Oxfam’s Humanitarian Informal Feedback project funded by the Humanitarian Innovation Fund (HIF) has recently come to a close. Here Project Manager Emily Tomkys shares the evaluation report and delves deeper into one specific finding: the link between trust and accountability. eceiving feedback from communities that organisations like Oxfam work with is an essential pillar of ensuring our work is responsive …
Geek out with us @ MERL Tech London
MERL Tech – an event exploring the use of technology for monitoring, evaluation research and learning – is coming to London for the first time in February 20-21st 2017. Hosted at the St Brides Foundation by Oxfam and Comic Relief, we are calling for practitioners to submit session ideas and to sign up to attend and become part of our …
Thinking outside the baseline
Dustin Barter takes us through Oxfam’s baseline management for a Durable Peace Programme in Myanmar and lays out how, this time, our approach was so different to the status quo. llocate some funding, get a consultant to collect data and write a report, and there you have it, baseline done. Share it with the donor and if they’re happy, contract …
Wanted! MEL specialist on fragile and conflict affected contexts
Marta Arranz reflects over the role of monitoring and evaluation in fragility and conflict programming and talks about a new exciting role in Oxfam GB. onitoring, evaluation and learning is a vital part of Oxfam’s work in fragile and conflict-affected contexts. We’re looking for a creative, experienced technical specialist to push our thinking and practice on monitoring Evaluation and Learning …
Evaluation for strategic learning and adaptive management in practice
Kimberly Bowman summarises some of the discussion and insight from a session on evaluation for adaptive management at the recent European Evaluation Society conference. ‘Adaptive programming’ (a.k.a. adaptive management, adaptive aid) is a hot topic, explored in a number of insightful reports, blog posts, learning initiatives and even manifestos. Many of us sitting in internal monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) …
Measuring indirect beneficiaries: Attempting to square the circle?
Marta Arranz introduces the challenging topic of measuring indirect beneficiaries as part of Oxfam’s efforts to better measure influencing work. s someone who works on M&E of influencing, I am interested in how programmes and campaigns can estimate who and how many people they actually benefit, particularly those who benefit indirectly, without being directly engaged with project activities. Don’t miss …
The politics of inequality; who is measuring what and why?
Our latest real geek instalment explores different measurements of inequality and how our understanding of the data they produce is crucial to the issue as a whole. here is no one ‘right’ way to measure anything. That’s what measurement is; one way to quantify out of many. There can of course be a wrong way and plenty of statisticians work …
Oxfam’s M&E team on the road
Evaluation conferences present us with a valuable opportunity to share our latest thinking and learn from others. In this post, we share some of our M&E team’s recent and upcoming contributions to meetings of actors from the evaluation and development sectors. t’s that time of year again… Autumn is evaluation conference season, and Oxfam’s M&E teams have been busy at …
Setting up ICTs in emergencies
Hilman Agung, our dedicated ICT Humanitarian Support Personnel (HSP), shares some insights into this new role and his experiences with this new way of working. ne of the biggest challenges to getting started with information communications technology (ICT) is having the capacity and support on the ground, especially in humanitarian settings where time is of the essence and small mistakes …
Rising to the challenge: Measuring an expanding concept of resilience in Oxfam’s impact evaluations
Resilience has become central to the development sector in recent years, but conceptually it is still in a state of flux. In this blog post, we explore some of the new challenges associated with measuring the expanding concept of resilience in Oxfam’s impact evaluations or ‘Effectiveness Reviews’. esilience keeps getting bigger. What started off as an ambitious attempt to meld …