As a post-genocide country, Rwanda has worked through the government, private sector, civil society, and international NGOs, to introduce various peacebuilding related initiatives aiming to reconstruct and maintain the social fabric (security, peace, trust, tolerance and social cohesion).
In spite of an alarming situation after the Genocide against the Tutsi in 1994, the last 24 years is evidence of tremendous achievement in normalizing and reestablishing good relationships within the Rwandan population. Many actors in peacebuilding, healing, and reconciliation, have registered an important contribution in restoration of social cohesion among Rwandans, yet, it is difficult to claim ownership of this credit because one of the long-standing challenges to successful peacebuilding initiatives, has been the difficulty of measuring results and generating evidence to identify what types of interventions worked and those which didn’t work.
In many contexts, peacebuilding interventions seek transformation that is more abstract than concrete, and it may take a long time to show clear peace-relevant results. These challenges highlight the need for robust and regular monitoring, evaluation and learning. The implementing partner organizations of peacebuilding projects have been clearly requested by donors to regularly track progress and impact of these initiatives as means of identifying where some credit may lie.
In Rwanda, M&E professionals and researchers, who use to measure the progress, changes, and impact of these initiatives, face this complex issue, and some still believe the “impact of peacebuilding projects is unmeasurable”. We are always asking ourselves the following question: “How can we measure trust, tolerance, influence, perception, awareness, gender equality, and conflict transformation?” This question goes with no clear answer. Even those, who have tried to measure these aspects, end up using non-rigorous methods.
Some of us believe that this part of peacebuilding work can be measured as we measure the number of kilometers of roads constructed, while others are skeptical about this measuring practice. This debate is endless about the appropriate approach to monitor and evaluate the impact of peace-related initiatives. Because of this, we brandish some peace building interventions as unmeasurable, and the full impact of peace actors in communities can be minimized.
Even if the M&E field is somewhat of a new concept in Rwanda, some International and local NGOs as well as the Government have shown an interest in the field. Some peace actors who receive funding from International development organizations are required to use the Logical Framework (LFA), as an approach of monitoring and evaluation of these projects. This tool is being utilized to conceptualize the design, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of these initiatives.
As elsewhere, the majority of M&E professionals in Rwanda viewed the Logical framework as the corner stone of M&E project design — This is true because the LFA has been adopted and used by many development organizations since its development in the 1990s and even today, M&E practitioners, are heavily relying on it.
We use it as the foundation of impact evaluation, and with this tool, we believe that impact can be attributed to a particular project or program. However, such ‘impact’ is in most cases a product of a confluence of events for which no single actor can realistically claim full credit.
In addition to this, the peacebuilding projects are, in most cases, implemented in volatile and quickly changing contexts, however, many organizations routinely continue to struggle with measuring results far beyond their boundary partners based on “IF and Then formula” of the Logical framework approach.
In response to the posed question of measurement of peacebuilding work and looking into the dynamics, complexity and non-linearity of situations in peacebuilding related initiatives, some international NGOs who recognize that social change is very complex and very dynamic, have adopted the use of ‘Outcome Mapping ‘ as a new tactic to planning, monitoring, and evaluating peacebuilding activities.
Using this tool, peacebuilders put “significant emphasis along the journey rather than on destination”. This tool was adopted to complement the traditional Logical framework to better monitor and evaluate peace building projects. With Outcome Mapping, which uses progress markers to regularly track the achievement of “Outcomes” as its black box, the impact is owned collectively; not the result of a causal chain beginning with ‘inputs’ and controlled by donors. The results are obtained from interactions between different actors, forces and trends rather than a single actor who wish they own.
The supporters of this new and evolving project design, monitoring and evaluation tool, argue that Outcome Mapping is well-suited to areas involving complex change processes, like peacebuilding related projects and organizations which use participatory action research. The Outcome Mapping approach enables users to track milestones that indicate a path of change rather than struggling in measuring the project’s impact as an end result of peace related initiatives.
Even if Outcome Mapping is a new concept, the users of this approach showcased its extreme advantages vis-à-vis the standard LFA. Because each approach has its own strengths and weaknesses, Outcome Mapping was adopted to supplement the Logical Framework. However, debates about whether one approach is better than the other have not proved to be fruitful, and this continues to dominate the minds of researchers and M&E professionals.
Four years experience of using the Logical Framework approach and two years experience of practicing a combination model of the Logical Framework and Outcome Mapping in a peacebuilding and participatory governance programme, has given me an insight into the practice of this mixed-M&E system – which has allowed me to see project beneficiaries as project boundary partners, and engage them as part of the project monitoring and evaluation process. I have been able to receive invaluable feedback from them through regular and cyclical reflections. It helped me to know exactly where the project has a direct control, direct influence, and indirect influence, through the paths of change.
Outcome mapping is a methodology for planning and assessing development programming that is oriented towards change and social transformation. It is based on learning from experiences around coping with change throughout a journey up to the destination, rather than assuming the logic of direct causality and attribution. Regardless of its complexity, in similar contexts, I can advise M&E professionals to use both the sides of coin – Logical Framework and Outcome mapping – to effectively design, monitor and evaluate peace building related initiatives.
It is better to use Outcome Mapping to complement the traditional Logical Framework approach instead of suppressing it. Using this approach can reduce the struggle of measuring impact because the change is documented throughout the journey and you end up knowing what your contribution to the social change is, rather than claiming to be the impact maker.