Many of us believe, very deeply, that peacebuilding is critical to reduce violence and build sustainable peace, but we still struggle to show evidence of the impact of our work. This lack of evidence is one of the greatest challenges we face as a field and it accounts, in part, for the limited funding available for peacebuilding projects. If we believe that what we do is important and that our work is effective, then we need to prove it, both to our donors and to the people who participate in our programs.
To respond to this challenge, with funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York (CCNY), the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) leads the Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium (PEC) in partnership with CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA), Mercy Corps, and Search for Common Ground (SFCG), – The goal of this consortium is to change the culture of design, monitoring and evaluation by creating better learning for better results in the peacebuilding field as a whole. The initiative has
brought together leading scholars, donors, and practitioners to encourage learning and build a stronger body of evidence for peacebuilding. It has also produced an online compendium of resources to help with this effort.
Good evaluation can only happen if we think about learning and evidence at the start of a program. This document, Guiding Steps for Peacebuilding Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation, details seven steps, outlined below, that are the minimum set of steps every peacebuilding program must adhere to in order to contribute to robust evidence and learning in the peacebuilding field. In the document that follows, each step is explained and the critical elements and their importance are outlined. We also provide an initial list of key resources for each step. The seven steps are the following:
1. Conduct a Conflict Assessment
2. Peacebuilding Program Design
3. Develop a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan
4. Conduct a Baseline Study
5. Monitoring and Adaptive Management
6. Conduct an Endline Study and Final Evaluation
7. Disseminate and Share Results and Key Learnings
The seven steps cover ‘what’ you should do. They do not cover ‘how’ you should do it. The resources listed at the end of each step will begin to provide you with information on the ‘how’. We are also developing a webinar for our members that will provide training and additional resources on each step. These steps will help you build a better program. Not every program will succeed, nor should we expect them to. We work on some of the world’s toughest problems. But, succeed or fail, if you follow these steps, you will be contributing vital knowledge to the field as a whole. And that is a very worthwhile goal.
Guiding Steps for Peacebuilding Design, Monitoring, and Evaluation
Created 04/27/2022
Type: Analysis, How-to, Tools & Templates
Theme: Evaluation & Learning, General, Program Design, Program Monitoring
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