Participant-led Visual Monitoring and Evaluation for Resilience and Community Visioning in Southern Madagascar: Report

Catholic Relief Services (CRS) Madagascar implemented a one-year qualitative monitoring and evaluation project (CC-IDEAL) through funding from the IDEAL Small Grants program, examining Community Visioning (CV) and community consultation processes within their Maharo Resilience Food Security Activity (RFSA) project operating in Southern Madagascar. CRS and partners applied CV in the Maharo RFSA to promote people-centered integrated food and nutrition security programming driven by participants’ needs, aspirations, and shared vision. This inclusive, non-extractive, project-duration process generated vast volumes of qualitative data. The main goal of the CC-IDEAL project was to upgrade and leverage the existing CV process within the Maharo RFSA. The objectives of the CC-IDEAL research project were to improve how data are captured, analyzed, and represented to serve as a proof of concept for collaborative monitoring and evaluation in CV implementation. Specifically, this research aimed to achieve the following:

• Create an approach and tools for communities/Maharo participants to produce, visualize, and analyze their own qualitative data so they can prioritize, plan, and evaluate their resilience and food security activities.
• Improve RFSA adaptive management by collecting, disaggregating, and iteratively co-analyzing qualitative data obtained through community discussions of this planning, monitoring, and evaluation process.

This report was made possible by a grant from the Implementer-Led Design, Evidence, Analysis and Learning (IDEAL) Activity. The IDEAL Small Grants Program is made possible by the generous support and contribution of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).