Comic Relief and GSK have formed a strategic partnership to provide grants to UK and locally-based organisations to combat malaria and strengthen healthcare systems in countries with particularly acute needs: Ghana, Mozambique, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and one of the vulnerable countries in the Mekong sub-region.
Comic Relief and GSK have allocated £5m and £17m respectively between 2016 and 2021 which will be managed through Comic Relief. During this time, the partnership aims to deliver three cross-cutting outcomes:
- Improve health outcomes for people living in the Partnership’s focus countries;
- Strengthen health systems for tackling malaria in the Partnership’s focus countries; and
- Inspire global action against malaria by telling compelling stories that demonstrate need and impact.
To help this partnership fulfil its vision, Comic Relief and GSK have appointed Coffey International and the Centre for Capacity Research as ‘Learning Coordinators’ to implement a range of monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) services for the duration of the initiative. The Learning Coordinator role commenced in May 2016.
The Learning Coordinator Partnership
Coffey International will lead the direct support to approximately 50 individual organisations to plan and budget for their MEL systems during the proposal development stage. A further 30 of the successful applicants will continue to receive support during their inception and start up phases. Coffey’s expert MEL advisers will draw on technical inputs from CCR to ensure that the support provided by Coffey International is done in such a way that indicators and the quality of evidence that is produced, is appropriate for the initiative’s target outcomes.
Coffey and The Centre for Capacity Research will facilitate and convene collective learning at three levels - national, regional, and between focus countries using a range of participatory methods. The Centre for Capacity Research will lead the consortium’s work to support the legacy of the partnership through the synthesis of lessons while also generating new learning that will be used to advance anti-malaria scholarship, policy and practice into the future.
