INTRAC reached its 30th anniversary in November 2021. During 2022, we planned to mark this milestone with a number of activities focused on the growing calls to shift power in the international development sector. This project focuses on the second and final phase, on shifting the power through monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL), which ran from May to August, 2022.
A series of blogs contributed by INTRAC staff, friends, and members of our network examined the topic from various perspectives:
- In “Reimagining monitoring, evaluation, and learning through African folklore” (May 2022), Gervin Chanase from the West Africa Civil Society Institute (WACSI) explores how MEL processes can be more attuned to the culture of communities in Africa.
- INTRAC Principal Consultant Rod MacLeod contributed the second blog, “Abuse of power? How M&E systems really operate” (July 2022). In it, Rod explores the power structure of MEL processes, which are rooted in the global North, and how these might be changed.
- The third blog, “To what extent does feminist MEL shift the power?” (July 2022) is a collaboration between independent consultants and members of our network, Elanor Jackson and Kanwal Ahluwalia. In it, the authors describe their conception of a gender transformative MEL approach.
- The fourth blog is titled “How can the shift the power process better reflect the unique insight of young people?” (August 2022). It is a condensed version of discussions between young civil society practitioners Willemijn de Bruin, Timothy Kisuule, Lily Maćków-McGuire, Marina Raoilimanantsoa, and Alastair Spray. A more full version of the discussions is available as a dialogue paper.
As a culmination to this phase of the 30th anniversary celebrations, INTRAC held the second of our two online events. Also titled “shifting the power through monitoring, evaluation, and learning”, the event took place on 20 July 2022 and attracted over 200 participants from around the world. The full video recording is available below.
Additionally, an extensive written event summary is available as a downloadable PDF, and there is a playlist of short video highlights available on our YouTube channel. During the event, four speakers gave brief talks on different aspects of the interaction between MEL and shifting the power:
- Franck A. Sombo (WACSI) on community-led monitoring and evaluation [Video]
- Sophie Kange (DENIVA) on Culturally and contextually appropriate and effective MEL systems [Video]
- Alison McKinley (Comic Relief) on knowledge asymmetries and participation deficits [Video]
- Catriona Dejean (Tearfund) on Tearfund’s localised change framework [Video]
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