English 
Do you sometimes wish you had a better understanding of context in order to respond in a relevant and proportionate manner to your NGO’s needs? Do you find it hard to decide which areas and which beneficiaries need your help the most, or to ensure that your help is effective in the long run? You are aware that there are loads of new tools out there you could use to collect data, but do you know which ones to use and how?
As the first step in any assessment, data collection is crucial to ensure quality data for adequate decision-making. Mobile data collection (MDC) uses smartphones to collect primary data about beneficiary needs, population movement, infrastructure location and assessment. Compared to the traditional paper-based survey approach, a properly designed mobile solution can help you save time, standardize responses, collect diversified information and produce ready-to-share and ready-to-analyse data. In technical terms, setting up a mobile data collection system is getting easier by the day, with great tools available for a growing number of needs. However, surveys, standard operating procedures and logistics can still present a challenge for organizations that have just embarked on MDC.
Learn more about how CartONG can help you with your Mobile Data Collection projects:
You can also visit the Information management and Capacity building pages as both are also necessary if you want your mobile data collection to be useful in the long term.
CartONG and Action contre la Faim have signed a 3-year partnership agreement to further their collaboration. The partnership agreement that will run from 2020 to 2023 details the general principles of collaboration between our two organizations around common goals and mutual commitments as well as more operational aspects.
In particular, it aims to develop the use of cartographic products within Action Contre la Faim by making CartONG’s mapping service available to ACF’s operations. In particular, our team of cartographers will be able to provide emergency support to ACF in the event of a humanitarian crisis, in what is called “rush mode format” as we can already do for other partners such as MSF or ACAPS.
More generally, this partnership also aims to provide ACF's teams with better support in the area of program data management (or Information Management), either through capacity building for their teams or strategic advice and support.
The "Strengthening CSOs' Information Management" project aims to professionalize French-speaking Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in the use and implementation of methods, tools and processes related to the different stages of the data analysis chain.
Co-financed by AFD for 3 years (early 2020 - late 2022) and implemented with the support of 10 partners, this project will make it possible for CartONG to continue its work in support of the sector by promoting the pooling and dissemination of new resources, both practical (tools, tutorials, training modules, etc.) and strategic (studies, etc.) to all humanitarian and development actors.
In alphabetical order, the 10 partners of the project are:
2020 was mainly marked by the release of an ambitious and in-depth study aimed at assessing and formalizing the practices and needs of francophone CSOs in program data management which will serve as basis for the rest of the project. The study was also the subject of various restitutions (webinar, video recap, presentation to some CSOs) and numerous disseminations within CSOs’ networks.
In addition to this study, the project has allowed the co-financing and dissemination of numerous technical and methodological resources including two comparative studies of solutions and a dozen tutorials, with a reorientation of the content of some of the resources due to the pandemic and its impact on data management practices in the humanitarian and development sectors. A first day of experience sharing bringing together more than twenty CSOs was also held at the beginning of the summer and should be repeated every six months for the full duration of the project.
In 2021 many deliverables will be released including a study on the skills and profiles within CSOs in charge of data management and a self-diagnosis tool. The IM Resource Portal was launched in June 2021 as part of this project.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
The RESILAC (Inclusive Economic and Social Recovery of Lake Chad) project and consortium identified during its start-up phase the need to improve the management of its information (also called Information Management or IM). CartONG is supporting Groupe URD in charge of the operational M&E system (système de suivi et d'évaluation des réalisations) on the information management component.
In 2019, CartONG conducted a diagnostic in information management (all combined technologies) in order to formalize the needs of stakeholders, identify existing constraints and opportunities and propose solution scenarios.
