Knowledge and Impact

Further professional development and acquisition of know-how increases the quality of employees’ work and is understood as a requirement for all employees. Professional knowledge management enables innovation and issues management, advancing Swisscontact’s position as a competent expert organisation. In order to keep pace with increasing specialisation, complexity, and project expansion, Swisscontact will strengthen its knowledge management; implementation of these plans began in 2016.

In addition to organisational development, in 2016 two global seminars were held:

• Promotion of Financial Services: In the future, this will focus even more on SMEs and smallholder farmers.
• In environmental matters, with the Paris Climate Accord there are new objectives and financing mechanisms to fight climate change. Swisscontact has defined pathways for making its contribution toward reaching these objectives.

In addition, Swisscontact tested gender guidelines for vocational education projects and expedited implementation of the St. Gallen model of sustainable tourism development. Internal experts created a handbook for introducing market development projects.

The Department of Knowledge Management supported presentations within national and international networks, including BEAM Exchange, the FoBIZZ Forum for Vocational Education and International Development, and the NADEL Centre for Development Cooperation at ETH Zürich.

The objective of Swisscontact’s monitoring and results measurement (MRM) system is to gather data on project results, guide our activities, further develop our approaches on a continuous basis, and be accountable to our donors. Regional MRM advisors support the projects during planning and system implementation. Comparable indicators measured with reliable methods make it possible for Swisscontact to analyse data at both the programme and organisational levels.

The MRM team consists of a coordinator based at HQ and regional advisors. In 2016, the team developed planning documents for Swisscontact’s own development programme. It also optimised results measurement of projects in tourism, SME start-ups, and systemic change analysis, and developed a
database that tracks the careers of Swiss­contact vocational education programme graduates.

In 2016, seven projects were reviewed by external auditors, including one formal audit conducted by the Donor Committee for Enterprise Development (DCED). These reviews make it possible to develop the MRM system even further and guide projects. The audit and exchange with external experts confirmed that Swisscontact’s MRM system delivers robust and convincing results.