Program Design
Nils Riemenschneider (he/him/his)
Lead M&E Systems Unit
Oxford Policy Management
Oxford, United Kingdom
Paul Jasper, PhD (he/him/his)
Senior Consultant - Research & Evaluation
Oxford Policy Management, United Kingdom
Location: Grand Ballroom 9
Abstract Information: Sub-title: Weaving Motivations into a Narrative for Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Processes: Experiences from Multi-Year Development Programmes Context Motivation has been recognized as a crucial factor in achieving success in Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) processes. In this paper, we present our approach to incorporating the motivations of intervention designers and implementers into a narrative that underpins the Theory of Change. This helps to create a powerful story for the programme. Our experience over the past 5 years of working on multi-year development programmes has shown that linking individual motivations to the overall objective of a programmes builds alignment and consensus within the team. It strengthens the desire to work towards success, and improves the interest in monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL). Objective The aim is to share our experiences from several multi-year programmes that are now well on track of achieving policy impact and learn from the experience and ideas of the audience.
Relevance Statement: We have used this approach that joins motivations into a narrative and story in multi-year development programmes. For example, we used the approach as part of a 5-year technical assistance programme to support the Government of Ethiopia to improve its response to climate and humanitarian shocks. It started in 2019. In a participatory workshop we asked the designers and implementers of the programme what success is to them in the programme, which challenges they see and which pathways to address them. On this basis we jointly developed a narrative (or story) that underpinned the theory of change for the programme. It now serves as thr basis for reporting, information provision, learning and evaluations, such as value for money assessments. Te programme is now well on track to have an impact on policy, especially with respect to the interconnecting areas of disaster risk management.