Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
Hi, I’m Kim Norris, Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) Director for American Institutes for Research (AIR)’s International Development Division. Part of my role is to lead a MEL practice. As part of our initial strategy, our practice team determined to focus on localizing our work. For us this means we seek out ways to increase local partnering and leadership in and around MEL efforts – from business development to MEL direction and execution. This involves local team leadership, capacity strengthening and engagement on local terms.
Our team knows that we are more likely to get what we measure, so we established meaningful localization metrics. We started simply our first year, measuring:
- Number of bids involving staff and consultants from the country or region of interest. This will increase inclusion of diverse perspectives and enhance local ownership of proposals and projects.
- Number of projects with local staff in leadership and active roles: By involving local professionals in project design, data collection, analysis, reporting, and learning roles, we increase decisions informed by local knowledge and insights.
As a trained Measurement Guide in a process described in Progress You Can See, I facilitated the team in identifying these and other measures and actions toward localization of our practice. The process was developed by Shanna Ratnerr, a fellow of Donella Meadows’ Academy for Systems Change, and utilizes a systems-based approach to identifying needs, measures, results and targeted actions based on key leverage points to create desired changes.
Lessons Learned
This wasn’t all we did, but the measures kept us focused, and helped us to identify early, some challenges in achieving objectives that we’re reflecting on this year. For example, we learned about:
- Misaligned systems and processes between local and home offices: Differences in operating procedures and organizational culture can hinder effective collaboration and communication. We worked across technical and operations units to address these misalignments — crucial for seamless coordination and integration between local and headquarters teams.
- Limited exposure of country representatives to complexity-aware MEL activities and processes and of home office staff to how MEL activities resonate in local contexts: Developing a robust understanding of complexity-aware MEL approaches and local contexts is essential for effective program implementation for much of the work we do in fragile and highly dynamic contexts. We are emphasizing local staff and peer-to-peer professional development to learn about and using fit-for-purpose and context-aligned methods and approaches from our own and others’ experiences, through periodic meetings involving home office and country/regional staff to bridge this knowledge gap. We are also funding opportunities for in-person team-building and professional development involving headquarters and local staff.
Applying a developmental approach to our efforts, we are adding, adjusting, and eliminating measures as we progress to ensure we focus our efforts toward overcoming existing and newly identified challenges. By measuring progress, addressing challenges, and reaping the benefits of localized MEL, we expect our MEL activities will provide rigorous evidence while also being more uniquely tailored to the needs and contexts of the clients and communities they serve.
Rad Resources
USAID, Measuring Progress on Localization: Introduces how USAID will use and adapt methods and metrics to evaluate outcomes and impact in localizing efforts. The page also includes the 2023 progress report on localization.
The Pacific Islands Association of Non-Government Organisations (PIANGO), the major regional NGO with membership in 23 countries and territories of the Pacific Islands, developed Measuring Localisation: Framework and Tools. The document describes their approach, framework and tools for measuring activities, sources of evidence, and impacts of localized humanitarian efforts (2019).
Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to submit an aea365 Tip? Please send a note of interest to aea365@eval.org . aea365 is sponsored by the American Evaluation Association and provides a Tip-a-Day by and for evaluators. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.