Evaluating as joint effort with partners and stakeholders

Frogleaps Strategic change approach uses the power of understanding the problem and designing the solutions as a joint effort with the people involved.

Why?

Because this way stakeholders & partners share responsibility for both the problem and the solutions.

It is only a natural next step to design and execute the evaluation as a joint effort as well. This process builds commitment for taking corrective actions.

Together you can:

• Identify the main questions
• Design the Evaluation: select measurement methods
• Collect data and info
• Analyze results
• Identify strong and weak points of your project
• Identify how to improve
• Design follow up steps

Advantages

Participatory evaluation has advantages:

• Focus on relevant questions for the people involved
• Create ownership of the results by the people who need to use them
• Empower your stakeholders, build capacity and learn how to improve
• Develop and build your project team

Challenges

Participatory evaluation does not have to be difficult. But there are challenges:

• Evaluating as a joint effort requires willingness, time and resources of your partners. Check these factors in an early stage and look for solutions.
• Applying methods for data collection and data analyzes requires skills: interviewing, facilitating focus groups, designing questionnaires, observing, understanding. Check if you and your partners have these skills. If not, develop your teams’ capacities or organize support.
• Joint Evaluating requires planning for conflict resolution before you set off: Who will make the decisions? How will we solve conflicts? This is important because when your team disagrees on methods, results or necessary corrective actions, conflicts can arise. That’s no problem if you are prepared.