Sharing learning and the application of lessons to our ongoing programmes is at the heart of our work. Throughout the five years of the STAR-Ghana phase 2 the programme will be building a body of evidence on what works and doesn't work.
Our approach
Learning within STAR-Ghana looks both outwards to accountability work, and inwards, ensuring that lessons are applied across the programme. We will draw on best practice, the latest research, and contribute learning to the sector.
STAR-Ghana is nurturing and facilitating a community of practice and learning among grantees, partners and stakeholders.
The community of practice will build an ongoing web of relationships and knowledge exchange between STAR-Ghana grantees, other citizen-based groups, the government, communities and other key stakeholders. These communities will act as a transmission system for improved policy and practice around transparency and accountability.
Community of practice
STAR-Ghana will call on its partners, including grantees, to be more than implementers of projects or activities – it will support them to be brokers of knowledge, evidence, multi-stakeholder engagement and partnership. Through the community of practice, our partners will exercise leadership in the process of collecting evidence, capturing learning, disseminating knowledge and scaling up innovations that can build more accountable, transparent policy and public services in Ghana.
Critically, the community of practice will create a ‘safe space’ in which the voices, experience and knowledge of all key stakeholders are engaged – a forum which particularly attends to the voices of women, girls and other vulnerable groups.
The community of practice will mobilise ‘action/reflection,’ evidence-based and experiential learning approaches, based on the assumption that much of the knowledge about the systemic challenges of poverty and inequality lies with the people and organizations engaged with these issues on the ground – and that among the most powerful vehicles for learning and capacity building are ‘learning through doing’ and ‘peer-to-peer’ learning.’
The community of practice will create a network of learning and action, which builds relationships of collaboration and trust between stakeholders required for collective action for greater impact.
Collaborative methodologies
STAR-Ghana will deploy a range of collaborative methodologies to fuel the community of practice, including: system, stakeholder and power mapping; policy and issue landscaping; safe space dialogue and ‘deep listening’ to diverse stakeholder voices; ‘World Café' dialogues; storytelling; peer consulting; appreciative enquiry; most significant change techniques; and emergent learning.
In addition, learning events will be held periodically. These will build on successful approaches adopted under previous service contracts and the learning will feed into STAR-Ghana programming going forward.
Our reports and resources
Humentum strengthens the financial management and accountability of NGOs around the world. They bring their expertise in due diligence and related capacity building of grantees, along with support to STAR to become an independent entity.