Following this diagnosis, CartONG continues to support the RESILAC project teams in 2020 and 2021 in the implementation of certain recommendations: design of a dashboard to help monitor and manage the project, design of a database at the level of individual beneficiaries to centralize the support provided by the project through these various activities, distance training to the teams in data management etc.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG worked with Welthungerhilfe to conduct a benchmark of several Mobile Data Collection tools in order to identify the best ones to use at an organizational level. We brought technical and methodological support into this benchmark, especially working on defining, detailing, prioritizing and organizing the requirements as well as cross-checking and testing information provided by suppliers vis-à-vis the selected requirements. The purpose of this support, which continued in the first part of 2021, was to accompany Welthungerhilfe prior to the selection of an MDC tool and to ensure that valuable and reliable information was collected on solutions pre-identified to be the most suitable as per their needs.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG supported FairTrade New Zealand in their implementation and scale-up of Mobile Data Collection in their areas of intervention, ensuring technical assistance and training remotely. This support also took the form of brainstorming discussions, webinars, form coding, development of analysis tools and a map and remote support for technical difficulties.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
In 2020, convinced by the FACET tools developed by Tdh, EAWAG and CartONG since 2016 (available here), the SWSC decided to adapt them for use by all consortium member NGOs for their WASH risk evaluations in health facilities & schools. CartONG therefore supported the adaptation of the tools to the SWSC needs, as well as a series of webinars to help the NGOs discover the tools and also - for those that were not big users of Mobile Data Collection - to learn how to apply it to their field data collections for FACET. Beyond this, a hotline was also offered to the consortium members to support them in their implementation, as well as to cover the local adaptations that were necessary of the global forms.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
Plan International Germany is involved in a project for “Support for Civil Society Organisations piloting initiatives of the AU-EU Youth Cooperation Hub” to support peace and security and strength stabilization efforts in the Lake Chad Basin. CartONG is supporting Plan International Germany in setting up a data collection tool to identify service infrastructures in the Lake Chad Basin and an online map to display the results of the said data collection.
A very important component of this project is for young people to take ownership of the tools so that they can be autonomous in managing the data collection and updating the online map on their own. CartONG has therefore put in place technical solutions with simplified steps so as to allow young people to carry out the said mission.
A 2-day remote workshop was organized for each country in January 2021 to train young people in the use of these tools and CartONG’s support continued well into 2021. CartONG will also ensure the maintenance of the solution during the whole duration of this three-year project.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report and the related news we recently published.
This project aims at supporting the humanitarian aid and international development sector in adapting its Information Management and Monitoring & Evaluation response to the Covid-19 crisis.
As part of this initiative, CartONG is to provide direct support to NGOs - hotline or coaching - addressing specific data-related requests at headquarters or in the field, as well as a more global support to the sector through the release of technical and methodological guidance (technical briefs, tutorials and tech watch findings) and feedback resources (case studies and lessons learned).
Requests for support or for guidance are to cover a wide range of IM topics - such as quantitative and qualitative data collections, data visualization and analysis, as well as responsible data management and data ethics - and will be tackled by CartONG's tech teams.
This project is run with the support of Groupe URD for the M&E component. We are also coordinating our action with MapAction, HOT and Translators without Borders in particular, as well as other H2H organizations to avoid duplicating our efforts.
A short recap of this project
In May 2020, we thus set up the IM Covid-19 Help Center on CartONG’s website to centralize the requests of local and international NGOs (which is now closed).
By the end of the project, we had provided support to 19 local and international actors, we had organized 6 capacity-building events and released 14 resources (7 in French & English, and 7 in English only).
The IM Covid-19 Help Center was supported by the H2H Network’s H2H Fund, which is supported by UK aid from the UK government. It was also implemented as part of the "Strengthening Information Management within CSOs" project co-financed by the French Development Agency (AFD).
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
Two series of webinars for beginners and advanced profiles were organised to support the ongoing capacity building of Terre des hommes' field teams in terms of Mobile Data Collection and analysis:
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
CartONG conducted one or two-day interventions in 8 training sessions at the Bioforce Institute in Vénissieux in order to raise awareness among project coordinators and managers as well as logisticians about the possible uses of Mobile Data Collection and Geographic Information Systems in the national and international solidarity sectors.
To know more about this activity, please read our 2020 Annual Report.
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