Why Day 1 matters: Programme management is not just administration plus delivery. It requires a fundamentally different orientation — from doing to enabling, from individual excellence to systems thinking. Day 1 establishes this orientation and gives you a clear framework for the programme manager’s role across the dimensions of leadership, operations, finance, relationships, and quality.

• The programme manager’s role: what it actually involves vs. what most people think it involves
• Systems thinking for programme managers: how to see your programme as a system and manage it accordingly
• The programme management cycle: planning, mobilisation, implementation, monitoring, review, close-out
• Managing up, sideways, and down simultaneously — the political reality of the programme manager’s position
• GCC and African youth sector context: the specific pressures, opportunities, and constraints for programme managers in the region
• Self-assessment: your current management strengths and the gaps this course will address

Why Day 2 matters: Your programme’s quality is determined by your team’s quality. Day 2 gives you the practical tools for the most challenging aspects of managing a youth programme team: setting expectations, giving feedback that changes behaviour, running supervision that actually develops your staff, and managing underperformance in a sector where “mission” often complicates accountability.

• Building a high-performing youth programme team: selection, orientation, and early performance management
• Setting clear expectations: how to brief your team so they deliver consistently across different sites and facilitation styles
• Supervision in the youth sector: a structured approach to regular one-to-ones that develops staff and catches problems early
• Giving feedback that changes delivery: specific, evidence-based feedback that improves programme quality
• Managing underperformance in the youth sector: balancing mission commitment with performance accountability
• Staff wellbeing and burnout prevention: managing the emotional toll of youth work on your team
• Developing your team’s skills: how to build a training and development plan for your programme staff

Session includes: supervision conversation practice, feedback role-play with real youth sector scenarios

Why Day 3 matters: Financial incompetence kills youth programmes — not through fraud (usually) but through poor planning, budget overspending, and inability to satisfy funder reporting requirements. Day 3 demystifies programme financial management for non-financial managers: how to plan a budget, monitor spend, manage cash flow, and produce the financial reports that USAID, EU, Gulf foundations, and government ministries actually need.

• Budget planning for youth programmes: building a realistic budget from your logframe and implementation plan
• Budget monitoring: tracking spend against budget, identifying variances early, and managing overspend
• Cash flow management: managing the gap between when funds arrive and when costs are incurred
• Funder financial reporting: what USAID, FCDO, EU, and Gulf foundations require in financial reports and how to deliver it
• Sub-granting and partner financial management: overseeing the financial accountability of delivery partners
• Financial controls and fraud prevention: the minimum financial management standards every programme manager must maintain
• Practical exercise: budget variance analysis with a real programme budget scenario

Why Day 4 matters: M&E that happens only at the end of a programme tells you what went wrong too late to fix it. Day 4 shows you how to build monitoring and evaluation into your programme management cycle from the start — so you’re making evidence-based management decisions throughout delivery, not scrambling for data when the funder asks for a mid-term review.

• M&E as a management tool: using monitoring data to make better programme management decisions in real time
• Building M&E into the programme management cycle: what to monitor, when, and how
• Data quality management: ensuring the data your team collects is accurate and usable
• Learning loops: how to review M&E data as a team and make adjustments to programme delivery
• Managing M&E across multiple sites or partner organisations
• Mid-term and final evaluations: how to manage an external evaluation process effectively
• Using M&E data for advocacy and fundraising: turning impact evidence into compelling funder communications

Why Day 5 matters: Programme managers who manage their stakeholders well — government ministries, funders, community leaders, partner organisations — have more resources, more flexibility, and more impact than those who don’t. Day 5 gives you a systematic approach to stakeholder management, applies quality standards to your programme, and ensures you leave with a concrete plan for improving how you manage.

• Stakeholder mapping and analysis: who matters to your programme, what they want, and how to engage them
• Government relations in the GCC: how to maintain productive relationships with Ministries of Youth, Education, and Social Affairs
• Funder relationship management: keeping your funders engaged and informed throughout the programme cycle
• Community and participant accountability: mechanisms for receiving and responding to community feedback
• Programme quality assessment using TQP standards: self-assessing your programme against international quality benchmarks
• 90-day management action plan: the three most important changes you will make to your programme management within 90 days