The first online MEL Dialogue offers an excellent opportunity to get firsthand knowledge of two practical MEL methods.

Renowned MEL specialist, Rick Davies will present ParEvo, a new method he has developed for planning and review of projects with multiple stakeholders. ParEvo is a method in which multiple people explore alternative futures or histories and produce storylines about what did or could, happen. Barbara van Mierlo, professor at Wageningen University and Research, has developed an excellent all-encompassing methodology for reflection and learning called Reflexive Monitoring in Action (RMA). The key in RMA is to trigger recurrent collective reflection on the results of actions undertaken in the light of systemic barriers as well as opportunities. The presentation will feed a dialogue on the MEL challenges and solutions encountered in DeSIRA.

Attending this session may be of great interest to those who need to report on the DeSIRA results, tell Stories of Change, extract lessons learned, or (re-)design projects.

Please note that this session will be held in English only

Want to participate?

Registration link here.

Registration closes on February 23rd. After this, you will receive a confirmation by email and the information to access the course.

Who should attend

DeSIRA MEL practitioners, project managers, and communication specialists, including people developing SoC.

For more information please contact Marlene Roefs at service@desiralift.org

All exercises in this handbook are inspired by the Insights into Participatory Video: A Handbook for the Field, published by InsightShare and the Participatory Video Facilitators Manual published by the CGIAR Research Program for the Humid Tropics.

• English session: May 25th, June 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd from 14:00 to 16:00 (CEST)
• French session: TBC

Would you like to improve the usefulness of your monitoring and evaluation? Do you like to go beyond accountability and use the monitoring data collected for learning with the project partners and other stakeholders? Are you looking for ways to create buy-in for M&E from partners and stakeholders? How to combine and balance different information needs and evaluation purposes? Are you struggling with allocating the limited resources to do effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to ensure the impact of your project? How to decide what and when needs to be assessed or measured?  And how to translate the information needs into MEL approaches and methods that can be realistically put in practice during the timeframe and with the resources of your DeSIRA project?  This course intends to support you by practicing with a structure to do the MEL of your project incorporating the learning part to it and providing you with tips, tools and methods to address the challenges faced by many DeSIRA projects.

Registration link here

Once registration is closed you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This course will be facilitated by Marlene Roefs, MEL advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Marlene has broad experience in designing and implementing MEL systems for agri-food strategies and interventions in East Asia and West and East Africa.

For the detailed course announcement, please see here

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

• English session: May 25th, June 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd from 14:00 to 16:00 (CEST)
• French session: TBC

Would you like to improve the usefulness of your monitoring and evaluation? Do you like to go beyond accountability and use the monitoring data collected for learning with the project partners and other stakeholders? Are you looking for ways to create buy-in for M&E from partners and stakeholders? How to combine and balance different information needs and evaluation purposes? Are you struggling with allocating the limited resources to do effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to ensure the impact of your project? How to decide what and when needs to be assessed or measured?  And how to translate the information needs into MEL approaches and methods that can be realistically put in practice during the timeframe and with the resources of your DeSIRA project?  This course intends to support you by practicing with a structure to do the MEL of your project incorporating the learning part to it and providing you with tips, tools and methods to address the challenges faced by many DeSIRA projects.

Registration link here

Once registration is closed you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This course will be facilitated by Marlene Roefs, MEL advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Marlene has broad experience in designing and implementing MEL systems for agri-food strategies and interventions in East Asia and West and East Africa.

For the detailed course announcement, please see here

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

• English session: May 25th, June 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd 14:00 to 16:00 (CEST)
• French session: TBC

Would you like to improve the usefulness of your monitoring and evaluation? Do you like to go beyond accountability and use the monitoring data collected for learning with the project partners and other stakeholders? Are you looking for ways to create buy-in for M&E from partners and stakeholders? How to combine and balance different information needs and evaluation purposes? Are you struggling with allocating the limited resources to do effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to ensure the impact of your project? How to decide what and when needs to be assessed or measured?  And how to translate the information needs into MEL approaches and methods that can be realistically put in practice during the timeframe and with the resources of your DeSIRA project?  This course intends to support you by practicing with a structure to do the MEL of your project incorporating the learning part to it and providing you with tips, tools and methods to address the challenges faced by many DeSIRA projects.

