How do the World Bank-funded projects fare? What do we want to achieve through our projects and programs? How do we know we are moving successfully toward our goals of making a difference in the lives of people? What do more schools and better teachers translate to for students, their academic achievements and future prospects? How does the new land law help a poor farmer who struggles daily to make ends meet for his family? – These and other difficult questions were posed for the participants of the Innovative M&E Workshop held in Dushanbe on June 17-19, 2009.

The thee-day workshop was a combination of basic overview of the monitoring and evaluation, their objectives, methods and techniques and intensive brainstorming around real projects’ results frameworks and M&E arrangements. The Workshop was delivered by the World Bank Institute’s Evaluation Group and the Central Asia Operations Team with support from the OPCS Small Grants Program for Results. 

Results that make difference for people ultimately matter

At some point we could be satisfied with attention to outputs – things that projects produce, such as more schools, more teachers, or new laws on land tenure. Today, however, it is no longer enough to declare good intentions. We face increasing demand and pressures for results that make a difference in the lives of people. Monitoring and evaluation can help us achieve our declared goals more effectively by monitoring progress, defining better indicators and their measurements, drawing conclusions and promoting learning, transparency and accountability. Despite these advantages, monitoring and evaluation are often lacking due attention. Having an evaluation as an afterthought when the project has already started means we may end up missing many important opportunities to use M&E to our advantage.

“In recent years the international community, including the World Bank, has been working to strengthen the effectiveness of development assistance. Our aim is to make positive impact for people on the ground - those who need our help most.  With our portfolio’s disbursement ratio of 40% as of end-May, we are definitely delivering results through our projects to the people of Tajikistan. While M&E systems are key to knowing what has been achieved and how we can improve our interventions, they do not always need to be complex or expensive – be creative, use cost-effective methods to collect the data, use proxies and official statistics where appropriate.  I encourage you to take full advantage of this training to tell the story on what difference our interventions make in daily lives of people.”, said Ms. Chiara Bronchi, the World Bank Country Manager for Tajikistan, opening the workshop. 

Using real-life examples

The Workshop targeted four project teams, composed of representatives from the implementing agencies, line ministries and the World Bank, and the staff of the Statistical Committee working on projects that are currently being implemented/prepared in Tajikistan, including the EFA FTI CF-3, Community and Basic Health, Land Registration and Cadastre System, and Public Financial Management Modernisation projects. The theoretical material presented at the workshop was then reviewed and applied in small groups through practical exercises to test the project logical model, monitoring indicators, data collection, evaluation designs and sampling strategies. The workshop developed recommendations to enhance the design of Results Framework for targeted projects, to better focus their indicators on results and improve their M&E systems.

“I find the information this workshop has provided extremely useful, as it really updated my knowledge of the cutting-edge M&E methods and techniques. During the course of this workshop, our project team has identified the section of our Land Registration and Cadastre Project’s monitoring and evaluation plan, which we will modify to better evaluate the progress and improve project results.”, said Saidali Vokhidov, The Chief Monitoring and Evaluation Expert of the Land Registration and Cadastre System Project. 

“Although I know my project very well, I see it differently after this training”, said another participant.