I. Collaboration via the Design, Monitoring & Evaluation for Peace Platform
(Lesson #2620)
Observation.
Peacebuilding is characterized by seeking to reduce and transform violence in complex conflict
systems. Given this complexity, it can be challenging to know how to evaluate peacebuilding programs
for their overall impact on peace/stability. To mitigate this challenge, an open-source knowledge
platform was created by several international non-governmental organizations to provide thousands
of practitioners with best practices and lessons learned on Design, Monitoring & Evaluation for Peace.
Discussion.
Peacebuilding evaluation focuses not only on the outputs of a specific program but also on how a
program contributes to greater peace and stability in the region (“peace writ large”). Peacebuilding
projects are often funded by donors who expect to see certain results; organizations must report on
their progress to ensure that they are using resources wisely and not doing harm. Yet, as evident in
this systems map from the Alliance for Peacebuilding, there is often cultural resistance to monitoring
and evaluation (M&E) due to a widely-held bias that “M&E is imposed judgment rather than
opportunity to learn and grow at the project, program, and organizational level,” (SFCG, 2015, p. 16).
To address these challenges, several prominent international non-governmental peacebuilding
organizations came together to form a Peacebuilding Evaluation Consortium (PEC). The PEC is
composed of the Alliance for Peacebuilding, CDA Collaborative Learning Projects, Mercy Corps, and
Search for Common Ground (SFCG), with support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York. The
main goal of the PEC is to encourage shared learning, develop methodological rigor for peacebuilding
evaluation, and promote the use of evidence in policy. In order to fulfill these goals, the PEC convenes
a multitude of stakeholders, including evaluation experts, donors, academic scholars, policymakers,
and local/international practitioners, to exchange ideas and build consensus through international
networks.
One of the main activities of the PEC is the facilitation of a web-based community of practice known
as Design, Monitoring & Evaluation for Peace (DME for Peace), a project of SFCG. This website
(www.dmeforpeace.org) is a hub for evaluators, practitioners, and academics to share best practices
about peacebuilding evaluation. It is set up as an open source website. All visitors can access resources
without officially signing up for site membership; however, membership is required in order to share
a resource. In addition to housing a resource repository of M&E materials, DME for Peace hosts bi-
weekly webinar discussions on various evaluation topics, known as “M&E Thursday Talks.”
The main goal of the PEC through the DME for Peace platform was to improve the culture of
evaluation in the peacebuilding field – making shared learning more accessible, integrated, and
transparent. From 1 March 2013 to 31 March 2015, this platform was funded as part of the PEC grant
from the Carnegie Corporation. To examine the relevance and effectiveness of this platform, a review
of the project took place part way through this grant, evaluating information from Google Analytics
(measuring numbers of documents uploaded, unique visitors to the site, etc.), focus group discussions,
information self-reported in membership profiles, and an online survey sent to DME for Peace
members. (The final report is linked below.)
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