Registration link here

Once registration is closed you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This course will be facilitated by Marlene Roefs, MEL advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Marlene has broad experience in designing and implementing MEL systems for agri-food strategies and interventions in East Asia and West and East Africa.

For the detailed course announcement, please see here

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

• English session: May 25th, June 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd 14:00 to 16:00 (CEST)
• French session: TBC

Would you like to improve the usefulness of your monitoring and evaluation? Do you like to go beyond accountability and use the monitoring data collected for learning with the project partners and other stakeholders? Are you looking for ways to create buy-in for M&E from partners and stakeholders? How to combine and balance different information needs and evaluation purposes? Are you struggling with allocating the limited resources to do effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to ensure the impact of your project? How to decide what and when needs to be assessed or measured?  And how to translate the information needs into MEL approaches and methods that can be realistically put in practice during the timeframe and with the resources of your DeSIRA project?  This course intends to support you by practicing with a structure to do the MEL of your project incorporating the learning part to it and providing you with tips, tools and methods to address the challenges faced by many DeSIRA projects.

Registration link here

Once registration is closed you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This course will be facilitated by Marlene Roefs, MEL advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Marlene has broad experience in designing and implementing MEL systems for agri-food strategies and interventions in East Asia and West and East Africa.

For the detailed course announcement, please see here

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

• English session: May 25th, June 1st, 8th, 15th and 22nd from 14:00 to 16:00 (CEST)
• French session: TBC

Would you like to improve the usefulness of your monitoring and evaluation? Do you like to go beyond accountability and use the monitoring data collected for learning with the project partners and other stakeholders? Are you looking for ways to create buy-in for M&E from partners and stakeholders? How to combine and balance different information needs and evaluation purposes? Are you struggling with allocating the limited resources to do effective monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) to ensure the impact of your project? How to decide what and when needs to be assessed or measured?  And how to translate the information needs into MEL approaches and methods that can be realistically put in practice during the timeframe and with the resources of your DeSIRA project?  This course intends to support you by practicing with a structure to do the MEL of your project incorporating the learning part to it and providing you with tips, tools and methods to address the challenges faced by many DeSIRA projects.

Registration link here

Once registration is closed you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course.

This course will be facilitated by Marlene Roefs, MEL advisor at Wageningen Centre for Development Innovation. Marlene has broad experience in designing and implementing MEL systems for agri-food strategies and interventions in East Asia and West and East Africa.

For the detailed course announcement, please see here

Contact for more information: service@desiralift.org

The seminar will be organized online on the 28^th of March 2023, starting at 2 pm CET.

Click here to join the meeting.

The theoretical background and the application of two approaches will be presented in this seminar.

Boru Douthwaite will present Outcome trajectory evaluation (OTE) and lessons from its application in the CGIAR context.

Fanny Howland and Jean François le Coq will present the assessment of the Climate Smart Agriculture Strategy (EASAC) for the SICA Region.

We will have time to exchange with the presenters and draw lessons from their experiences.

You may find here some documents about the approaches and cases that will be presented:

• Douthwaite, B., Proietti, C., Polar, V., & Thiele, G. (2023). Outcome Trajectory Evaluation (OTE): An Approach to Tackle Research-for-Development’s Long-Causal-Chain Problem. American Journal of Evaluation, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/10982140221122771
• https://www.researchgate.net/project/Outcome-Trajectory-Evaluations-OTEs-of-CGIAR-Outcomes
• Collazos Acosta Sara, Howland Fanny, Le Coq Jean-François. 2021. Towards a theory-based assessment of the Climate Smart Agriculture Strategy (EASAC) for the SICA Region. . Medellin : s.n., 3 p. Latin American workshop on climate-smart agriculture, Medellin, Colombie, 14 Juillet 2021/14 Juillet 2021. https://agritrop.cirad.fr/599594/

Registration link here.

