Publikation

Results orientation, the monitoring of outcomes and impacts, has become more or less an obligation for the partner organisations in Africa and elsewhere financed by development systems. On the one hand, we can only be delighted with this shift away from the reasoning predominated by descriptions of activities and enumerations of quantitative data in reporting often devoid of meaning. One would expect all the stakeholders to want to know whether or not their work is useful and contributes to change, also to be able to re-direct their efforts if needs be. On the other hand, it may be considered regrettable that the initiative has come from the funding agencies and not from the local players engaged in social transformation.

However, it turns out to be more difficult than expected to implement monitoring systems which effectively identify the outcomes and changes we are contributing to. For we have to prevent these systems from becoming so unwieldy that they consume a large share of the energy of the people who work in the field. Peace work and working on social change in general is even more complex than projects and programmes that focus on technical issues. “Demystifying impact”, the firrst publication in this “Building Peace” series, is no longer available in French in hard copy, for it found a wide readership in the different African networks. Instead of ordering a reprint, we decided to get together with our colleagues from Eirene and AGEH and share the experiences that local partners, peace workers, consultants and desk officers at the head offices have had of this important and thorny task of result or impact orientation.