SBAIC Newsletter Highlights ME&A’s Cutting-Edge TPM Work in Tough Environments
ME&A’s success in third-party monitoring (TPM), using cutting-edge technology and a multi-method, systems-based approach, was recently highlighted in the Small Business Association for International Companies (SBAIC) newsletter and website. In complex or conflict-affected areas, TPM often offers better access and mobility than USAID personnel or traditional monitoring teams. This enables local monitors to gather reliable and actionable data and insights to help USAID drive sustainable change.
“ME&A’s approach to TPM is consistent with ME&A’s overall suite of services supporting locally led development. This suite includes our unique approach to local capacity strengthening at systems levels,” the article quotes ME&A President and CEO Teresita Perez as saying. “Our focus on systems enables us to provide innovative, culturally sensitive solutions tailored to each community’s unique needs. We also use advanced data-gathering technologies for TPM to ensure marginalized voices are heard.”
The SBAIC article explains ME&A’s comprehensive TPM approach, including using remote sensing; geographic information systems (GIS); and various data collection techniques, such as georeferenced site visits, key informant interviews, and focus group discussions along with verification checklists and desk reviews of project documents. This thorough approach allows for tracking project inputs and outputs, making it easier to compare with internal monitoring efforts for each activity.
The article showcases three examples of ME&A’s recent TPM work in Bangladesh, Nicaragua, and Rwanda. It further explains how ME&A’s Performance Improvement of Local Systems (PILS) approach combined with the firm’s decade-long experience with USAID’s Human and Institutional Capacity Development (HICD) approach, including projects in Georgia and Armenia, enhance ME&A’s TPM capacity while minimizing risks to USAID. Moreover, the article explains how ME&A’s integration of TPM, PILS, and HICD helps USAID simultaneously achieve localization and small business contracting goals while combining advanced data-gathering technology with systems-focused implementation to foster collaboration, accountability, and innovation.
SBAIC is a membership organization established to promote the meaningful utilization of U.S. small businesses at U.S. government agencies providing foreign assistance, such USAID; the Millennium Challenge Corporation; Overseas Private Investment Corporation; and the U.S. Departments of State, Defense, Health and Human Services, and Agriculture.
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Monica Jerbi, ME&A’s Communications Advisor, has more than 30 years of experience, much of it as a USAID contractor. Her expertise includes designing and implementing behavioral, attitudinal, and informational communication campaigns as well as researching, writing, editing, and designing print and digital communications and knowledge management products.