Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation (What, Why and How?) on Programming for Adolescents and Youth in the Arab States/MENA Region

This presentation from the Programming for Adolescents and Youth in the Arab States/Middle East and North Africa (MENA) Region conference in Istanbul, Turkey (December 3-7 2012) looks at the importance of the participation of children and youth in the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of child/youth programming.

Introduction
According to Awny Amer, over the past ten to fifteen years, child and youth rights agencies have done much to promote children's and youth participation. At the same time, child and youth participation in society and programmes has remained patchy at best. Participation is a fundamental human right, which affirms child and youth as rights holders entitled to demand their own rights. It is worth saying that the importance of adolescents and youth participation increased significantly after the latest Arab Spring movements in some of the MENA region countries towards better life with full freedom, social justice, and democracy. Nearly one in five people living in the Middle East & North Africa (MENA) region is between the age of 15-24 - the age group defined as "youth". The current number of youth in the region is unprecedented: nearly 95 million in 2005.

As a consequence, child and youth participation has to be a fundamental part of any strategy, policy, or programme to achieve the other child/youth pillars such as the development, survival, and protection of children and youth. According to Awny Amer, such participation should be extended to ensure the youth's involvement in all the programme cycles including research and evaluation processes and activities. Since the early 1990s, the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) has been at the forefront among child/youth rights agencies and even within the UN system of promoting children's and youth voices in opinion polls, at conferences, as young journalists, or through the voices of youth websites.

Why youth participation is important?
There are different interpretations of the aims of participation. One of the most commonly made distinctions is participation as a means and as an end:

Participation as a means - used to achieve effective project implementation. For example a youth participation project might be set up to involve young people in designing the local youth centre because they are more likely to know what the target population would find attractive, and hence ensure a popular and successful youth centre.

Participation as an end - sees involving young people in decision making as a goal in itself, regardless of whether it actually results in better decisions in all the project/programme cycles including the monitoring and evaluation processes and activities.

Participatory M&E: WHAT?
Participatory M&E involves sharing the responsibilities for evaluation planning, implementing, and reporting by involving stakeholders in defining the evaluation questions, collecting and analysing data, and drafting and reviewing the report. Paulmer (2005) describes it as "a collective assessment of a programme by stakeholders and beneficiaries". So, involving young people in the evaluation process is a participatory process where the young people/youth will have the opportunity to engage in the evaluation processes as key players not as objects.

The key objective in promoting participation for young people/youth programming is to: empower young people to advocate more effectively for the realisation of their rights; ensure greater accountability and transparency; and provide demonstration models of good practices in young people's participation in M&E processes, especially for the adolescents’ and youth programmes. So, participatory M&E seeks out meaningful collaboration between citizens and government, thereby improving public involvement in community decision-making especially during the evaluation process as well as enhance local governance structures by combining the creativity, skills, and resources of many different individuals and groups more effectively toward solving a problem, tackling an issue, or handling any crisis.

Key fruits of applying the participatory M&E in youth programming
The following are the key fruits that will result from the application of the participatory M&E in all development programmes, especially adolescents’ and youth programmes:

• Promote downward accountability and transparency among all the key stakeholders.
• Ensure balanced power relations of all the key players in the entire programme cycle phases.
• Mutual and collective learning for further corrective actions and policy change.
• Equity and non-discrimination without exclusion of any targeted groups.
• Ownership as the participant youth must be informed of the results of the research.
• Effective and meaningful participation including the authentic participation.
• Maximize the utilisation of the R&E findings and results.

Participatory M&E and other approaches in youth programming
The participatory evaluation approach usually increases the credibility of the evaluation results. This is because it moves from the focus on things to the focus on people and from top-down to participatory, and from considering the people as beneficiaries to considering them as rights holders. Also, it moves from donor-ship to ownership and considers the youth as agents for social change instead of as objects in the evaluation processes.

Key ingredients of influential participatory M&E

• Usefulness of findings and expectations
• Evidence-based lessons
• Reflection
• Appropriate dissemination
• Applicability of recommendations
• A healthy and enabling environment.

Key players in the participatory M&E: (Who?)
In the community reflection process, community-based organisations (CBOs) and other community leaders will play the main role with the involvement of CBO members. Sometimes participation of other local government representatives, partner non-governmental organisations (NGOs), and government departments become helpful.

Key participatory M&E tools – HOW?
There are many participatory M&E tools that youth can use in different programme cycles starting at the situation analysis and planning phases (e.g. community mapping, problem tree, SWOT [Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats] analysis, daily routine, gender analysis, participatory wealth (well-being) ranking, etc). Also, during the implementation phase, they can use different reflect tools while during the evaluation processes, they can use some tools such as focus group discussions, Most Significant Change, Appreciative Inquiry, community reflection tools, etc.). Such tools will enable the participant youth to capture the outcomes resulting from the implementation of different interventions.

Community reflection and learning: Learning from what did not have the desired effect enables you to adjust your mental model of how the project works and to work with more valid assumptions. So, you'll need to plan for "Learning" through a series of reflective events. Without critical reflection, your M&E data will not help you to manage for impact.

Key successful initiatives of involving young people in the M&E processes and activities:

• Involving young people in the final evaluation of the regional project of UNICEF-MENA Region - Adolescents as agents for social change - The right to participate with in-depth evaluation in 3 countries (Egypt, Occupied Palestinian Territory, and Morocco) on July, 2011.
• Involving children and young people in the implementation of the M&E framework at Plan International Egypt.
• Involving young people with young researchers to conduct the participatory situation analysis of youth related issues in 3 communities - UNICEF Algeria - May, 2012.
• Formation of the Young Advisory Panel (YAP) to be involved in all the youth related issues (including the M&E and research related issues) - 2012.