Capturing Change in the Lives of Women and Girls: Innovating Monitoring and Evaluation

October 1, 2019

UNDP’s Gender Team convened the first “Innovating Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Workshop” in Beirut, Lebanon in early September 2019 to explore how M&E can be used as a tool to manage complexity, capture experiential knowledge, amplify the voices of stakeholders, hasten feedback loops, and act nimbly in evolving contexts.

The workshop is part of the initiative “Ending Gender-based Violence (GBV) and Achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs),” funded by the Republic of Korea and implemented by UNDP. Through pilots in seven countries – Bhutan, Indonesia, Iraq, Lebanon, Moldova, Peru, and Uganda – the project is testing new approaches that reduce GBV and accelerate progress towards other development goals.

In her opening remarks at the workshop, UNDP Resident Representative Celine Moyroud stated: “I am pleased that Lebanon is one of the pilot countries, this initiative is a continuation of our work in line with the Sustainable Development Agenda where gender equality is a cross-cutting issue.” She also affirmed UNDP Lebanon’s commitment to place gender at the center of our strategic engagement and programmatic and operational strategies.

UNDP Lebanon is integrating GBV prevention into women’s economic empowerment programming, linking SDGs 5 and 8.  Working with Lebanese and Syrian refugee women and men, municipal officials, and community leaders through GBV community-based sessions, the project enhances activism opportunities through the establishment of innovative Gender Equality Cafes.

Against this background, workshop participants engaged in a series of human-centered design-inspired sessions. Putting themselves in the shoes of different stakeholders, they asked themselves: “what does a gender-equitable community that is free of violence look and sound like?” Participants envisioned the future they are working towards and mapped all the different signals that the pilots are moving in or away from that direction, such as  religious and traditional leaders speaking out against GBV and decision-making mechanisms that hear and heed the voices of women and all discriminated-against groups. Participants also explored different ways to scan for these signals with an emphasis on participatory tools, such as Most Significant Change and mobile technologies. Workshop participants are now working with their partners to finalize their M&E strategies.

Initial findings from the pilots will be presented at the Sexual Violence Research Initiative Forum, taking place 21-25 October, 2019, in Cape Town, South Africa.

For more information on this workshop, please contact Leon Chammah: leon.chammah@undp.org.

For more information on the GBV and SDGs project, please contact Diego Antoni: diego.antoni@undp.org.