m&e in garissa.

In dusty Garissa for a week. The Nomad Hotel, admittedly, is nothing like Garissa. Fancy you have to go all the way to “Forgotten Kenya” to find a nice place to sleep with regular Internet (albeit slow), good prices and a lot of quiet, quiet space these days.

I’m here for a workshop on Monitoring & Evaluation, Communications, Reporting and Documentation. Basically, two days of information on all that paperwork that people find awfully boring and typical of development. Surprisingly enough though, I am not falling asleep but finding the information quite interesting. I suppose that’s my analytical “now where is development really going wrong?” side.

Apparently, unbeknown to me, results-based monitoring & evaluation is a new concept. Godfrey, the facilitator, said it was introduced by USAID (go figure). Here’s an example of a results-based monitoring & evaluation process:

Input: Girls’ Forum (staff, funding, trainers, kit with tampons and khangas etc.)

Activities: Train teachers in Girls’ Forum model, train student forum leaders

Outputs: Improved attendance among girls

Outcomes: Increased performance and retention

Goal: Increased access to education by marginalized

The traditional monitoring and evaluation system would have stopped at outputs. Donors would only have wanted to know that the kits were delivered and that a certain number of teachers were trained. That’s it.

Above, we look at the bigger picture. While the bigger picture is definitely not deeply changed within five years, perhaps this type of reporting system means we’re on track to analyzing data behind change instead of making decisions based on politics or anecdotal data.

If you’re asking yourself what on earth monitoring & evaluation is, it’s basically a process that allows you to see how an organization affects its environment. You choose “key performance indicators,” such as # of girls who finish primary school, and find a baseline number. As you implement something like the Girls’ Forum in that school, you see if those numbers change. You also use a control school (so one where there is no Girls’ Forum) and compare variances. Of course, there’s nothing foolproof. You compliment this with in-depth focus group discussions and surveys to see if – perhaps – positive variances can be attributed to a certain activity.

Well, at least this is my very basic understanding.

I’ll be teaching the reporting, communication & documentation section tomorrow. I’m much more comfortable in this field, though I may want to realize that the Somali mzee has never heard the word “social media documentation.” Debating whether to drop this from the presentation.