Making good things happen

I remember the first time someone asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. Without hesitation, and unlike most classmates who cited more realistic aspirations such as being a doctor, I said I wanted to be the first female president of my home country.

In my young, and dare I say egotistical and naive mind then, my understanding of presidents was that they were the big guys (and gals) who had the power to do a lot of good things that I know now to broadly be the provision of social services for communities. What I did not understand was what it takes to go from “being president” to “making good things happen”.

Spending the past years as a monitoring, evaluation, research and learning consultant has allowed me to appreciate the distance between intention and aspiration on the one hand, and meaningful impact that has sustainable outcomes on the other.

This has been made clear to me through the long-term integrated monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) partnerships that the Evaluation for Development (E4D) practice conducts with our partners. Integrated MEL is a core E4D service line that seeks to identify and address implementation challenges in real time. “Integrated” means we embed ourselves in our partners’ teams and become a critical thought partner during implementation.

One example is our current partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food Initiative , which we have supported as a learning partner since 2021. Our team gathers quarterly monitoring and learning evidence and data from the foundation’s grantees; this is then used to facilitate quarterly learning and reflection sessions with the team. In these calls, we explore what’s working well, what’s not, emerging conclusions and lessons, plus the implications of these findings on intended programme outcomes.

As one who has deeply desired to contribute to positive change, in a space where it’s really hard to quantify the contributions we are making, integrated MEL has provided glimmers of hope. By keeping close contact with activities on the ground, we are able to test assumptions and recommendations in real time, tailor interventions and pivot efforts to ultimately build a better understanding of the complexities that exist between intention and outcomes.

Ultimately, I am finding that as our partners make strategic and programmatic shifts and changes based on emerging evidence and data, I am also better able to see how the work that we do is indeed contributing to “making good things happen” for the communities in which we live and serve.