Can digital approaches to monitoring, evaluation, research and learning support participation?

by Linda Raftree 

Back in the 2010s, the world was buzzing about the potential for digital tools to revolutionize and democratize most everything – SMS for community feedback loops, mobile phones for citizen journalism, open data to improve transparency and accountability, social media platforms for people to make themselves heard without needing to be part of the elite, and networks so that social movements could organize in resilient ways at very low cost.

A decade later, there have been enormous shifts and changes that have benefited participation. However as often happens, these spaces have also been appropriated and taken advantage of by those who are seeking to maintain their status and power.

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PARTICIPATORY MONITORING AND EVALUATION OF SUSTAINABLE LAND MANAGEMENT PRACTICES TO ENCOURAGE SOCIAL LEARNING AND LARGE-SCALE ADOPTION

by Raquel Luján Soto

Participatory Action Research (PAR) emerged in the 1970s as an alternative to the technocratic methods of top-down research, which continue to be widely used to this day in the field of agricultural sciences.

These technocratic methods have not proved capable of involving farming communities in sustainable land management and are often abandoned at the end of the research process.

On the one hand, PAR arises from the need to recover the local knowledge of grassroots farming communities and recognise the value of the diversity of the agricultural practices and natural resource management methods they use in food production, biodiversity conservation and in creating a multifunctional landscape, as well as the ways they have maintained agroecosystems sustainably over centuries.

On the other hand, it also emerges from the necessity that researchers and local communities jointly identify customised solutions capable of addressing their needs and objectives in order to ensure they are more positively received and more widely adopted in the long term.

The PAR approach involves the development of horizontal relations between farmers and researchers based on the premise that research should be carried out through a ‘dialogue of knowledge’ and with recognition and respect for the rural communities, their knowledge and the ways they manage their relationship with nature. This idea will be further explored in this post.

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NEW TRAINING SET: “SOWING AND HARVESTING HANDBOOK” IN WHITEBOARD-ANIMATION FORMAT

It is with great joy that we share the news of the launch of a new resource in our community of practice and learning EvalParticipativa, aimed at accompanying and illustrating the Sowing and Harvesting, participatory evaluation handbook .

This is a set of five short videos, one for each core chapter of the manual, done in Whiteboard-animation format.

The Whiteboard-animation format (or whiteboard animation) has gained popularity as a form of communication and distance training. The logic of this tool is to tell an illustrated story, simulating that it unfolds and develops on a blackboard. The animations are accompanied by a scripted narration with the purpose of explaining, in an entertaining and simple way, concepts that, explained in another way, would not be easy to grasp in a few minutes.

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A methodology that fosters a participatory approach

Lessons from using a Theory of Change in a Participatory Evaluation

by Viola Cassetti and Joan J. Paredes-Carbonell

Our professional paths crossed in Valencia in 2016, when Viola was finishing her European Master in Public Health (EuroPubHealth) and about to start her PhD at the University of Sheffield (UK) and Joan was working as Deputy Director General of Health Promotion at the Valencia regional health authority.

Our first project was to adapt the NICE guidelines on community involvement to the Spanish context using a collaborative approach. We spent two years co-coordinating a group of more than 80 professionals who actively participated in the project. You can acess the guide (only in Spanish) by cliking on it (Cassetti et al., 2018).

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EXPERIENCE CAPITALISATION: LEARNING BY DOING

by Jorge Chavez-Tafur

The term “experience capitalisation” is increasingly used to refer to the process of describing and analysing a project, programme or specific experience in detail, and producing lessons that can be shared and used to improve development interventions.

As in a systematisation process, this approach is believed to help identify specific innovations and practices, and -above all- to understand the reasons behind their successes or failures. One of the major benefits of an experience capitalisation process is that it involves all those who are -or were- part of the experience.

But how do we promote such a process, and what are the steps to be followed? And once we have decided to go ahead, how do we facilitate the participation of different people? These were some of the questions that we asked ourselves at the Technical Centre for Agricultural and Rural Cooperation (CTA) about five years ago, prompting us to initiate a project together with the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). Financial support was provided by the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). From 2016 to the end of 2019, the project responded to the need to develop specific skills for describing and analysing specific experiences, identifying and disseminating lessons and recommendations, and putting these to use. Working in different parts of the world and focusing on analysing the steps that should be taken in processes of this kind, the project sought to encourage the adoption of a capitalisation process at different levels. To this end, we sought to capitalise on the experience we had embarked upon, to learn lessons about the process itself and to validate the approach followed.

