Annual Report 2013–2014 The APF works to protect and promote the human rights of people in the Asia Pacific region through the work of its member institutions. Many of the APF’s activities are directed towards supporting and strengthening its members, including: • training programs to build knowledge and skills that are central to the work of effective NHRIs • capacity assessments that enable its members to identify achievable and sustainable steps to strengthen their institutions, and • specialist programs tailored to meet specific requests of individual member institutions. 1.1. TRAINING EVALUATION FINDINGS Outcome indicator Training Performance rating On track The APF’s training programs are designed to assist its member institutions in carrying out their core functions, which include investigating and resolving complaints, monitoring human rights, providing advice to government, reviewing laws and policies and undertaking human rights education programs. The APF’s training programs help build the professional and knowledge-based skills that strengthen the capacity of more than 155 Commission members and 3,100 staff employed in our 21 member institutions. The APF, with its partners, conducted a total of 19 training courses for NHRI staff during the reporting period. This included courses which used the blended learning approach of combined online and faceto-face components. Additionally, the APF ran four high-level dialogues for Commissioners and senior staff of the NHRIs from Samoa, Indonesia, Malaysia and Palestine. Evaluations indicate that both the participants and the member institutions themselves regarded the courses as highly relevant and of a high quality. The average response on relevance across courses and participants was 4.6 out of 5. Participants also consistently regarded courses as of a very high quality (an average response across courses of 4.4 out of 5). In response to the issue of the relevance of courses to the member institutions themselves (as opposed to the individual course participants), all but one NHRI confirmed that knowledge gained from training had been disseminated to other staff. Members, on average, thought the courses extremely relevant (5 out of 5), indicating that the expectations of member NHRIs continue to be aligned with course participants’ experiences of training courses. Members were also asked to indicate how effective they found the use of APF training manuals. 81% of members said that they had been very effective. Members were asked to indicate whether they agreed with a series of statements relating to the way knowledge gained from training has been disseminated. All members agreed that training participants report back to their manager. Most members also agreed that training participants report back to their colleagues and distribute training resources and materials. When asked whether English language skills were a barrier to their staff making the most effective use of APF training over the last five years, the member institutions from West Asia and North Asia largely agreed. The proportion of member institution staff that had sufficient English language skills is shown in Figure 1. The lack of English language skills in West Asia reinforces the APF’s decision to upgrade its virtual learning environment in order for it to run Arabic only training courses; and to progressively translate all APF training into Arabic. 1. Enhance members’ institutional capacity | 7