Your search
Results 29 resources
-
This briefing note focuses on the remote collection and use of data for adaptive management during the Covid-19 pandemic, setting out key considerations to help practitioners think through a transition from more ‘traditional’ monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) to MEL for adaptive management (MEL4AM) that reflects the unique data collection challenges presented by Covid-19. The brief provides an overview of some key considerations in remote data collection, when this is required, and...
-
This briefing note looks at how the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) Wildlife Asia programme has operationalised the concepts of adaptive rigour and adaptive management as part of its approach to collaborating, learning and adapting. As described by the Global Learning for Adaptive Management (GLAM) initiative, adaptive rigour is about ensuring that the data, information, methods, processes and systems that underpin adaptive management are robust, systematic and...
-
Development cooperation has spent decades wrangling over the merits, evidence, and implications of what we may term “the learning hypothesis”: the idea that increased knowledge by development organisations must logically lead to increased effectiveness in the performance of their development activities. Organisations of all stripes have built research and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) departments, adopted a multitude of knowledge management systems and tools, and tinkered with...
-
This guide is a basic reference on systems thinking and practice tailored to the context and needs of the UK Government’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO). It is an output of the FCDO Knowledge for Development Programme (K4D), which facilitated a Learning Journey on Systems Thinking and Practice with FCDO staff during 2021 and 2022. The guide offers a common language and shared framing of systems thinking for FCDO and its partners. It explores what this implies for...
-
Doing development differently rests on deliberate efforts to reflect and learn, not just about what programmes are doing and achieving, but about how they are working. This is particularly important for an action research programme like Child Labour: Action- Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia (CLARISSA), which is implemented by a consortium of organisations from across the research and development spectrum, during a rapidly changing global pandemic. Harnessing the potential...
-
Essential points for practitioners and donors • Mediation offers a cost-effective and proven method for resolving armed conflict. Between 1985 and 2015, 75 per cent of armed conflicts in the world were resolved through agreement rather than by force. In most cases these processes will have involved third party facilitation or support. • Professional mediators understand the high stakes involved in their work to prevent, mitigate and resolve armed conflict. In addition, they and their...
-
This learning paper highlights how elements of outcome mapping were used by Save the Children Sweden in a project (2018-2020) that supports adolescents, affected by the Syria crisis, to become more resilient. The paper first outlines how the spheres of influence framework has been applied to develop an actor focused theory of change. It then describes how progress markers, as an alternative to SMART indicators, were formulated to monitor the programme’s results. The paper also outlines how...
-
This document is a an Introductory Toolkit for for civil servants. It is one component of a suite of documents that aims to act as a springboard into systems thinking for civil servants unfamiliar with this approach. These documents introduce a small sample of systems thinking concepts and tools, chosen due to their accessibility and alignment to civil service policy development, but which is by no means comprehensive. They are intended to act as a first step towards using systems thinking...
-
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly shifted the context in which aid and development is being delivered. The global scale of the pandemic and the speed at which it is spreading mean that the ‘normal’ economic, ideological and organisational influences which shape (if not determine) aid delivery are in flux. This means that – for a relatively short-period – there is scope for aid actors to work collectively to embed more locally-led, politically-informed and adaptive forms of MERL in aid...
-
The complexity of issues addressed by research for development (R4D) requires collaborations between partners from a range of disciplines and cultural contexts. Power asymmetries within such partnerships may obstruct the fair distribution of resources, responsibilities and benefits across all partners. This paper presents a cross-case analysis of five R4D partnership evaluations, their methods and how they unearthed and addressed power asymmetries. It contributes to the field of R4D...
-
Calls for more ‘adaptive programming’ have been prominent in international development practice for over a decade. Learning-by-doing is a crucial element of this, but programmes have often found it challenging to become more learning oriented. Establishing some form of reflective practice, against countervailing incentives, is difficult. Incorporating data collection processes that generate useful, timely and practical information to inform these reflections is even more so.This paper...
-
This chapter examines good practices in implementing effective Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) systems within complex international development Democracy, Human Rights, and Governance (DRG) programs, which are characterized by challenges of non-linearity, limited evidence of theories of change, and contextual and politically contingent nature of outcomes. The chapter presents three cases of MEL systems in complex projects implemented by Pact across distinct and diverse operating...
-
Introduction:The Most Significant Change (MSC) technique is a complex-aware monitoring and evaluation tool, widely recognized for various adaptive management purposes. The documentation of practical examples using the MSC technique for an ongoing monitoring purpose is limited. We aim to fill the current gap by documenting and sharing the experience and lessons learned of The Challenge Initiative (TCI), which is scaling up evidence-based family planning (FP) and adolescent and youth sexual...
