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Behind
this Course
Planning, Monitoring,
Evaluation and Reporting
(PME&R) should be key processes in the working cycle of developmental
practitioners and organisations, helping them to manage, support and
improve field practice with consciousness and rigour.
But PME&R is typically a headache for
many, not because it is difficult but because our approaches are too
often too mechanistic, dry, lifeless and disconnected from other vital
processes of our work and learning.
For many practitioners, planning has
been reduced to event management, monitoring to checking or policing,
and evaluation to proving to donors or management whether we deserve
continued funding or support. Planning has been separated
from Monitoring and Evaluation which has itself been elevated and
reduced to a specialist function, robbing field practice of an
important vitalising ingredient.
Accountability and measurement of impact
have become separated from
learning, and learning is itself ambiguously regarded as important but
also something of a luxury, to be done if there is spare time.
Cleverly packaged and imported frameworks or tools are implemented
with little consciousness of their cultural
appropriateness or of the practice
which they should be managing and supporting. Logical Frameworks
Analysis (logframe) and similar “project management” tools and
approaches, introduced in an attempt to bring rigour and
accountability to development work, have tended to obstruct and
disable developmental approaches, undermining the very results that
they set out to achieve.
Typically we find that standardised Project-Cycle
Management frameworks, potentially helpful for managing clearly
definable change processes in stable environments, are applied
regardless of the type of change being facilitated or the stability of
the environment, with the result that
rigid and inappropriate structure and tools
are used to make sense of emerging,
fluid or complex
processes, leading to repeated mistakes, wasted effort and
resources and a failure to facilitate
authentic development.
PME&R thus becomes a part of
the conventional conveyor belt on
which so many practitioners try and fail to deliver development.
However rigorous management and
support of field practice is possible, indeed vital,
particularly by practitioners and "communities" themselves. This requires a
shared understanding of what type of change is being worked
with and which PME&R frameworks are useful,
as well as the kind of relationships and
environment which encourage ongoing learning from experience.
Planning, monitoring,
evaluation and reporting
can thus become part of an integrated process which enables continuous
improvement of practice and of results and contributes to healthy,
honest relationships between colleagues working towards a shared
purpose.
This course participants helps participants to
explore and develop approaches and methodologies that enable this.
Any development practitioner who
has:
-
some responsibility for PME&R processes
-
some frustration with conventional approaches to PME&R
-
some critical questions about what a developmental
approach to PME&R is and how to do it
-
some experience with PME&R
Course aims:
Overall aim:
The participants will leave with increased knowledge
and confidence to develop and implement PME&R processes appropriate to
their own developmental practice
Detailed aims:
-
To surface, illuminate, contextualise and
critique current/conventional practices and notions about planning,
monitoring and evaluation
-
To help participants understand where the source
of their questions or frustrations lie with regard to PME&R
-
To help participants understand what a
developmental practice is and from that what kind of PME&R practices
best support it
-
To put forward and stimulate the sharing of
alternative approaches and tools
-
To provide guidance in applying these in
rigorous, innovative and developmental ways
Some
Core concepts
PME&R can be used flexibly and
appropriately to support different kinds of change. We distinguish
between:
-
Emergent change: unconsciously developing situations with
emerging needs and uncertain or shifting environments for change,
requiring processes aimed at step-by-step or continuous improvement.
(action-learning based change and PME processes)
-
Transformational change: complex processes of overt and
hidden crises and stucknesses in unstable internal or external
environments requiring deep shifts usually related to issues of
identity and power. (U-process of change with very active,
in-the-moment PME approaches)
-
Projectable change: conscious change prompted by a
clear problem or need with relatively stable internal and external
environments enabling development projects to take hold.
(project-cycle managed change and PME approaches)
Understanding which kind of change
process is being worked with enables the right kind of PME&R approach
to be designed and in so doing enables PME&R to be integral to the
practice.
Monitoring is most alive when it
has learning and replanning at its core,
as well as ongoing personal and practice support for field-staff.
Evaluation is more
meaningful where there is a purpose of deeper learning at its centre, a bigger
reflection on progress against longer-term purposes, as well as a
reassessment of wider contextual situations and shifts, to enable
further strategic planning.
Accountability is most
useful if pursued through
learning practices in a culture where “failure” and honesty is not
penalised, but rewarded as the primary source of learning and
continual improvement. Being accountable for producing learning and
contributing to development thinking is seen as a vehicle for
"results".
It is important to distinguish
between accountability for outputs and outcomes. Accountability
for outputs should be fairly straightforward, related to financial
auditing - ascertaining how the resources were used for planned or
re-planned activities. Accountability for outcomes or results in
complex development programmes is often difficult to assess.
External evaluators have a primary
role to validate the self-evaluation of players at ALL levels of the
intervention, from donors to field-staff to community.
PME&R cycles work better to the
extent that they are attuned to the natural rhythms and cycles of the
field, these derived from the rhythms and cycles of the client system
Above all, our PME&R processes should always respect the
processes of the community. “Who is participating in whose process?”
should be a continual guiding question.
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This course can also be contracted to
be run in-house at negotiated rates.
Contact Pauline Solomons
for application queries:
pauline@cdra.org.za
Contact Doug Reeler for curriculum details:
doug@cdra.org.za
