What are we talking about?

In the era of inclusive development, participation and genuine partnerships with local stakeholders should be the cornerstone of all interventions, yet no one within the sector could, hand on heart, state that this is the norm. This, more often than not, is not malicious, but is more as a result of competing priorities within organisations and the wider ecosystem, however the result at best creates a significant power imbalance, and at worst is at example of neo-colonialism at its finest.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning as crucial parts of the development process are all often victims of this phenomenon, with a significant lack of “meaningful” engagement with communities built into the systems they create. The evaluation regularly extracts information from the communities it wishes to serve, yet in the rush to fulfil numerous reporting requirements, it rarely returns this information wealth to these communities. Data, and the knowledge that comes from it, is stockpiled out of reach from those who could use it to advocate for themselves, to become more resilient, or to hold the aid sector accountable.

What if local stakeholders had access to the data and the resultant learnings – and the understanding of how to use it? Would they make better decisions about the services that are accessible to them, and use the information to support their own communities more broadly? 

You can find out more about our thinking here.

Who are we?

In early 2019 a small group of MEL practitioners, based in London, came together to discuss challenges, and to share experiences and resources. We have been meeting frequently since. Several of our deliberations have been about the fair use of data that is collected, and more specifically about sharing findings with the communities we work with in a way that they can use them.

We are agreed on communities’ right to evaluation findings, both as an ethical requirement, but also in support of furthering development efforts and supporting practice change. We are keen to bring together people who are interested enough to trial approaches and regularly share and discuss, with the long-term vision of creating usable methodologies.

What next?

The next step is to widen the discussion to bring in a wider variety of people, including funders and communities representatives, as well as MEL professionals from the south. We would like to bring together a Community of Practice who are committed to discussing this issue, learning from and challenging each other and ensuring that we move towards a more democratic and fair distribution of data and knowledge.

This Community of Practice would meet online once a quarter with participants from across the community presenting their thoughts and findings to the group.

If you would like to find out more about this initiative please use the sign up link below to be added to the mailing list. Our next meeting is currently scheduled for 26th October at 12pm BST.