MAKING OF FIELD LEARNING REGISTER AND FIELD OBSERVATION SCHEDULE: THE TOOLS FOR PROCESS MONITORING

Abstract

In field of monitoring and evaluation, process monitoring is always essential. Process monitoring is necessary in order to ensure the quality and standards of activities. If the activities are not conducted as per standards, then talking about results will be like finding black cat in a dark room. Results are always based on the implementation and quality outputs and proper use of these outputs by the communities. Let suppose, in a project of food and nutrition security if any organization is distributing goats and M&E department has just counted the number of goats distributed against target. They have not monitored the process of distribution to answer the questions; “if the goats were healthy, if they were weighed and vaccinated at distribution point?” At the end of project evaluation report says that there was no any visible impact on nutrition of beneficiaries with the distribution of goats. The reader of the report will have first the impression that the project impact hypothesis was wrong; “distribution of goats is not helpful in improvement of food and nutrition security of rural communities”. However, there can be the possibility that few of the goats died just after distribution and/or few of the goats were over aged to reproduce further. If these could be the possibilities then question raises: where could be these reviewed? And the answer is, when the goats were distributed. To feel the importance of process monitoring, team of Deutsche Welthungerhilfe based at Sindh, Pakistan decided to develop most effective and qualitative tools for process monitoring. Two tools were developed and implemented through partners working in field. One was Field Learning Register (FLR) which is kept in the offices of partners and being used by everyone to write down their learnings during implementation of activities in field. Other tool was checklist for spot checks of activities which was being used online through Akvo-Flow software. Later, on that check list was replaced with Field Observation Schedule (FOS) now it is being used for process monitoring of different activities at the time of implementation. Field learning registers is helping to decide about implementation of project activities and refine the beneficiary criteria. Field observation schedule is helping to shape up the approach of managing and conducting project activities. Concept of field observation schedule was taken from the idea of observation schedule (Bell, 2010).   

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