Monitoring and Evaluation for Peacebuilding Programs

August 5th, 2011

Linda Collins, internCRP Sudan

Sources consulted• Designing for Results: Integrating Monitoring and Evaluation in Conflict Transformation

Programs, Search for Common Ground, 2006• Guidance on Evaluating Conflict Prevention and Peacebuilding Activities: Working Draft

for Application Period, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development - Development Assistance Committee, 2008

• Impact Assessment in Post-Conflict Peacebuilding: Challenges and Future Directions, Interpeace, July 2004

• Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning for Fragile State and Peacebuilding Programs: Practical Tools for Improving Peacebuilding Results, Social Impact, n.d.

• Reflective Peacebuilding: A Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Toolkit, The Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies, University of Notre Dame, and Catholic Relief Services, 2007

• Reflecting on Peace Practice: Participant Training Manual, Collaborative Learning Projects, 2009

• Starting on the Same Page: A Lessons Report from the Peacebuilding Evaluation Project, Alliance for Peacebuilding, 2011

• Quantitative and Qualitative Methods in Impact Evaluation and Measuring Results, Governance and Social Development Resource Centre, March 2009

Challenges to CRP Sudan

• Maintain flexibility of proposed programs• Articulate the goal• Develop indicators

Flexibility

• General consensus that flexibility is vital• Donors should allow for greater flexibility

(OECD)• Keep donors informed as to changing

conditions. Donors want to achieve objectives and will respond to candid discussions regarding changing needs. (SFCG)

Articulating the goal:Managing the ‘attribution gap’

Reflective Peacebuilding: a Planning, Monitoring, and Learning Toolkit, 2007

General consensus: it is usually impossible to prove a program affects macro-level peace.

Peacebuilding may be micro

• Do not claim a false link: worthwhile community projects may not contribute significantly to national peace. (AFP)

Peacebuilding is always macro

• Goals should be statements of change at the socio-political level, even if programs are local. We should insure that programs address important drivers of societal-level conflict and have the scope to influence societal peace. (CLP)

• Programs cannot be responsible for macro level changes. Success is determined by change affected in the ‘intervening variable’ which affects the macro level, in theory. (Interpeace)

Establishing indicators

• Output indicators demonstrate successful completion of activity. Outcome indicators demonstrate progress towards objectives and goals.

• Indicators must be SMART (specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time bound) (OECD)

• Indicators must be context-specific (SFCG)• The objectives of peacebuilding projects are intangibles;

they are process-oriented objectives, not products. (OECD)

• One of the perennial dangers of establishing fixed benchmarks of progress is that the mechanisms for evaluating progress become an end in themselves. (Interpeace)

Sample Indicators SFCG, GSDRC, Social Impact

Objective: Increase trust between the two communities• Indicator: Increase the percentage of participants from the southern districts reporting an improvement in their relationship with the other(s) to the point where they now enter each other’s homes from 20% in 2005 to 70% by 2008.

• Indicator: 50% of men, women, and children from each side increase their mobility within the areas controlled by the other side by at least one square kilometer per year.

Objective: increase inter-community collaboration on public policy issues that address common interests.

• Indicator: Expand from twice/year to six times/ year the number of public policy de- bates or forums where all three com- munities contribute interest-based solutions on natural resource management disputes by the end of 2009.

• % decrease in the number of teenagers (ages 12-15 within the village) who associate negative images with descriptions of the “other”

Sample Indicators• Reduced incidence of violent conflict

reported, measured by Media Content Analysis

• Reduced conflict and tension, measured through action evaluation, storytelling, and conflict mapping

• Perceptions of the people about the accomplishments of the project

• Percentage of people who can name at least three people from the other side who they consider sensible and responsible at the end of 10 months

• Percentage of respondents who perceive positive changes in relationships at the end of year one of the project

• Generally speaking, would you say that most people can be trusted, or that you can’t be too careful in dealing with people?

• Are there any services where you or members of your household are occasionally denied service or have only limited opportunity to use?

• Number of respected leaders who maintain at least three new relationships with people from the other side during the first six months of the project

• Increase in capacity to communicate with the other parties, assessed quarterly: Do people have the skills, knowledge, resources, and motivation needed to communicate?

Monitoring vs. Evaluation

Conflict Analysis/Theory of Change

Models for Program Design:

• OECD• CLP• SFCG• Outcome mapping• CRS & Kroc – Reflective Peacebuilding• www.theoryofchange.org

Questions for thought• Can we articulate a more specific goal that is still shared with DP?• Would achieving our strategic objectives logically contribute to achieving

peace?– What do we conceive in the phrase ‘livelihoods to thrive’ that would contribute

to peace? – Can we articulate how our strategic objectives target drivers of conflict?

• Would achieving the intermediate objectives signify we have achieved strategic objectives?

• We wish to emphasize the processes that we support. How can we do this with the indicator system? Do we simply designate our activities as output indicators?

• Our intermediate objectives will be fulfilled if we complete our activities. Are they better called output indicators?

• Should we include outcome indicators? What should they be? Or, do we only need to establish the theoretical link between our activities and our strategic objectives?

• How will we collect information? Should we plan to run a baseline study of the current status of any indicators?