

In our observation, these individuals tend to have lots of experience and a deep understanding of the area in which they are operating and enough passion to last for decades but they don’t always have the depth of skill required to design and run effective programmes – including designing theories of change, or implementing monitoring systems. It is this understanding that underpins our approach at Southern Hemisphere,

In the 25 years that Southern Hemisphere has been in operation, over 2 000 people have been formally trained by us but that is not the only upskilling that has occurred, regardless of how we are engaged to assist, knowledge transfer and capacity building is at the heart of our offering.

So for us, upskilling and knowledge transfer takes on many different forms. Organisations identify the need in their teams and either formal training or short or long-term capacity building is available.

Southern Hemisphere hosts an open-to-all training programme, our Monitoring, evaluation and learning Bootcamp which we will run next year between 05-16 May 2025. The Bootcamp format works incredibly well as the learning happens not only from the facilitators but also from peers in attendance.

In other instances, where it is not feasible to attend Bootcamp, organisations contract Southern Hemisphere to either develop a bespoke and short-term training programme or to run the Bootcamp programme for their teams. A great example of this is the training undertaken for SAAF (Safe Action Abortion Fund) where 87 grantees across 3 continents were trained in 3 languages.

Another great example of this is the work we did for CPSE (Challenging the Politics of Social Exclusion project). Large multi-country programmes with multiple implementing partners often face the problem of monitoring the planned outcomes in their programme Theory of Change (ToC) and systematically gathering stories of change. APHRC solicited the support of Southern Hemisphere to assist CPS with this. .

CPSE is an extremely complex endeavour, a three-year multi-country programme. Capacity strengthening sessions have included 13 NGO partners from eight (8) countries across Eastern, Western and Southern Africa and the outcomes have been extremely favourable. During a sense-making session with CPSE partners, a notable observation emerged among participants. They highlighted that the changes realised by the end of 2022 were primarily at the immediate outcome level. However, by the end of 2023, these changes had evolved towards longer term outcomes. In complex, long-term projects, it makes sense to leverage the experience and methodologies of a seasoned partner such as Southern Hemisphere. Southern Hemisphere partner Cathy Chames wrote about this here

Longer term capacity building projects such as the provision of consulting and support services for Brot für die Welt (BrfW) have enabled the organisation to get better proposals from grantees, and to develop stronger outcomes-oriented reporting, so that they can assess the impact that their funding is making in Southern Africa. Read more about that project here.

In another example, Frontline AIDS identified the need to ensure that learning was embedded at both a theoretical and a practical way in their work and with their teams. They wanted to ensure that MEL was well-woven into their United for Prevention project and because of this, they appointed Southern Hemisphere as an experienced external evaluation and learning partner to work alongside their partners for the duration of the project. We like to think of this as learning on steroids.

The Southern Hemisphere team assisted in developing and facilitating a multi-pronged learning and evaluation process, working in alignment with the project’s more formal outcomes. This accompaniment meant that participants were constantly supported in action learning to enhance their advocacy practice.

Regular meetings were also dedicated to learning. In the course of running the project there were plentiful structured opportunities for participants to reflect on what they were learning from their own on-the-ground project experiences. Monthly online learning meetings were held between Southern Hemisphere and United for Prevention coalition members in 7 African countries to support active reflection. In each meeting, participants considered what had been achieved since the previous meeting, identified enablers and obstacles, discussed significant moments of change and clarified their next steps.
Learning in this way really empowers teams to have confidence and all of the requisite skills to run future projects autonomously.

Wherever your organisation is in its journey, what is evident is that investment is required, make 2025 the year of change by investing in the team capacity to enact change.