Success Stories

And Achieving Lasting Impact...

We are achieving lasting impact: at community level - with congregational project leaders; at national level - with enterprise support institutions; at enterprise level - with small businesses…

Organizational Assessment and Strategic Planning

Religious Sisters of Mercy (RSM): RSM needed a strategic plan that would help the Province –Kenya:

• Look into the future with confidence.
• Improve the efficiency and effectiveness in the implementation of the Central Chapter mandate.
• Focus Mercy ministries to goals and results – the beginning of a programmatic approach.

With this need, RSM engaged the services of EMD-Kenya who worked with the congregational leadership, the membership and stakeholders in Mercy ministries. The process started right with: clarifying the objectives for the strategic planning, which then led to an organisational assessment of all Mercy ministries in Kenya. This involved visiting and discussing with staff, the sisters, project beneficiaries, diocesan representatives and other key stakeholders. Information emerging from this organisational assessment laid the foundation for planning.

Initially the report was shared with all the membership that was brought up to date with the goings on. Then in a highly participatory manner, representatives were selected who in smaller groups; identified goals and strategies; and developed action plans and resource needs. Outcome from these processes was shared with the larger membership who also had a chance to make input. Finally the whole team validated and adopted the plan.
Currently, the plan is being implemented.

Program Design, Marketing and Evaluation

CMC-Mensen met een missie: Halfway through implementation of her Peace and Reconciliation Programme funded by the Dutch government, CMC engaged EMD-Kenya to carry out a midterm review of the Kenya Country Programme.

The general aim of this Mid-Term Review was fourfold: partners and CMC learn of experience gained; gain insight into the efficiency of deployment of funds by partners and CMC; gather input for improvement of the programme in the period 2009 – 2010; and generate ideas for continuation of the programme from 2011 onwards.

EMD-Kenya successfully achieved this aim and more by first doing a desk review to understand the 20 CMC-Kenya partners, followed this with the design of the review tools then moved to gather information through discussions with partners and relevant stakeholders. The output at this stage was a draft report which was validated by partners in a workshop. The review report was then concluded and was presented to the partners who adopted it at a second workshop.

The whole exercise was a highly participatory one that took on board views of partners and involved CMC. Most of the review recommendations are being implemented by the partners.

Leadership and Management Development

The Sisters’ Leadership Development Initiative (SLDI): Since 2007, Marywood University - ASEC has retained a team from EMD-Kenya to build the leadership capacities for religious sisters in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania.

In partnership with Marywood University, EMD-Kenya team have for three years provided a highly comprehensive and integrated training in Leadership and management to sisters responsible for non profit organisations.

The scope of work involves content development and facilitation and evaluation of the programme. SLDI is an initiative of ASEC, Marywood University, USA.

Enterprise Development

The Development Kenya Action (DKA): DKA’s Executive Director contracted EMD-Kenya to provide business consultancy services for DKA’s project partner, Euphrasia Women’s Centre. The deliverables included a report on the diagnosis of the organization, and a plan on proposed new strategy and resources required for implementation.

On successful completion, EMD-Kenya’s services were retained to build the capacity of Euphrasia Women’s Centre in enterprise management for competitiveness.

Export Promotion Council (EPC): Since 2000, EMD-Kenya has partnered with the Export Promotion Council on many successful assignments. Most recently, EMD-Kenya was contracted to develop exporters’ guide, training modules and training manuals. Earlier on EMD-Kenya had conducted management performance diagnostics of 50 enterprises and provided a ranking and recommended intervention measures.

And now retained by the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) through EPC to provide Export Marketing and Product Development for Export Training to small businesses.

International Trade Centre, ITC UNCTAD/WTO, Geneva: EMD-Kenya is certified as the Enterprise Management Development National Centre. Currently engaged as both a national consultant for Kenya and an international consultant for Uganda and Tanzania to “Build the advisory capacities of Kenyan, Ugandan, and Tanzanian consultants for export competitiveness”.

Earlier phases included piloting and validating BizDev tools under development by ITC, compiling a regional e-preparedness report of East Africa, e-enabling SMEs to create and document success stories, supporting the Export Promotion Council to compile and package trade information into web-based tools, and adapting the generic export fitness checker for use in Kenya.