Planning and M&E

Welcome to Module 8 Project Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation.

Much of the work of youth development professionals is organised around specific projects. They may be small projects designed by yourself and relevant stakeholders to solve very specific problems that you and they face. Alternatively, they may be part of much larger projects run by major funding bodies.

Either way, project design and development is often expected to use certain techniques to ensure project quality. The aim of this module is to introduce you to the practices that have built up around the design and management of projects in the last few decades.

What is presented here will give you a general overview of project work. It has been written to help you develop the knowledge and skills necessary to plan, design, implement, monitor and evaluate projects in your youth in development programme. The processes described include:

• deciding whether a project could address a particular issue or set of circumstances (Unit 1)
• the identification and analysis the project’s context, including the needs of a target group of people – the stakeholders who will benefit from the project and who will be affected by the project (Unit 2)
• the drafting of a project design based upon situational analysis, problem identification and diagnosis. It includes the setting of objectives; a timetable for achieving those objectives; and the development of a logical framework for managing the project (Unit 3)
• the writing of project documents, including proposals for accessing funding (Unit 4)
• the organisation and implementation of project staff activities based on your documented project plans (Unit 5)
• the monitoring and evaluating of projects in relation to your plans for project implementation; and following up the project using feedback and evaluation findings to ensure the sustainability of the project (Unit 6).

The module has been designed to include practical examples. You are expected to use the examples given in this module and apply them to your own context. There are activities throughout the module that are designed to help you with this.

Because students doing this course will be from many parts of the Commonwealth and from a wide variety of societies and situations, the examples chosen may not be familiar to you. But bear in mind that the examples are only used to show underlying principles. You will need to make adjustments to be able to transfer these principles to your own situation.