The members of our Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Team were seen in full swing during an M&E Introductory Training session held in Lahore last week. “We want to train these young ambassadors to use the M&E toolkit we have designed for them. This way they can judge the progress of their projects and immediately take action if something goes wrong. We want to create a sense of belonging for Social Action Projects amongst youth and give them an opportunity to grow,” said Shazia Khawar, Team Leader of District Youth Assembly Programme. The British Council’s leading consultant, Mr Atta Soomro from DevCon – an association for rural development – facilitated the M&E training. He began the session in a very unique style – by asking participants to share their proudest and funniest moments in life. The hall echoed with laughter, relaxing the atmosphere and allowing everyone to be themselves. |
Afterwards, we introduced the concepts of Monitoring and Evaluation to the young people and explained to them the importance of this phase of the project. “Monitoring” is the collection of information about project activities as the project progresses. It helps to keep the project work on track and lets the management know when things go wrong. In contrast, “Evaluation” means comparing a project’s planned impact with the real impact it has actually had, and helps the team to note what they have accomplished so far. “Monitoring and Evaluation is a slightly confusing concept, but I am sure that once we start working on the projects, we will learn,” said Saba Malik, a participant.
Having built the foundation concepts, we went a step further to introduce a project’s hierarchy and used the following chart to explain it:
- Goals- Impact
- Purpose- Outcome
- Activities- Output
After lunch, we asked participants to brainstorm on tools that can be used to monitor the Social Action projects and they arrived at the conclusion that the most comprehensive information can be collated through:
- Questionnaires
- Quarterly reports
- Tracking sheets
- Success stories
- Activity report forms
Atta Somroo then showed samples of each of the identified tools and encouraged participants to use them in their daily lives too.
The response to this part of the session was very encouraging, as evidenced by the views of Yaseen Munshi, a 22 year old Research Analyst who recently joined the District Youth Assembly. “I am thrilled to be a part of the discussion revolving around Monitoring and Evaluation,” he said. “I always wanted to learn how to control the projects that we will implement in the near future.”
Most of the participants were only just beginning to understand the importance and impact of Monitoring and Evaluation Analysis. We advised the amateur analysts on the extreme importance of tracking progress, and counselled them to collect quantitative and qualitative data and keep evaluating the project after every three months to ascertain that the projects were on the right track.
“Let’s make our projects a success,” became the motto, and when we asked participants to give their own title to the Introductory Session, the vote was unanimous for “Learning Day!” It has made them take ownership and work sincerely for District Youth Assemblies and the Social Action Projects.
Consultant Atta Soomro had some very positive thoughts to share after the workshop was over. “I am glad that the British Council is empowering youth,” he said. “They have given youngsters an opportunity to learn Monitoring and Evaluation which is a complex tool. This shows the British Council’s commitment towards youth development.”
The team members who participated in Monitoring and Evaluation Introductory Session were:
Saba Malik, Soban Ahmed, Aakash bin Younas,Tayyaba Zia, Atif Chohan, Yaseen Munshi, Ihsan Ullah, Rahman Ullah, Tariq Naeem, M. Ahmad Raza Kiani, Raja Asif Qamar, Adnan Ahmed Rafique, Mariam Azeem, Azmat Baloch, Abdul Sattar and Sajjad Larik.
Very soon we will launch training programmes for other DYA Management Teams so that they can also assume their roles with full responsibility and passion!!!
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