Shah Aryaee – TAGHEER

Establishing TAGHEER “a personal story”

Shah Aryaee — Tue, 12 Apr 2022 08:58:46 +0000

TAGHEER means “Change”, which was my dream to challenge the status-quo I observed in my career, where most of us talk about coordination, participatory approaches, inclusivity, and customer care but No One truly works for it. Just ticking boxes were no more helpful and to stop the blame game between implementers, contractors, and M&Ers, I established TAGHEER believing in the VALUES that the “truth needs to be told”, “mutual respect and understanding needs to be created”, and that “we can always go the extra mile” to ensure accountability and learning. While creating a global common vision for this was beyond our scope, during this period, we served our clients with sincerity guided by our values and shared stories of success and failure for learning and improvement; an effort to CHANGE perceptions and weak practices. TAGHEER during this time has expanded the scope of services beyond only Afghanistan to include the US and Turkey.

A MOTIVATED TEAM MAINTAINS A WORK LIFE BALANCE

Shah Aryaee — Mon, 05 Apr 2021 20:40:17 +0000

Amidst the COVID-19 crises, Team at TAGHEER was able to train a group of data collectors from Faryab province to enable them understand the evaluation sample and stakeholders as well as questionnaire / guides for surveys, KIIs, IDIs, and personal stories. The training will help with data collection for the mid-term review of a 3-years Rural Development project funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs for interventions on WASH, Natural resources management, Small enterprises development, & Women’s Empowerment.

This comprehensive two-day training is being conducted following the MoPH guidelines. The participants are working together to practice KOBO software using android phones, interview arrangements, and to interact with story tellers to make them speak about their life changes pursuant to project interventions.

STUDY ON EXPLORING #SYNERGIES BETWEEN HEART OF ASIA – #ISTANBUL PROCESS (HOA-IP) AND REGIONAL ECONOMIC COOPERATION CONFERENCE ON AFGHANISTAN (#RECCA):

Shah Aryaee — Thu, 01 Apr 2021 17:51:41 +0000

#TAGHEER is contracted by The Asia #Foundation and #WADAN to explore and understand the synergies between both cooperation initiatives and inform a policy level discussion within senior Government peers by understanding the commonalities and complementarities of the two Processes and to guide the Government approach towards a more robust regional economic and social integration. TAGHEER is carrying out key informant interviews with high-level government officials and facilitating a strategy workshop to undertake this study, which will also inform the decision of senior Government officials mainly of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (#MoFA) if the two Processes need to be merged and can be unified under the umbrella of the RCD.

Please share your thoughts on the commonalities of both initiatives and if you think they should be merged!

PRACTICE TO PERFECTION

Shah Aryaee — Sun, 03 Jan 2021 20:28:27 +0000

Team at TAGHEER trained a group of field researchers in an effort to practice data collection tools while following the data handling protocols and evaluation ethics. They will be deployed to local communities in Herat, Balkh, Daikundi, Takhar, Kabul, and Nangarhar provinces to conduct surveys, KIIs, FGDs, and collect stories of change from project beneficiaries and stakeholders for a 5 years project funded by the Netherland Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The project which supported the protection, relief, and recovery components of the Afghanistan National Action Plan (NAP) and assisted women with better access to health and education services was implemented by Oxfam in Afghanistan.

This training and data collection effort will help underpin the project achievements, lessons learned, implementation challenges, and best practices for future application; all to be reflected in the final evaluation report.

OVERCOME THE SYSTEMATIC EXCLUSION OF DISADVANTAGED GROUPS

Shah Aryaee — Thu, 12 Mar 2020 17:58:08 +0000

Every Voice Counts (EVC) is a global program, which is funded by the Netherlands Ministry of Foreign Affairs and is being implemented by CARE since 2016 in Burundi, Pakistan, Rwanda, Somalia, Sudan, and Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, this project aims to increase women’s meaningful participation in local decision-making process including Community Development Councils (CDC) and to improve their accessibility to justice and quality of education and health services.

TAGHEER will undertake the End-line evaluation of this program in the next Seven (07) months. TAHGHEER will use an interactive and participatory approach to rigorously analyze the program achievements at the completion stage against the baseline conducted in 2016 and midline carried out in 2018. The evaluation design and framework will be agreed with the CARE Global Evaluation Team in a 4-days workshop in Netherland.

The evaluation, which will be conducted using the OECD DAC criteria will mainly focus on community women and girls, CSOs and networks to represent local women’s issues, DDAs (District Development Assemblies), CDCs (Community Development Councils) and Policy makers at the National level especially the Ministry of Women Affairs (MoWA) for receiving improved services and their engagement with the EVC program. The evaluation report developed by TAGHEER will serve as an input for the global evaluation report of EVC program in 6 countries.

TAGHEER CONDUCTS EXPORT MANAGEMENT COACHING IN AFGHANISTAN

Shah Aryaee — Sun, 20 Jan 2019 18:04:23 +0000

The International Trade Centre (ITC) is currently implementing the Advancing Afghan Trade project, an EU-funded trade assistance project in Afghanistan. Its objective is to improve conditions for regional cooperation and trade as a lever for economic and human development and poverty reduction in Afghanistan through technical assistance to the Afghan Government and the private sector.

To achieve these objectives, ITC has contracted TAGHEER to coach small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) involved in exports in order to improve their trade performance. The instruction is designed to prepare them for export management, cope with export challenges inside Afghanistan and beyond the border, and provide information on the application of labelling, packaging customs clearance, and freight forwarding. In preparation for this assignment, TAGHEER staff participated in a training of trainers (TOT) session in Sri Lanka, facilitated by the ITC, to receive advanced instruction on the delivery of on-the-job coaching services to Afghan SMEs.

The ITC, in consultation with TAGHEER, has prepared a coaching manual on export management. The manual will be introduced to selected export SMEs in Afghanistan following an initial assessment of their current export management practices. TAGHEER will be developing a coaching plan to improve their export management administrative practices to reduce their transaction costs. This coaching will involve the training the SME staff, information-sharing, monitoring their activities remotely, and remaining available to answer queries throughout the coaching period.