Monitoring and evaluation is a crucial component of all the work that we do at Gender Links for a number of reasons. Firstly the routine, systematic collection of information is important for the purpose of checking our projects' progress against plans but more importantly it is how we use the monitoring data to make judgements about whether a project has achieved its stated outcomes. As an organisation it is important that we are able to show a change in condition or behavior of our beneficiaries as a result of receiving benefits from our project outputs. And ultimately we are trying to measure actual changes in conditions of the basic problems that we have identified and which we are attempting to address.
The M&E unit is responsible for managing the monitoring and evaluation for the institution across all programmes and has gone a long way in developing and streamlining all of its M&E tools and processes which can be found in the GL planning, monitoring and evaluation manual. The unit has also been developing and testing new online M&E forms which relate largely to the GL Profile at the moment and include the GL in the media log, events tracking, queries and testimonial logs as well as publications feedback, protocol village workshop reports, workshop evaluation and workshop participants which feeds into our workshop statistics.
The benefit of having these forms online is manifold, i) by decentralising the function we reduce the data capturing burden at the head office, ii) we also reduce the cost and time of transporting heavy loads of documentation from satellite and field offices in 8 countries, thereby also reducing the chances that these getting lost, and finally we see the benefit and importance of promoting ownership of these processes by all staff.
The new system should be a routine for everyone and will make us more effective in the way that we collect and manage information, resulting in us being able to assess how we work and how we might improve and do things better.
Contact us: Susan on MandE@genderlinks.org.za or progassistant@genderlinks.org.za.
Click here to fill in the Evaluation Form online
Click here to complete a Publications Feedback form
Click here to provide a Testimonial
Click here to download the Monitoring and Evaluation manual.
Click here for the results of 693 responses to an attitude survey administered in 13 (DRC, Botswana, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Swaziland, South Africa, Tanzania, Zambia, Zimbabwe) SADC countries in 2009/10.
Click here to download the Gender Links organisational evaluation October 2010 - March 2011.
