Workshop on Managing the Monitoring and Evaluation Functions

Program overview: 

 Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of development activities provide senior executives, government officials, development managers, and civil society with better means for learning from past experience, improving service delivery, planning and allocating resources, and evaluating results as part of accountability to key stakeholders. Within the development community there is a strong focus on results – this helps explain the growing interest in M&E.

For whom:

The program is intended for senior public service executives / officers, NGO management, program and project co-ordination staff that are involved in, or have responsibility for, monitoring and evaluation within their organization and particularly across development programs and projects.

Learning objectives:

At the end of the program, participants will be able to:

• Acquire skills to define and explain M&E issues;
• Assist in tracking the significant resources – financial, technical and human resources – that are utilized by ministries, departments, agencies, international aid agencies, NGOs and private sector organizations;
• Manage the M&E functions of their organizations;
• evelop effective M&E process to help assess program impacts; and
• contribute to the achievement of desired development goals and ensure ‘early warning’ and strategies for preventing failures

Course outline:

Day 1: Monitoring and Evaluation Functions:

• Planning evaluations, consulting and project cycles
• The use of logical, strategic and result-orientated frameworks to control and monitor programs and projects
• Objective setting and performance measurement
• Types of Indicators
• Developing & Defining Your Indicators
• Output vs Outcome Indicators
• Gender-sensitive and Gender-specific Indicators
• Indicator Quality Assessment
• Establishing a Baseline and Setting Targets

Day 2: Human capacity for monitoring and evaluation 

• Organizational structure
  • Collection and management of data to inform learning and identify solutions.
  • Data collection skills (interviews, questionnaires etc.) and design of data analysis tools
• The Role of the Evaluator.
  • Performance Management.
  • The increasing role of information communication technology (ICT) and how to utilize it effectively for monitoring and evaluation
  • Working effectively with development partners and stakeholders to identify barriers to success and gain acceptance of recommendations for change

Day 3: Understanding the Monitoring Functions

• Understanding Monitoring
• The power of Measuring Results & Principles of Monitoring Systems
• Collecting Data and Managing Project Records
• Participatory Monitoring and Methods of Data Collection
• Monitoring Mechanisms & Work plans
• Monitoring Tools & Project (Re) Design
• Critical Success Factors of PM&E
• Quality Assurance, Project Monitoring &

Verification Activities

Day 4: Managing the Evaluation Functions

• Planning and Managing an Evaluation Function
• Evaluation Outputs and the Project/Program Cycle
• Evaluation Steps & Performance Logic Chain

Assessment

• Methods of evaluation including environmental

impact assessments

• Advocacy and communications
• Routine programme monitoring
• Cost-benefit and cost-utility analysis methods.
• Developing a costed M&E plan
• Impact Evaluation & Types of Evaluation
• Evaluation Data Collection
• Using Evaluation Outcomes
• Project Audit & Evaluation Report

Day 5: Accountability and Learning

• Performance monitoring of program by implementers

Using M & E tools, like LOGFRAME, MEAL plan…etc.

• Case Studies: MEAL in Practice
• Accountability for affected population, through gender, feedback mechanism and continuous improvement using MEAL plan

Best Practice in M&E and Evaluation Reporting         

• Best practice in M&E reporting
  • Project Audit & Evaluation Report
• Planning and managing M&E units
  • Best Practices.

• Tackling Challenges in Monitoring and Evaluation.

Training Methodology: Lectures, discussions, exercises, case studies, audio-visual aids will be used to reinforce these teaching/learning methods