Partnership in Opportunities for Employment through Technology in the Americas (POETA): Examining the Impact of the POETA Program on the Lives of People with Disabilities - Report on Monitoring & Evaluation Framework

Abstract

This project was funded by the International Development Research Center of Canada (IDRC) and managed by the Trust for the Americas, a nonprofit affiliate to the Organization of the American States (OAS). This Framework is just an initial step in outlining the main elements that would need to be produced to establish a fully functional monitoring and evaluation system for the POETA centers. Several important outcomes were achieved in this initial work. First, we reviewed a diverse body of relevant literature to identify candidate mechanisms and broad contextual factors that might have an impact on the success of the POETA program. Then, we integrated the results of original field research with the results of dedicated workshops with POETA local partners into an initial framework that can form the basis of a Monitoring & Evaluation system. Within this first approach to a Monitoring and Evaluation system, we identified and described the principle POETA components (Training, Social Interaction and Employability), the main contextual factors relevant to POETA, and each of the mechanisms.