-
Does the choice of monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approaches and tools matter for adaptive programmes? In short, yes: monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) and adaptive management (AM) are intertwined. While programme monitoring data and evaluation results are not the only sources of evidence that programmes use for learning and iteration, they often are amongst most important ones — or at least they should be. Selecting what type of information to collect and analyse — and how — is...
-
- The United Kingdom’s Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO)’s standard economy, efficiency, effectiveness/cost-effectiveness and equity (4E) framework is still relevant for approaching, measuring and managing value for money (VfM) for adaptive programmes. • However, this framework needs to be reframed to capture and incentivise flexibility, learning and adaptation. • VfM appraisal and reporting should be done in a way that draws on beneficiary feedback and informs good...
-
- This short paper draws out lessons for working effectively with and through partners, based on the experience of the Institutions for Inclusive Development (I4ID) programme – an adaptive, politically smart governance programme in Tanzania. • Cultivating effective partnerships can be a key part of delivering locally legitimate projects that have the potential to create sustainable change. Adaptive and politically informed ways of working create specific opportunities and challenges for...
-
Over the last decade, the peace sector has been developing and adapting Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) systems and tools to fit their contexts and ways of working. This evolution may hold some insights for the aid community in how to go beyond more traditional, backwards-looking M&E to navigate today’s volatile, interest-based world of politics and aid.
-
This thesis applies ideational and institutional theories to analyse how two specific ideas, results and adaptation, have changed the theory and practice of development cooperation. The thesis addresses the question of why the results and adaptation ideas are often treated as binaries and how this debate has evolved historically. In a first theoretical paper, the evolution of results and adaptation is conceptualised as a combination of institutional layering and diffusion within development...
-
Executive Summary When Christian Aid (CA) Ireland devised its multi-country and multi-year Irish Aid funded Programme Grant II (2017-2022), they opted to move away from a linear programme management approach and to explore an adaptive one. Across seven countries: Angola, Colombia, El Salvador, Guatemala, Israel and the occupied Palestinian territory, Sierra Leone, and Zimbabwe, CA and partner organisations support marginalised communities to realise their rights, reduce violence and address...
Explore
Theme
- Adaptive Approaches [+]
-
MEL4 Adaptive Management
- After Action Reviews (2)
- Capacity Development (1)
- Context Monitoring (1)
- Contribution Analysis (1)
- Critical Friends (1)
- Impact Oriented Monitoring and Evaluation System (2)
- Knowledge Management (1)
- MEL in International Development (5)
- Most Significant Change (1)
- Outcome Mapping (1)
- Participatory Action Research (1)
- Peers/Peer-Group Review (2)
- Portfolio Management (2)
- Power Analysis (1)
- Process Tracing (2)
- Randomized Controlled Trials (1)
- Realist Evaluation (1)
- Scenario Planning (1)
- Strategy testing (1)
- Systemic Change (5)
- Systems Mapping (1)
- Theory-based evaluations (2)
- TOC (Theory of Change) (1)
- Value for Money (2)
- Cases (9)
-
Development Actors Perspectives
(15)
- China (1)
- FCDO/DFID (UK) (4)
- Irish Aid (1)
- NGO Perspectives (7)
- UNDP, UN Global Pulse, UN... (1)
- USAID (2)
- World Bank (1)
-
Geography
(10)
-
Africa
(7)
-
Central Africa
(1)
- Angola (1)
- Eastern Africa (7)
-
Southern Africa
(1)
- South Africa (1)
-
West Africa
(3)
- Nigeria (2)
- Sierra Leone (1)
-
Central Africa
(1)
-
Americas
(1)
-
Central America
(1)
- El Salvador (1)
- Guatemala (1)
-
South America
(1)
- Colombia (1)
-
Central America
(1)
-
Asia
(7)
-
South-eastern Asia
(1)
- Cambodia (1)
-
Southern Asia
(3)
- Bangladesh (1)
- Nepal (2)
- Pakistan (1)
-
Western Asia
(2)
- Israel (1)
- State of Palestine (1)
- Syrian Arab Republic (1)
-
South-eastern Asia
(1)
-
Africa
(7)
- Practical (7)
-
Sectors [+]
(18)
- Agriculture (1)
- Alternative Development (2)
- Cash Trasfers (1)
- Children (2)
- Economic development (2)
- Fragile and Conflict Aflicted Settings (2)
- Gender (2)
- Governance and Accountability (4)
- Health (1)
- Humanitarian Aid (1)
- Locally driven development (1)
- Organizational Change (1)
- Peace Building (1)
- Research for Development (R4D) (1)
- Scaling up / Propagating (1)
Resource type
- Blog Post (3)
- Journal Article (3)
- Magazine Article (1)
- Radio Broadcast (1)
- Report (20)
- Thesis (1)