Monitoring and evaluation in the context of international development includes a consideration of the impact of the work being done, as well as assessing the impact of the evaluation of development projects. In the spring of 2009, Alberto Minujin and Michael Cohen taught a course at the Graduate Program of International Affairs to assess the development impact of public policies and international assistance affecting slums, education, and micro-credit in developing countries. Students looked at the methodologies and content of how development impact is assessed. 4 student works that critically evaluate the monitoring and evaluation methodologies were selected for online publication. Ritu Yadav’s paper examines the evaluation of the “Mejoramiento de la Calidad de la Educación Primaria“ (MECEP) program to improve teaching quality of primary school teachers in Peru through training in new pedagogical methods, improved curricula and learning materials. She demonstrates that the evaluation, conducted on behalf of the funding agency German Financial Cooperation, faced a number of limitations, including lack of controls, independent evaluators, insufficient time to assess long-term impact and participatory analysis by students, teachers and other community members. . Monika Shankar’s paper examines the eThekwini Safer City Project, aimed at addressing crime, violence and insecurity in the peri-urban areas of the city. While lacking in formal supervision, UNHABITAT has undertaken periodic supervision missions over a span of three years to evaluate the project’s effectiveness and guide future adjustments. Shankar identifies several issues assessing in the UNHABITAT’s evaluation of the eThekwini Safer City Project, citing evaluative inadequacies as an issue of evaluative approach, data-gathering issues and process issues. Annie Place’s paper examines the Internal Oversight Service IOS’ evaluation of the Latin America Laboratory for the Evaluation of Educational Quality (LLECE) program. The IOS’ evaluation measures two things: the affect of LLECE on Latin American education systems and UNESCO’s support to LLECE. Place argues that the evaluation of IOS’ work is suggestive of ways the evaluation could have been better implemented to gather more in depth information for a more well-rounded analysis. Astrid Corvin-Brittin paper evaluates the “Tap and Reposition Youth (TRY) Savings and Micro-Credit for Adolescent girls,” project, led by the K-Rep Development Agency (KDA), in partnership with the Population Council. Corvin-Brittin summarizes the intervention, the type of evaluation conducted, its design and methods, and provides a critique of the evaluation.
The meeting was co-organised by Equity for Children in partnership with UNICEF and the Bristol Poverty Institute, at the University of Bristol, UK, who are collaborating on a research program to improve the international measurement of child and family poverty.
