Community of Practice in Participatory and Systemic M&E

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The Community of Practice brought together six third sector organisations funded by Imaginable Futures to develop their monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) practices. I was part of the project team from 2023 to 2026, directly supporting the six organisations in implementing participatory MEL methods, as well as hosting the group's collective learning process.

The project began in 2022 and took on different formats along the way. Initially, the initiative was named Brazil's Education Systems Sensing Table. In its first phase, in the second half of 2022, a series of meetings was held to form the group and align key concepts related to systemic changes and participatory evaluation. In its second phase, under the name Community of Practice in Participatory Approaches to M&E, throughout 2023, the member organisations conducted an Outcome Harvesting process with a common overarching question, focusing on a specific programme about which they wanted to better understand the results. In addition to the individual reports from each organisation, this process gave rise to a collective case study publicado no site The Causal Pathways Initiative.

In its third phase, which began in June 2024, the team supported the six member organisations in strengthening their internal MEL processes and/or applying participatory evaluation methodologies in specific programmes with the aim of supporting learning about how the organisations influence the systems in which they operate, as well as informing their strategies. The methodologies chosen included Most Significant Change, Ripple Effects Mapping, Photovoice, and the structuring of institutional Theories of Change. The journey included training sessions, notably sessions on systemic thinking offered by Jewlya Lynn in January 2025 and the course on participatory approaches to Monitoring and Evaluation offered by Marina Apgar and Ángela Baez Silva in February 2025.

In addition to strengthening the organisations in their internal MEL processes, this phase aimed to structure, together with the group, a working front to influence the MEL field in Brazil. This intention unfolded in the group's participation in the 11th Seminar of the Brazilian Monitoring and Evaluation Network (RBMA) in Belém, in June 2024, with the presentation of a panel, and in a working group to plan the continuity of these advocacy and participation actions. This working group is now called the Participatory and Systemic Evaluation Community (COMAPAS) and continues to be active beyond the context of this project.