Once registration is closed, you will receive a confirmation by email and information to access the course. This course will be given by Roger Reuver, owner at RCO.design and Senior consultant in Communication Design

This course will help you to:

• Outline an effective communication strategy for your DeSIRA project.
• Practice with gathering visual information in a structured way.
• Identify effective user-centered communication products.

Why should you choose this course?

Do you feel sometimes frustrated because the results of your research or innovation are not being considered by policy makers, peers or other stakeholders you feel would benefit from them? Do you struggle with presenting your M&E results in an attractive way? This online course will help you formulate your communication strategy and provides opportunities to practice with tools and techniques that support the communication of your M&E results.

Learning objectives

At the end of the online course, participants have:

• Outlined an effective communication strategy for their DeSIRA project.
• Practiced with gathering visual information in a structured way.
• Identified effective communication products, based on their communication strategy.

Course delivery methods

• A series of four 2h online live training sessions, facilitated by an expert on programme communication.
• Individual assignments to be done prior to the live training sessions.
• Possibility of individual/group mentoring sessions over a two months period as follow-up of the implementation of the course content.

Overview of content

Session 1: Setting up communication for M&E

• Why? Goals in communicating M&E results.
• For whom? Internal and external audiences.
• Inventory of challenges & needs.
• Homework.

Session 2: Data & visual communication

• What data is available in different phases of your project?
• Data > Information: developing formats.
• Introduction to visual communication.
• Homework.

Session 3: Communication design

• Information design.
• Using video & animation.
• Practical tools & design resources.
• AEIOU framework.
• Homework.

Session 4: Evaluating M&E communication

• Means & budgets.
• M&E of communication
• Conclusions

Related courses and service offering

This course will build further on the course on theory of change and feed the course on structuring your monitoring, evaluation and learning.

FAQ

• Who to contact about this course? Roger Reuver at: service@desiralift.org
• Where can I find more information on the support services for proving impact? Please visit here
• Where can I find information on the overall DeSIRA-LIFT service offering to Pillar 1 projects? Please visit this link
• Where can I send general questions, comments and suggestions about the DeSIRA-LIFT service offer to Pillar 1 DeSIRA projects? Please send them to service@desiralift.org

For more info, please see this course description

WHY: Much too often, others – usually the project delivery staff – are reporting on the project results on behalf of participants. Furthermore, these stories tend to be recorded in written format, meaning that in contexts of low literacy, the stories are being recorded in a medium that is inaccessible to the actually involved population. Using Participatory Video, selected stories are recorded on video by participants themselves, making the information accessible and useable.

Using PV can help participants tell their stories and communicate their perspectives in an accessible, compelling and versatile format through a participatory process. We will use PV in combination with (an adapted version of) the Most Significant Change technique in order to gain valuable insights on Monitoring and Evaluation.

This course will run over 9 sessions. Each session will be 1.5 hours, in which we will give a theoretical overview, we will explain practical PV exercises that are fun and participatory for you to repeat in your own projects, will have brief brainstorming sessions and there will be a short homework session.

Throughout these 9 modules, we will dive into the ´why´ participatory video and how this is different from other participatory methods and/or documentary filmmaking. We will touch upon the ethics and challenges of facilitating a PV process and how to deal with difficult situations. After this, we will focus on the crossroads of PV and M&E and go through the different steps and exercises. We will end with how to conduct a participatory paper edit and how to disseminate the final video.

WHO: This training course will be given by Manon Koningstein, an independent consultant on audiovisual communications with multiple years of experience in conducting PV courses and training with CGIAR as well as with InsightShare.

WHOM: We invite the Communication focal points as well as M&E officers of the interested DeSIRA projects to attend.