Monitoring & Evaluation

To navigate continuous changes in your working environment, you need a good compass, a functional map, and a vigilant crew able to adjust course in due time to reach your objective. We can help you prepare for this journey.

Based on your needs, we can craft full-fledged M&E frameworks or targeted tools and processes for systematic data collection, sense-making, and documentation that support your project management.

We pay special attention to the people who implement your M&E process and the context dynamics in which they work. We want your M&E system to be lean, fit for purpose and a stepping stone for personal and organisational learning.

1. ‍Design of indicator frameworks and integral M&E systems (processes and tools) for lean and goal-oriented project or organizational management.‍
2. Facilitation of strategic reflection processes, theory of change workshops, planning and forecasting meetings, making sense of data, complexity analysis of VUCA environments, mindfulness and meditation at the workplace, …‍
3. Efficiency analyses using Social Return on Investment (SROI) to capture the wider social and environmental benefits of your work and Multi-Criteria Efficiency Analysis (MCEA) to compare the relative effectiveness and efficiency of the interventions that make up your project.‍
4. Innovative data collection using SenseMaker™ to quantify qualitative dimensions of your work and make voices of people heard, either for on-going monitoring or evaluation of your project or to improve project design, tailoring existing Rikolto frameworks such as the Inclusive Business Scan or the Youth in Agriculture Scan, or custom-designing new frameworks for your specific use.‍
5. Linking multiple data sources (e.g. Excel, KoBo Toolbox, Salesforce, GIS, satellite imagery, …) in user-friendly and interactive dashboards to support live on-the-ground monitoring and data-driven decision-making.

1. Sense

Combining complexity analysis with creative and non-verbal group facilitation, we come to a shared understanding of the heart of your challenge in relation to your organisation and work context.

• Listen to your needs and understand the stakes at play.
• Capture the diversity of change dynamics, actors, power relations, and perspectives.
• Descend into the underlying patterns and mental structures that frame your reality.
• Envision a solution that is embedded in the dynamics of your work context.

2. Craft

Set up a lean yet robust monitoring and evaluation framework to keep track of progress at critical junctures of your intervention and to learn about your strategy’s results.

• Visualise assumptions and strategies through pathways of change, mind maps, system diagrams, ...
• Identify indicators that give you a sense of direction without getting lost in endless data collection.
• Strike the balance between capturing numbers and grasping the dynamics behind them.
• Recognise black holes and embrace them through your monitoring practices.

3. Organise

Embed your M&E framework in relevant project management practices with a clear division of roles and responsibilities to match your organisational dynamics.

• Elaborate project management dashboards with information needs and expected outputs.
• Align key rhythms and spaces for project management.
• Clarify the roles and responsibilities of all colleagues with regards to project management and data collection.
• Articulate the triggers that steer your action in unexpected situations.

Relevant for project management: support planning activities, regular monitoring, strategic reflection, and reporting, while satisfying all accountability needs.

Multifunctionality: engage a diverse range of stakeholders and feed multiple layers of sense-making, learning and decision-making.‍

Learning-oriented: enable feedback loops with partners, stakeholders, donors and peers, inspire constructive and critical self-reflection, and document lessons learned for organisational and sector-wide growth.‍

Evidence for impact: collect the impactful data, information and evidence that can inspire scalers and stakeholders to transform their current business models favouring a more sustainable food system.

Recently, we have developed the M&E framework for a multi-country Regional Rice Value Chain Project financed by the Islamic Development Bank and the Arab Bank for Economic Development in Africa. We are currently delivering M&E trainings to the Project Management Units of the project.