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Despite a swathe of critiques of logframes and other blueprint approaches to development over the last 30 years, most aid infrastructure continues to concentrate on the design and subsequent implementation of closed models. This article does not propose an alternative to blueprints, but challenges the inflexibility of their implementation, which is inadequate given the complex nature of social change. It proposes a supplementary management and learning approach which enables implementers to...

This paper tracks the efforts of an Asia Foundation team and local stakeholders as they worked to support improvements in the solid waste management sector in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The team worked in a flexible way with a range of partners, and with particular focus on understanding the incentives and politics affecting service delivery. While reform of the sector remains in progress, steps have been taken to introduce more competition and better public sector management of solid waste...

This paper examines adaptive approaches in aid programming in a fragile, conflict and violence-affected setting (FCVAS), namely Myanmar. A combination of desk review and field research has been used to examine some of the assertions around the ‘adaptive management’ approach, which has arisen in recent years as a response to critiques of overly rigid, pre-designed, blue-print and linear project plans. This paper explores if and how adaptive approaches, including rapid learning and planning...

Healthcare systems are increasingly recognised as complex, in which a range of non-linear and emergent behaviours occur. China’s healthcare system is no exception. The hugeness of China, and the variation in conditions in different jurisdictions present very substantial challenges to reformers, and militate against adopting one-size-fits-all policy solutions. As a consequence, approaches to change management in China have frequently emphasised the importance of sub-national experimentation,...

Pressure is mounting on international development cooperation agencies to prove the impact of their work. Private and public commissioners as well as the general public are increasingly asking for robust evidence of impact. In this context, rigorous impact evaluation (RIE) methods are increasingly receiving attention within the broader German development system and in GIZ. Compared to other implementing agencies such as DFID or USAid, the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale...

Children end up in child labour as a result of many, often unknown or hidden, interactions between multiple actors and multiple factors within households, communities, and labour systems, leading to unpredictable outcomes for children and other sector stakeholders and sometimes resulting in the worst forms of child labour (WFCL). It is a complex problem, and interventions aimed at tackling it are also, inevitably, complex and challenging. The way they influence change is non-linear,...

This article explores the potential of using participatory action research as an adaptive programming modality to drive learning and innovation to tackle the drivers of (and seek to eliminate) the Worst Forms of Child Labour. We draw on our experience from early phases of implementation of a large-scale action research programme, which despite the constraints covid-19 posed in moving to full implementation and participatory engagement with children and other stakeholders on the ground, is...

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...

CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) is a large-scale Participatory Action Research programme which aims to identify, evidence, and promote effective multi-stakeholder action to tackle the drivers of the worst forms of child labour in selected supply chains in Bangladesh, Nepal, and Myanmar. CLARISSA places a particular focus on participants’ own ‘agency’. In other words, participants’ ability to understand the situation they face, and to...

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...

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...

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...

Multiple aid agencies often try to support change in the same places, at the same time, and with similar actors. Surprisingly, their interactions and combined effects are rarely explored. This Policy Briefing describes findings from research conducted on recent aid programmes that overlapped in Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan, and from a webinar with UK Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office (FCDO) advisors and practitioners. The research found three distinct categories of ‘interaction...

The CLARISSA Nepal team collected and analysed 400 life stories of children and young people engaged in or affected by the worst forms of child labour (WFCL), particularly in the “Adult Entertainment” sector in Nepal, which includes children working in Dohoris (restaurants playing folk music), dance bars, spa-massage parlours, khaja ghars (tea/snack shop) and guest houses. Stories were also collected from children in CLARISSA’s focus neighbourhoods, children in this category...

The CLARISSA Social Protection Intervention was set us as an innovative social policy intervention for tackling social ills, with a...

CLARISSA (Child Labour: Action-Research-Innovation in South and South-Eastern Asia) has a participatory and child-centred approach that supports children to gather evidence, analyse it themselves and generate solutions to the problems they identify. The life story collection and collective analysis processes supported children engaged in the worst forms of child labour in Bangladesh to share and analyse their life stories. Over 400 life stories were collected from children who worked in...

The Covid-19 Responses for Equity (CORE) programme was a three-year initiative funded by the Canadian International Development Research Centre (IDRC) that brought together 20 projects from across the global South to understand the socioeconomic impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic, improve existing responses, and generate better policy options for recovery. The research covered 42 countries across Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East to understand the ways in which the pandemic...