Cosponsors: Catholic Relief Services, American Red Cross/Red Crescent, United States Agency for International Development, and AEA’s International and Cross Cultural TIG
Description: This webinar is part of a four-part series on monitoring and evaluation. To be successful projects must lean towards an adaptive management style and all staff must have a clear understanding of the project monitoring system and their role in its implementation. Yet few manuals exist on the nitty-gritty task of how to set up a monitoring system. CRS has created an approach to setting up a project monitoring system – SMILER – that includes mechanisms to turn data into useful knowledge that informs project learning and decision making whilst maintaining a focus on achieving results and reporting accomplishments. By emphasizing project monitoring, SMILER seeks to balance the need for project staff to seek and listen with the more formal obligations of evaluation to quantify and prove. The presentation will introduce SMILER and some useful tips of turning M&E rhetoric into practical reality.