Speaker 1: Welcome, guys, to Monitoring and Evaluation Made Simple. I'm your host, Coach Alexander. If you're here for the very first time, please do to subscribe to this channel because on a regular basis, I post content in relation to M&E. I want us to discuss how do you develop an M&E framework. But before I do, as usual, I like to let everybody know, especially those who are here for the very first time, that I've been in this field for 10 years now. I've enjoyed every bit of it. I want you to be part of this journey because it is really a wonderful journey of getting to know what monitoring and evaluation is all about. So in case you don't know about this, we've been running a six-month one-on-one coaching program. It began in January 12th. But it's not too late to really enroll because many have been asking me the same. You can still enroll in this six-month program. It is a good program and you derive all the maximum benefit from it. Also, we have these two free e-books. Please do to download them. They're totally free, no strings attached. And then there is this course, which is running on Udemy, how to set up a monitoring and evaluation system step-by-step guide. So please enroll in this course. It has been very beneficial to a lot of people out there. So the timestamps, as usual, are designed to make your viewing experience memorable. If you don't want to watch this whole video, you can just skip certain parts of this video in order to get the information that you really want at a given point in time. So without wasting any more time, let's get straight into business. So what is a monitoring and evaluation framework? So one thing I want to tell you guys is there's usually this confusion between an M&D plan framework and system. Guys, these are totally different things. The M&D system is the whole thing, okay? It's everything that is related to monitoring and evaluation in an organization. But below that system is the plan and below the plan is the M&D framework. So what the framework does is it just gives you an overall summary of exactly how the system works. But you know, like every system, it has components in it. And it is those components that really define what it is. So you can't say that the M&D framework is the system. No, it isn't. But it just gives you some kind of summary, overview picture of what the system does. So that is a template, the monitoring and evaluation framework example. I like to use this template because it is pretty straightforward, pretty simple. All you have to do is populate whatever is missing there. So you've got the goals, outcomes, outputs. But then above there, you've got the indicator. You've got the definition, the baseline target, data source, frequency, responsible person, and so on and so forth. So now, this framework can differ, okay? It may be different depending on how organizations want to contextualize it. But the critical points to remember is that usually these frameworks always have, like I've always seen this coming up, they usually have the baseline target, data source, frequency, and person responsible. These are usually the parts which define the framework. And I've not seen the definition part usually because what I know is that if you're going to define an indicator, it will be in the indicator reference sheet. So sometimes this may not be necessary to include in the framework. But these parts, I think I've seen them commonly come out. So the question is, how do you actually start to develop it, okay? So the key really is to have the logical framework, okay? So I've given you an example of a logical framework matrix. I got this from a website called smsswm.com, okay? This is where you find, this is your starting point. So with me, I like to make life easier, all right? Because with us, with monitoring and evaluation professionals, they think the key is to know the indicators. That is really the key. You just need to know the indicators. So now let me show you an example of how you can develop this step-by-step, okay? I'll try to be as quick as possible. Guys, so I'm in a Word file right now. And as you can see, the template is pretty much there. And we have an example, but I'll start populating whatever needs to be populated in this framework. So now below, I've deliberately brought in the log frame so that it can be used as a reference, okay? Wow, I didn't see this. Okay, I thought actually it was an actual logical framework of a project, but this is just giving us some kind of guiding point. It's actually a template. Okay, too bad about that. Okay, so that's all right. But because we are experts, we can actually do this ourselves. So now, when you look at indicators, let's say you are running a project called a Poverty Reduction Project, Poverty Reduction Project, okay? So a Poverty Reduction Project, usually what you're trying to do is your aim is to have activities that are going to reduce poverty levels in the rural communities or in a certain location. So let's say that we have a Poverty Reduction Project, and the mechanism to reduce poverty is by empowering farmers to produce more crops and increase income levels. Okay, so you have a project, and your aim is to reduce poverty levels by empowering farmers to produce more crops and increase income. So I'm just, I haven't, I've seen projects like this before, but because I made the mistake of getting the wrong logical framework matrix, I'm just getting this out of my head so that we can understand this example clearly. So definitely, the indicator at this level, at goal level, which is also known as impact level, it's also the impact level, is maybe percentage of farmers living in poverty. So now, below that is perhaps you want to know the indicator, maybe we can say amount of income, amount of income earned by farmers in USD, okay? So this could be one, okay, then we can say, we can give another indicator, maybe because we've given one indicator called amount of income earned by farmers in USD, then, in case you are asking USD, I'm sure you know it's United States dollars, then we also want to know the crop production levels, okay, crop production levels, okay? So this is just an example, I think maybe we can work with this for now so that you just get the point, okay? So now, how do we define? So we need to define, what do we mean by percentage of farmers living in poverty? So this definition could be the number of, actually, it's the proportion, the proportion

Speaker 2: of farmers living on less than two dollars a day, okay?

Speaker 1: So then, the amount of income earned by farmers in USD is obviously the earnings generated by farmers, either male or female, in a given year, okay? That is the definition, then crop production levels is the amount of produce generated in kgs or tons, okay? So have you seen, so I'm sure you're getting the point, right, guys? I hope you're getting the point and I hope you're not getting bored. So now, the next step is now to give a baseline. So if this project started in, let's say, it's a 20, it started in 2015 and it's ending in 2020, then when is the baseline? The baseline is 2015. So what is the 2015 baseline level, okay, baseline percentage? So the baseline percentage, we can just, in case, like, let's say we had done the baseline survey in 2015. So the baseline survey reviewed that out of the sample, 45% of farmers were living in poverty, okay, at baseline level. Then in terms of amount of income, we can say, earned by farmers in a year, we can say that maybe farmers in a year earn, maybe on average, $100 or, okay, maybe let's say $250, okay? So just so that we have an example. Then what is the kg, what is the produce, the amount of produce generated in kgs? We can say these farmers were able to generate 1,000 tons, okay? So what is the target? So the target could be by 2020, I hope you guys are not getting bored. This is very important, it's good you follow this. So the target could be that we should have 25% of farmers at least living in poverty, meaning that we've reduced it by 20%. Then the target should be that farmers should earn $2,500, and meaning that farmers should be able to produce maybe 5,000 tons, okay? So how will this be measured? How are you going to be collecting this data, okay? How are you going to be collecting this data? It's through maybe one-on-one interviews with farmers using a questionnaire, okay? And it could be the same also with this other stage here. So how often will you be doing this, okay? When do farmers actually grow their crops? They do it annually, not so. But if they're doing it quarterly, it's probably with crops that are able to generate income quarterly. So we could also include quarterly there. And because this is generated annually, it means that you'll be measuring this annually, you'll be doing this annually. So who will be responsible for this? You have the M&E officers, okay? And where will it be reported to? It will be reported... The M&E officers will report to who? Their M&E managers, okay? So it could be that they'll report to the project coordinator, as is the case sometimes, or maybe oftentimes because not everyone can have... Not every organization can afford an M&E manager. So you can see how I have populated this whole thing. How long did it take me? It took me just a few minutes. But in actual sense, it doesn't take this short a time, because doing all this, you need to involve stakeholders, and that is what takes longer. So I really hope you enjoyed this presentation, guys. Until we meet again, if you have any questions, you can write to me anytime, I'll be able to answer those questions the best way I can. Until we meet again, I've been your host, Coach Alexander, and see you on the other side. Bye.