4. Guidelines on monitoring and evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are ways to ensure that the objectives of development programmes and projects are realized.
Monitoring2 is a continuous process during project/programme implementation in order to achieve efficient and effective performance and to provide feedback to management for improving operational plans. This enables managers to take timely and effective action to redirect activities.
2 Physical and financial monitoring measures a project's delivery of services and inputs. Beneficiary contact monitoring measures whether the project outputs reach intended target groups and beneficiaries.
Evaluation is a process to determine the relevance, effectiveness and impact of project activities in the light of its objectives. It is usually carried out half-way through the lifetime of a project to improve activities still in progress, or after the end of a project when the full benefits and impacts of a project are expected to have been realized.
Design of an M&E system should be included in project formulation for two important reasons:
- It encourages clearer thinking and a refined statement of objectives, assumptions and activities;
- Project budgets will then include the cost of an M&E system.
As few aquaculture projects have objectives which specifically or directly relate to gender, it is difficult for project implementors to monitor or evaluate gender-specific issues.
However, even if no gender-specific objectives have been set for a project or programme, M&E systems should seek answers to a few key questions in order to establish the effects or impacts of project activities on gender, and to enable reorientation of project activities and future development interventions, wherever negative effects on gender are occurring. Participants and beneficiaries and those not targeted should be included. These questions relate to the degree to which men and women participate and thus contribute to viable activities (effectiveness) and the distribution of project benefits or ill-effects between men and women (balanced development). The questions are formulated as follows:
(1) Who has been involved in decision-making during all stages of the project?
(2) What changes have taken place in the roles, activities and resource allocation among men and women? Which changes can be attributed to development interventions?
(3) a. Who benefits, who loses? How? Why? b. Who gets the fish and who eats it? Why?
(4) Have new conflicts arisen between men and women?
As a M&E should be included in project formulation and involves the collection and analysis of information, the matrices presented in Appendix 1 can also be used for developing a set of M&E indicators. Choosing indicators will depend on the type of project and can often be a difficult task. For gender, qualitative indicators may also have to be found, as effects and impacts may not be quantitatively measurable. In addition, indicators chosen might have to be replaced during the lifetime of the project, on the basis of the experience and availability of refined data.
