Guidelines to Monitoring and Evaluation: How are we doing?

Sun, 08/31/2008 - 12:52 — Cristina Sette

Publication Type:

Miscellaneous

Authors:

Source:

CARE International in Uganda, Kampala, Uganda (1997)

Abstract:

Every CARE Country Office faces the challenge of assessing progress in its projects and understanding the ways it is making a difference, beneficial or otherwise, in people's lives and the institutions serving them. Attaining this, we can use lessons learned to continuously improve the design and implementation of our programme. There is no shortage of literature on the subject of monitoring and evaluation; indeed, it is vast. Unfortunately, much of it is very technical and obscure. Sorting out what is useful and necessary to a complex programme of varying sectors, or even an individual project, can be a daunting task. Most CARE programme staff have technical backgrounds, but their academic education rarely includes monitoring and evaluation, or the M&E training is seldom oriented to the needs of an NGO project. The common result is that monitoring and evaluation too often remains 'mysterious', consuming substantial time and resources with little to show for considerable effort.