Following up on CLI’s program growth: Six months later

Last fall, we wrote a blog post to update our supporters on the early success of two strategic projects. As discussed, we are always looking for ways to improve our program and maximize impact. In the interest of continued transparency, we thought it appropriate to let you know what we have learned since then from our pilot programs to improve female participation and alumni engagement. We’re also adding an update on our distance learning initiative, a third strategic extension we have taken on during the current (very busy!) fiscal year.

Female participation

In the fall, we reported that we added budgetary support specifically targeting women and girls in the CLI program. The early “returns” were good: Our investment in young women and girls succeeded in raising their levels of attendance significantly. Since then, numbers have slipped somewhat, but no more than the historical rate of attrition across all program participants.

Currently, the average attendance for young women is at 88%, which is in line with what we expect for all participants in the program over the full year. In other words, young women are missing our training sessions for reasons endogenous to Congo (largely insecurity and weather) as opposed to discriminatory practices.

Most of our partner sites have used the allocation we provide for female participation in order to help defray transportation fees that young women encounter to attend lessons. In a place where the average per capita GDP is less than $500, a $1-2 expense to attend a meeting can be prohibitive. Because our program is free, this transportation cost can be seen as the expense that we ask our participants to "contribute" to our joint success. In a sense, we have with our partners created a "scholarship" for girls and young women. It has had its intended effect of making a CLI education accessible to a group that otherwise could not afford it.

CLI alumni engagement

CLI alumni have done amazing things after graduating from our program, but this is the first year that we have put in place specific programming focused on them. Based on what we have learned, we will certainly do so again in the future and hope to expand the budget available for alumni meetings.

Most alumni sites have held two meetings to date, though multiple regions feature self-directed alumni meetings initiated and entirely run by the alums themselves. Further, we have received more than fifty applications (and counting) from alumni for funding to support their businesses and social projects.

Ultimately, this is important because we want to better understand the long-term impact of the CLI program on the lives of youth who participate. We maintain rigorous metrics on youth and their activities during their year as participants, but longitudinal metrics are much more difficult to attain logistically (for CLI or any similar organization). Programming that targets alums helps to fill this gap while creating a launch point for additional alumni engagement in the future.

CLI’s distance learning initiative

Perhaps the most significant strategic advancement in CLI’s history, our distance learning initiative opens the possibility of CLI training to a much broader set of the DRC’s massive population. Since September, more than 150 participants have accessed the CLI curriculum via distance learning channels. This is slightly more than half the number who are enrolled at our leadership "sites", but we expect that more than 80% of participants will engage via distance learning by 2025.

Using a combination of radio, internet, and mobile communication, we have succeeded in developing a model by which we can transmit our curriculum to youth in far-flung parts of the DRC - as well as those who are unable to attend our existing program sites due to constraints on classroom size. Given the explosive growth expected in the DRC over the coming decades, finding cost-effective ways to disseminate the training that CLI provides is critical. We are pleased with this early success.

One important learning is that the majority of our distance learning participants do so not entirely independently, but through an informal group managed by a local Congolese civil society organization. This means that, for the most part, we are not sacrificing the community feeling and teamwork element of CLI training. We plan to continue to assess the best ways to integrate these "informal" partners into our network of leadership training.

As always, thank you for your support! Without you, we cannot continue to do this meaningful work, but with your help and our continued innovation on the ground, the future is bright!