The Commission on Filipinos Overseas attended the 2-day Philippine Youth Development Plan (PYDP) MEAL Framework Workshop at the Hive Hotel & Convention Place in QC— hosted by the National Youth Commission in partnership with UNICEF Philippines; one of many lined up capacity building activities hosted by the NYC.

Held on February 6-7, 2024, representatives from various government offices participated in an intensive training and seminar as to how their respective agencies can implement and sustain an efficient Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) tool, with the addition of Accountability and Learning– hence MEAL.

Representatives were grouped depending on how their agencies cater to the needs of the Filipino youth. The CFO, for one, is placed under the Maginhawa cluster for Global Mobility due to its mandate of promoting and upholding the interests, rights, and welfare of overseas Filipinos and strengthen their ties with the Motherland.

Since only the CFO attended the workshop under the Global Mobility group, the CFO had to collaborate with the Economic Empowerment group to be able to produce outputs and indicators during the seminar. The Exchange Visitor Program (EVP) [where the Commission serves as the Committee Secretariat] was primarily used by the CFO in order to give light to the economic side of the programs and processes conducted at, and by the Commission. Present members of the Economic Empowerment group were representatives from the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE), Department of Trade and Industry (DTI), and National Economic and Development Authority (NEDA).

 
A total of three (3) workshops were conducted during the in-house training which included: 1) the identification, and definition of agency-wide indicators, availability of data, frequency of data collection, identification of persons/units responsible, validation, reporting, and mechanisms put in place, as well as data sharing and utilization; 2) identifying the collaborative work of agencies under the same cluster that will directly affect the Filipino youth; and 3) application proper of the MEAL Implementation and Management System.

The NYC is hopeful that they will be able to host another in-house workshop within the same month, February 2024, in order to address all other concerns and matters that were not tapped into due to time constraints.