“Yikes! You Mean Crises Aren’t One-off?”: How Critical Moments Reflection Helped Us See the Trend-line

Everyone working in the social impact sector takes complexity as a given (or should). But what happens when complexity morphs into full-blown crisis? What are the implications for MEL when, on top of a system’s chronic disease, there is a heart attack to contend with? This blog shares the experience of WomenStrong’s outcome evaluation (October […]

Mentoring in evaluation & communication: A Trojan horse for adaptive management

Context and MEL challenge Designing Evaluation and Communication for Impact (DECI) is funded by the International Development Research Centre (IDRC, Ottawa). Our partners are researchers in the global South committed to bridging research to policy in dynamic topics. Their applied research efforts are complex and evolving, and require a developmental MEL support. Since 2009 DECI […]

Navigating the Public Resources Governance System: A reflection on Strengthening System MEL

Navigating Public Resources Governance Systems:  Public resources and services are necessary for equitable and sustainable development around the world.  However, the governance systems that shape how resources are raised and used are often stuck in a vicious cycle of ineffectiveness and exclusion due to power asymmetries, prevailing ideas and norms, and the complexities of reforms […]

Gauging change in the aggregate across portfolios

How do we use contexts to interpret the world in a different way? How do we make sense of messy, tangled-up systems? How do we understand problems in the development sector and frame challenges that communities – and humanity as a whole – are facing?

Navigating New Horizons

How do we use contexts to interpret the world in a different way? How do we make sense of messy, tangled-up systems? How do we understand problems in the development sector and frame challenges that communities – and humanity as a whole – are facing?

Embracing Complexity

How do we use contexts to interpret the world in a different way? How do we make sense of messy, tangled-up systems? How do we understand problems in the development sector and frame challenges that communities – and humanity as a whole – are facing?