Our services
Closing stage
At IDS, we understand that development is a process and that with intentionality, the closing stage of a program can become the opening of a new pathway towards the program’s ultimate development goal. To harness the program’s achievements and facilitate a positive transition, the IDS team can support the identification of pathways to sustainability and scale, new funding opportunities and investment partnerships, including through a final program evaluation and through facilitating engagement with emerging key stakeholders.
Through a collaborative approach and the use of tried-and-tested tools, IDS provides tailored support to governments, development agencies and financial institutions across all stages of a development initiative, project, or program.
There is flexibility in our approach: we can either accompany a program from start to finish, holding the space and nurturing relationships throughout, or we can add expert support at one or more stages or components of a program where the team might need additional help.
What our support could look like across the lifetime of a program:
Implementation stage
During project implementation, the IDS team can provide tailored support to key stakeholders through capacity building, facilitation of partnerships and engagement through multi-stakeholder platforms, and monitoring and learning for project management and course correction.
Design stage
Based on a deep understanding of the problem to be addressed, the IDS team can support program stakeholders in building consensus on entry points for reform and critical pathways towards shared understanding on success indicators. This support would encompass facilitating stakeholder dialogues, developing a program theory of change and a results framework for monitoring and learning; designing grant-based facilities and selection criteria; developing a framework for selecting project stakeholders, including civil society organizations, and socializing and gaining buy-in for the initiative among key stakeholders.
Initial stage
The initial stage of an initiative is all about generating a deep understanding of a problem: its symptoms and root causes; the systemic factors that perpetuate the problem and hold it in place; and the actors within the system that can influence or are influenced by the problem. At IDS, we work with tried-and-tested tools to make the initial picture as clear as possible, including political economy analysis, context analysis, stakeholder mapping, and systems mapping.