Tag Archives: Participation

The idea of development as a practice which is embedded in a community is an interesting one. There is growing interest in the concept of learning communities, communities which are empowered to chart their own pathways of change. Rather than ‘development practitioners’ ‘treating’ groups of people, and then measuring the …

Stakeholder analysis (also called stakeholder mapping) is an important step in designing a new program. Stakeholders include individuals, community leaders, groups and other organisations who will be impacted by the program, or who could influence the outcome. They can be internal or external. This template can be used to identify the stakeholders for …

The answer to this question is almost certainly ‘yes’. Any organisation that comes into contact with children directly or indirectly should have a child protection policy, including most organisations working in international development / aid, not just organisations that focus on children’s activities. Direct contact with children includes activities where children are …

I work at the bottom of the development food chain, on the ground where people benefit from the money that donors give. Some days I feel sorry for the donors because I see their money being wasted, stolen or misused. On other days I am frustrated by donor policies which make it very difficult to run …

A Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) is an agreement made between two or more partners. An MoU is normally signed when NGOs agree to work with each other, or when an NGO agrees to work with the government. In an MoU, all parties are considered equal, and agree to worth together …

Measuring results is important, but not every result can be counted, tracked and fit neatly into an M&E framework. Some results are intangible – things like “empowerment”, “confidence” or “improved capacity”. Just because these things are difficult to count that doesn’t mean you can’t measure them. You just need to measure …

Update: IDEO and +Acumen are partnering to offer a free online course on Human-Centered Design for Social Innovation Last year I did a free design course from the University of Pennsylvania. The course wasn’t specifically for international development – most of the practical exercises were on designing a new type of ice-cream scoop. …

Note: A progress report is sometimes called a field report or a quarterly / six monthly report. Progress reports are used by a project team to update the donor or head office on the status of the project (for example, at the end of every quarter or 6 month period). There …

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. …

This article was originally posted on How Matters. Reposted here with permission. Many international small grantmakers try to make the application and reporting process practical and accessible to grassroots organisations. This decreases the reporting burden on applicants and grantee-partners. Yet grantmaking staff also recognise that often they do not receive …