Lesson-110810-1

National coordinators, based in the countries targeted by the project, are highly important to ensure that activities and outputs advance as planned, especially outreach and engagement with key stakeholders. The project operated nearly 30 months with only the project director covering both Argentina and Madagascar and providing overall project management, research, and monitoring and evaluation support. In July 2023, the project added the position of Monitoring & Evaluation (M&E) and Engagement Specialist based in Argentina. While the M&E and Engagement Specialist covers both Argentina and Madagascar, he plays a critical role in Argentina by helping the project engage with key stakeholders from the government, garment sector, trade unions, and some NGOs around preliminary research results. The addition of the M&E and Engagement Specialist helped ensure project activities remained on track. On the other hand, the project was not able to identify a suitable National Project Coordinator for Madagascar. An effective national project coordinator in Madagascar would have been helpful to advance project activities and engage key stakeholders in the project, especially given the concerns about finding forced labor in the garment sector supply chains.