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THE ‘CHIVA’, A USEFUL PARTICIPATORY TOOL FOR EVALUATION PROCESSES: LESSONS FROM COLOMBIA

by Carmen Lucía Jaramillo

Creating spaces where -regardless of their levels of education- people feel they can truly participate in planning and evaluation processes, in an informed and active way, has been a principal methodological concern during my work with communities, particularly in rural areas.

Beyond discourses on empowerment, horizontal relationships and recognition of the value of the knowledge and experience of local actors, it is always challenging to combine the demands of methodological rigour (structures, formats and technical language) and the need for fluent communication with protagonists in the transformation of the challenging realities they face in their territories. Generally speaking, structural socio-economic problems and indifference on the part of those in power are standard features in such environments. That is why it is always a challenge to “[…] create a space for debate, that is, a truly respectful space. Not the simple tolerance derived from indifference and scepticism, but a positive appreciation of differences” (Zuleta, 1985).

For this reason, in this continual pursuit of in-depth analysis and debate based on the use of simple language, I often opt for methods rooted in analogies that are familiar to the contexts and daily lives of the people with whom I carry out participatory planning or evaluation. One of the analogies that I have been able to adapt to multiple situations is that of a journey in a chiva, a form of transport used in rural Colombia to carry both passengers and goods. The image of the chiva is also very useful, because each one is a unique representation of what its owners want to say about their region. This is why they are covered in colourful images as a hallmark of pride and identity.

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PARTICIPATION, A KEY FOCUS IN OUTCOME HARVESTING: LESSONS FROM CHILE

by Andrea Peroni Fiscarelli

Homogenous evaluations vs differentiated evaluations

In order to build a solid framework and evidence, state-led evaluations have become more standardised over time, and are thus increasingly gaining in credibility. The problem that remains is the need to recognise that not all public programmes share the same characteristics, and therefore differentiated types of evaluations should be considered.

This is evident in programmes that centre around the delivery of goods with no interaction with the beneficiaries (such as in the case of subsidies, plans and vouchers), and others that seek to provide tools and/or develop competencies and skills aimed at increasing the social inclusion of individuals, especially from vulnerable sectors.

For these types of programmes, traditional evaluation methodologies have proved to be insufficient as they only seek to assess the level of effectiveness or efficiency and do not manage to capture the complex and diverse reality, practice and results that are present. Furthermore, as the programmes deal with human and social behaviours, the complexity of their contexts should also be recognised.

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Evaluating 15 years of Experiencia Sur

by Belén Rodríguez Navas & Juan José Clavaín Nuño

Entreculturas is a Jesuit-sponsored international cooperation NGO that works to promote justice and social transformation. It defends education as a human right and upholds the right to a dignified life for migrants and refugees. It also seeks to construct committed global citizenship, gender equality and the reconciling of humans with nature. It seeks to contribute to the development of the most vulnerable communities, appealing to values such as solidarity and equal rights, and involving all types of stakeholders (citizens, companies, governments etc.) that share the responsibility of tackling these global challenges.

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Games as a participatory tool in evaluation

A reflection from the systematisation of the guinea pig production experience (Peru).

by Ana Tumi Guzmán

In this article, I’m going to share some thoughts concerning a systematisation experience that involved stakeholders with varying degrees of training. I will draw particular attention to the engaging tools used to promote analysis and reflection.

The provinces of Jaén and San Ignacio, in the department of Cajamarca, are renowned in Peru for producing high-quality coffee that is exported to several international markets. Most inhabitants in these areas farm this seasonal crop and their work is particularly intensive during the harvest period between April and September when labour is most demanded. The staggered sale of their harvest is reflected in the income they receive.

Within this context, a development organisation working in the area embarked on a business diversification project to provide producers with additional sustained income as a way of reducing their dependence on coffee production. A participatory consultation process with the coffee growers led to the decision to implement various business types that included the technical production of guinea pigs, to be reared for the local market where there is a high demand that is largely unsatisfied. The guinea pigs, also known as cavy, or cuy/cuyes in Spanish, is a domestic rodent species, the result of a millennia of cross-breeding several species in the Andean region of South America.

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Participatory evaluation testimonies from Costa Rica

Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast is known for its lush green landscapes, beautiful beaches and friendly people. But, unfortunately, it also stands out for its high incidence rates for several kinds of cancer. This prompted the region’s Health Boards (local bodies who monitor the quality of health services) to request an evaluation of cancer care and prevention services, taking advantage of the fact that at the time there was an open tender organised by the Costa Rica Ministry of Planning (MIDEPLAN) and the German cooperation programme, FOCEVAL to support capacity strengthening in evaluation.

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