Adama, Ethiopia — The Mass Youth Employment in Apiculture (MaYEA) project has strengthened the capacity of its staff through a training focused on systems thinking, adaptive management and approaches to advancing systemic change.
Organized by the International Institute of Rural Reconstruction (IIRR), the consortium lead organization of the MaYEA program, the training brought together program staff from IIRR, SOS SAHEL Ethiopia, and MELCA Ethiopia to reflect on project achievements and challenges, discuss the transition from MaYEA Phase I to Phase II, and align on the implementation of upcoming project activities.
A major focus of the training was on systems thinking and systemic change and the evolving role of MaYEA staff. Participants explored systems thinking, the Center for Exponential change (C4EC) approach, adaptive management, collaborative facilitation and stakeholder engagement, with emphasis on how these approaches can support more effective collaboration and sustainable change. The C4EC approach itself emphasizes societal thinking, networks, ecosystems and co-creation as important dimensions of achieving change at scale.
The sessions also highlighted the importance of Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) in generating evidence, supporting continuous learning and informing evidence-based decisions.
Other areas covered during the training included, enterprise development and access to finance; commercial and climate-smart apiculture; gender mainstreaming, safeguarding, youth engagement and inclusion; communication, documentation and visibility; policy knowledge; artificial intelligence; leadership; resource management; and action planning.
By strengthening these interconnected capacities, the training is expected to support MaYEA staff to work more collaboratively, make better use of evidence, adapt implementation when circumstances change, and contribute more effectively to sustainable system-level change.
The learning from the training will provide a foundation for continued application of systems thinking, adaptive management, collaboration and evidence-based decision-making in the implementation of MaYEA activities.