Participatory Monitoring,
& Evaluation Workshop

Held on 21st-23rd January 2004

The SDC-IC NGO programme – Karnataka-Tamil Nadu is in its consolidation phase. As outlined in its project document, partner NGOs are being supported in different activities incuding capacity building. To enhance the understanding and skills of the partner NGOs in participatory monitoring and evaluation, a three-day workshop was organised by PSMU. The workshop was an out come of the need, expressed during the partners workshop, of enhancing and strengthening the capacities of the partner organisations and helping them develop project specific monitoring and evaluation approaches. Ms. Annette Kolff was invited from IC Berne to facilitate the workshop with the PSMU team. Chief and field functionaries of 12 partner organisations from Tamil Nadu and Karnataka attended the workshop.

The first day involved:

• Introduction of participants and briefing of the objectives of the workshop.
• Explanation of existing monitoring and evaluation systems at the different partners organisations and the level of participation in them through. This was done through charts prepared by the partners for a better understanding.
• A session on "Facts and Fiction of PME" to deepen the participants' understanding of the potentials limitations, methods and tools of PME. In order to make the session more learner-centered, it was organised in the form of a poker game using cards.
• The final session of the first day focused on the preparation for the field visit, which included group formation, clarifying the group task for the field visit.

The second day's programme involved:

• More field exercises.
• The groups visited 4 villages along with facilitators. Based on their observations and discussions, the groups prepared the charts and presented them in the plenary.
• There were intense group discussions, the facilitators drew key points from the presentations and presented them back to the groups for further clarity.
• The final session of the day focused on methods and tools for PME, which helped the participants to enhance their thinking to develop more ideas for combining tools in PME.
• This session involved a group exercise on 4 cases.

The third day covered:

• Some more inputs on PME based on the first days session on facts and fiction on PME. This was organised through focused discussions and clarification of points that arose in the discussions. The session ended with arriving at a simple definition of PME as “keeping track of changes”.
• Action planning by the individual NGO partners indicated the application of skills of the participants gained in the workshop into actual action. It was more a dry run as there was no participation of community representatives. There was a cross exchange of ideas from different partners on the action plans of each other.
• The workshop evaluation was done by the participants in a more participation way using a rating scale for the 5 criteria identified by the participants along with individual feed back.

The expected out put of the workshop was that the the individual partner's will prepare a plan of action for introducing and facilitating PME on some selected topic.

The concluding remarks of the workshop were positive, however the usefulness and effect of this workshop will only be apparent if the partner's successfully adopt the new tools in their work. PSMU will support them in this through monitoring and documention and also through capacitating the partners.