- Inside the Guide
- Preface
- What is...
- Why and how to use The Good Enough Guide
- 1. Involve people at every stage
- 2. Profile the people affected by the emergency
- 3. Identify the changes people want to see
- 4. Track changes and make feedback a two-way process
- 5. Use feedback to improve project impact
- 6. Tools
- 7. Other accountability initiatives
- 8. Sources, further information, and abbreviations
- Thank you
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The Good Enough Guide
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The Good Enough Guide
Section 5: Use feedback to improve project impact
Why?
Tracking, feedback, and reporting help field teams learn what is working and what is not working during the project. Mistakes can have serious consequences for people affected by an emergency. Sharing lessons and taking action in the course of the project means good practice can be replicated and not-so-good practice rectified as soon as possible.
When?
Analyse, summarise, and feed the information from tracking and beneficiary feedback into planning meetings as soon as possible. If information from this process is not used, collecting it is a waste of time and resources for staff and beneficiaries.
Take urgent action before scheduled planning meetings if necessary, for example if monitoring discloses any of the following: evidence of poor quality, risk to staff or beneficiaries, or allegations of corruption or sexual abuse. Share success and credit at the end of the project or when handing it over to the community.
How?
Do use the information collected through feedback or when tracking progress against indicators to inform project decisions and changes. Tool 12 and the box on page 27 are evidence of how monitoring and complaints mechanisms can identify gaps and improve project impact and coverage. Think about the frequently asked questions or complaints you have received: can you include the answers in need-to-know lists for field staff (Tool 1) or information sheets for people affected by the emergency?
Consider inviting beneficiaries to a lessons-learned meeting. Keep a written record of discussions that lead to significant project changes and the reasons for making them. Share progress reports with beneficiaries (Tool 13). Don’t forget to say goodbye at the end of the project. Share success, lessons learned, and credit with the community. Mark the end of the project with appropriate formality, courtesy, and celebration (Tool 14).
Suggested tools
Tool 1 How to introduce your agency: a need-to-know checklist
Tool 11 How to hold a lessons-learned meeting
Tool 12 How to set up a complaints and response mechanism
Tool 13 How to give a verbal report
Tool 14 How to say goodbye
Using feedback from children to try to improve impactThe C-SAFE project in Southern Africa involves CARE, Catholic Relief Services, World Vision, and Adventist Development & Relief Agency International (ADRA). Its ‘Listening to Children’ exercise in Zimbabwe was set up to monitor a school feeding programme and understand food insecurity from the children’s perspective. Staff of C-SAFE used individual interviews and focus groups. Five schools from each district in Zimbabwe were selected. Three children from each class were interviewed every month. There were separate focus groups for the oldest girls and boys. In all, 5000 children were interviewed. Findings went beyond quantitative indicators about the children (age, height, weight), important as these are. C-SAFE found that many of the interviewees’ classmates could not pay the small fee charged by schools to cover the cost of preparing the food. In some cases children had been barred from eating the food and in other cases they had been prevented from attending school. While the fees were necessary for some schools, analysis revealed that fees were doing more harm than good. C-SAFE therefore consulted local government officials and head teachers on how to remove the fees or soften the requirements, and at the same time raised extra funds for the neediest schools. Source: Consortium for Southern Africa Food Security Emergency September 2005 |
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