Monitoring for sustainable and effective results

[Suman Chowdhury Mony]

Many Government Organizations (GO), Non Government Organizations (NGO) and international Aid Agencies work in many countries for social and economical development. There are various types of projects and programs implemented for developing the socio-economic conditions of those countries, especially in developing and under developed countries. Since hundreds of years, the development agencies have been working in many countries only for doing various development issues. Thousands of projects-programs already implemented, many are running now and many projects will also run in future.

Many international Aid and Donor organizations give money, equipments, mental and physical labors etc to the GOs and NGOs for doing proposed and assigned development projects. Some of the foreign assistances are donation and others as debt. By getting those assistances, every GO and NGO try to successfully implement those projects.

But what are the outcomes? Maybe there are no sustainable results!!!!!!

There are several types of implementing body including monitoring cells in every NGO, Go and Aid Agency.  Every organ of those organizations works for successfully completes the projects. Years after years, as many as projects have implemented and as much as money spent for those projects, but there are very few real sustainable outcomes which are successful to develop the project related society and objects.

If most of the projects have gained sustainable results then the whole scenario of the world (especially in the related countries) obviously go to positively changed.

But what are the problems?

Maybe there are some problems in the monitoring and supervision processes. Presently, everyone talk about the result based monitoring. But I want to put maximum emphasis into the sustainable result based monitoring and supervision.

If our monitoring and supervising authorities (Aid & Donor Orgs) aim to achieve sustainable result by their projects and appoint their monitoring teams to monitor and observe the projects works and cooperate the implementing authority to touch the project goals and gaining effective and sustainable results then the implementing authority (GO & NGO) really try to work for achieving the best result.  And the whole scenario of the project related countries and peoples will be obviously gone to positively changes. The target people and areas, also the assisting and implementing authority enjoy the best and effective results of those projects.

Learning from the previous experiences and outcomes, every Aid & Donor organization, also the implementing authority (GO & NGO) should rethink about their monitoring process. It is very much essential to rearrange their monitoring and supervision processes and works for achieving the sustainable and effective results.

Isn’t it ??????

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Ashok Agarwal Sustainability of the effect of any intervention needs to be thought right from the project design stage and then the related activities/outputs need to be monitored

[RAJESH KUMAR SOOD]

Yes- if the beneficiaries are empowered to understand the programme, monitor it objectively and qualitatively... it will be a good practice. But often the beneficiaries are not properly represented -- a token representation - even to the extent to endorse the faked success story of the donor/ implementor.

See the fate of social audit of MNREGA... etc...

[RAJESH KUMAR SOOD]

SUSTAINABILITY is a difficult to attain. The reasons are multiple- project have excessive inputs- which cant be sustained after external support is withdrawn. On paper - there is a transition plan- with terms like community ownership - but practically these never work. There is negligible local fund mobilization to support the transition  and volunteers cant be expected to survive on air.

As for monitoring - it focuses on the processes and short term outcomes, hence long term sustainability is not a concern in present M&E. The community mobilisation and behavior change is the real parameter. For example- a targetted intervention for sex workers after 5 years should have changed behavior enough so that the health seeking behavior is improved - all are self motivated to have routine medical checkup and negotiate condom use, STIs eliminated, and the project moves on to new clients. But does this really happen?

[Rituu B. Nanda]

This is Anand's response from India Civil Society group. Thank you Anand!

 

Anand Chaudhuri Interesting question......needs a wider discussion forum than FB. There is currently no standard definition of "sustainability"....does it pertain to project outcome?, does it mean scale up as in " mass (critical mass of best practices during project life) x velocity (speed with which these project outputs and best practices were made operational)=momentum (replication and scale up, regionally or nationally)?" Many related questions arise and the two are just examples on which discussion forums may try to grapple with the key elements of Monotoring (and Managing ) results.

[Rituu B. Nanda]

Hi Suman, thanks for your blog. Please elaborate on your experience with sustained based monitoring.

What if the community mointored its progress and reported to the donor? This would not only reflect progress but also generate debate and discussion in the community. In our work with ADB the facilitation team from India reported the progress through self assessment tool.