Barbara Franken is the Monitoring & Evaluation Specialist at Right to Care. She heads the (Monitoring & Evaluation) M&E department, which consists of five M&E officers at the head office and regional offices, close to 30 data managers based at government ARV clinics across Gauteng, Mpumalanga and Northern Cape, and close to 40 data capturers based at the same clinics.
Her department is responsible for tracking and disseminating data on all PEPFAR-funded programmatic activities, including VCT, HIV Care & Support, TB/HIV services, ARV Treatment, Training, and Outreach, at all clinics and programmes supported by Right to Care.
The M&E department works in close collaboration with the TherapyEdge department, which oversees the implementation of TherapyEdge at selected sites, and assures the quality of clinical data on the database. Keeping in line with the two main purposes of M&E, the M&E data is used to ensure accountability towards the funder USAID, by updating the PEPFAR SA Data Warehouse (DW), as well as to strengthen programmatic interventions, by disseminating data to project managers, directors, partners, peer organisations, and other stakeholders. The M&E data is also used for future projections and target setting, which is used in Right to Care’s funding applications.
Barbara joined Right to Care as M&E officer in May 2004 when the organisation had just received its first PEPFAR funding and was taking its first cautious steps from infanthood into toddlerhood. At the time, Right to Care consisted of barely over a dozen employees, and Barbara, as the sole M&E person, was tasked with establishing and managing the Right to Care M&E system from scratch. This was no easy task, as the PEPFAR programme globally was in its infancy, and OGAC was still designing and piloting its reporting requirements.
During the initial years, most of Barbara’s efforts went into developing indicators, designing data collection and collation tools, providing training and technical assistance on M&E to all partners and programmes, doing on-site assessments of data management systems, participating in data quality audits, compiling M&E Work Plans and logframes, and continuous verification of site-level data and reports.
She also assisted in the design, assessment and improvements of automated reporting functionalities in Right to Care’s Health Management Information System (HMIS) TherapyEdge, as well as piloting and modifications to the PEPFAR SA data warehouse (DW). By late 2006, Right to Care had expanded to the level where additional M&E staff was needed, and Barbara started building up an M&E department, which now numbers around 70 staff members. Also in 2006, PEPFAR SA awarded her the inaugural ‘Barbara Franken Award for Outstanding Dedication to M&E Excellence’, which is now an annual PEPFAR SA award.
She grew up in the Netherlands where she studied towards her Masters Degrees in Development Studies and in Social Anthropology. Her thesis research brought her to South Africa in early 1996, where she finished her studies and has lived ever since. Before joining Right to Care, she has worked in the fields of research, project management and administration, and skills development, for non-governmental organisations, private sector companies as well as a university centre, in areas ranging from travel, youth development, and microfinance to local government capacity building.