What is Monitoring and Evaluation?

Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is a tool that has helped many organizations, institution's and individuals measure progress in relation to plans made at inception of a Strategy. This blog is really about helping both the new and experienced M&E practitioner's fully understand what it really takes to implement a fully fledged Monitoring and Evaluation System. While there is no standard way to do this, there is ofcourse Universal principles that are important to realize when undertaking interventions of this nature.



What is Monitoring and Evaluation? M&E consists of two words (1) Monitoring which means continuous tracking in order to ascertain whether progress is being made in implementation of activities and (2) Evaluation which means an assessment to see whether impact or change has been achieved as result of the activities implemented.



When organizations have a strong and robust M&E system, they express to the world their commitment to bring change to the lives of the communities and society as a whole. Its not just about bringing change, but its also about appreciating how this change comes about. You see folks, there is a lot of money that is pumped into the implementation of activities, many governments who spend this kind of money do so by first taxing their citizens in order to raise resources to give the struggling economies. That never comes easy....

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The thing is, there is always need to account for this money spent. Accountability is really about holding people responsible for the money. If positive change is achieved in society, stakeholders are confident that the resources were put into good use. Actually, as a matter of fact, with such successes there is high motivation that if they pumped in more resources, greater change could be achieved at a grander scale.

It is very important for all organizations implementing projects in whichever sector to be able to set up the M&E System whether its in the implementation of construction projects, engineering projects or developmental aid projects.