Evaluating Your Practice

Evaluation has to be an integrated part of community development. Without evaluation (and periodic monitoring) it is impossible to know how well the project/group/campaign is proceeding, or to take stock of what works and what is being learned. In this chapter we discuss a basic evaluation and monitoring framework: Monitoring and evaluation are an essential part of community development A useful approach to creating a framework for monitoring and evaluation is through using a logical framework A community development-focused logical framework should make reference to (appropriate) community development principles and these should be built into the framework Producing and managing a logical framework, and the final evaluation that is derived from it, should be a participative activity Local people can, and should, undertake their own evaluations. The community development worker's role is to facilitate this process and access expert support when necessary Logical frameworks need to be applied flexibly and should be changed as circumstances change All community development activity should have evaluation and monitoring as an inherent component.