OVERVIEW Monitoring and evaluation of programmes have ceased to be ‘afterthought’ programmes in peace-building work and should be ‘front of mind’ when practitioners are engaging with communities. Monitoring and evaluation are important for several reasons. It is always important to know what has been achieved in terms of what was initially planned in order to assess whether programmes are meeting their intended goals that they were funded for, while, at the same time, learning from what has been done. Such reflection should be systemic from the planning process through to the final assessment. Although many people initially considered peace-building work to be qualitative and therefore difficult to evaluate, in recent years important strides have been made using qualitative, quantitative and mixed research methods such that monitoring and evaluation are now a requirement in programme implementation. OBJECTIVES • To increase awareness of the key concepts in monitoring and evaluation; • To include monitoring and evaluation in the design of programmes; and • To design strategies and tools for monitoring and evaluation in peace-building programmes. METHODOLOGY The following are used during the course of this module: • Mini lectures; • Brainstorming; • Group discussions; and • Plenary sessions. KEY CONCEPTS Causal pathway: This comprises the logic and plan for your programme. It allows you to lay out the programme plan and see how each component logically relates to the previous piece. It is ‘causal’ because it is based on the premise that the activities which your programme carries out should logically cause desirable results to occur; and it is a ‘pathway’ because it is based on the idea that the causal links form a technically and programmatically sound logical progression. Logical-framework approach: A logical framework is a visual representation of the logic of your programme and of how you will measure its impact. Goals: These are the long-term changes that you want to contribute to. Objectives: These can be immediate or intermediate, but ultimately leading to the achievement of set goals. • Immediate: What immediate (short-term) outputs and outcomes do you hope to see with your programme? What can your programme be reasonably held responsible for? • Intermediate: What medium-term changes would contribute to achieving the longterm changes? 126 Community Healing: A training manual for Zimbabwe