Finding the right fit in your monitoring and evaluation position can be a challenging task. Some practitioners may prefer to work in a research or data post, across a range of subject areas, whereas others may be committed to studying the change created by a particular project or with regards …
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Doing basic gender analysis for your project using Gender Analysis Tools
Download the Gender Tools Gender is an important topic in international development / aid. Most donors ask you to explain how your project will address issues related to gender, and it can be difficult to know how to address that part of the proposal unless you’ve done a gender analysis. …
Read More »Collecting data on smartphones and tablets with Device Magic
Your organisation probably uses forms, a whole bunch of them. Forms for leave requests, forms for acquisition requests, forms for inventory stocktake, baseline survey forms, satisfaction surveys, etc. Basically… a whole lot of forms and surveys and the majority of them are likely to be paper-based. A number of these …
Read More »Assessing your strengths and weaknesses with the McKinsey Organizational Capacity Assessment Tool (OCAT)
Run the online OCAT International development programs often try to build the capacity of organisations. In some cases, donors try to help implementing organisations improve how they work. In other cases organisations themselves realise there is room to improve. To help with this process the international consulting firm McKinsey & …
Read More »Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) – does it really work?
Community-Led Total Sanitation (CLTS) is quickly taking the international development / global aid world by storm. According to the Institute of Development Studies it is now being used “in more than 50 countries, of which at least 15 have made CLTS official national policy”. Traditional sanitation programs usually distribute free or subsidised concrete …
Read More »Sending Email Newsletters with MailChimp
Say you want to send out a regular email newsletter or some ad hoc email updates to a bunch of people. It could be emails to people that have made individual donations to your project. It could be an email campaign promoting family planning services in a target country. It …
Read More »Using Tableau Public to visualise data
Download Tableau Public Do you ever wish you could send your donor a cool interactive map showing the results of your project, rather than just a boring report or PowerPoint presentation? Well, now you can. Tableau Public is a free tool that allows anyone to create interactive charts and maps …
Read More »Simple, quick and easy – Tiny Tools for impact assessment
Download Tiny Tools Many international development / aid programs try to directly improve people’s lives through activities such as building boreholes, running agricultural training programs, or setting up youth programs. When evaluating these types of programs it can be difficult to know if community members really believe that their situation …
Read More »Free online courses for international development professionals
It used to be that if you were working in international development and wanted to improve your skills you only had two choices. Either spend a lot of time and money doing a masters degree, or try to teach yourself using whatever old textbooks you could find lying around. These …
Read More »Online-based survey software… 5 pointers to look out for
Surveys are a pretty common activity in international development programs. It is becoming increasingly easy to undertake online-based surveys (as opposed to paper-based), and there are definitely some benefits to be recognised. It used to be that undertaking online-based surveys was a major production, requiring co-opting a web nerd in …
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