Process of monitoring and evaluation: a case of an education intervention in two urban informal settlements in a Nairobi, Kenya

• In Event: Assessment of achievement education in Africa

Abstract

For the past two decades, education stakeholders have been working to promote the education of marginalized populations in the developing world. While education stakeholders have made strides in terms of access, retaining students and transiting them to the next level of the schooling system has been a challenge for marginalized communities. Some organizations have developed mechanisms which aim to address the challenges faced by marginalized communities in retaining children and transiting them to the next phase of their schooling. Some of these mechanisms include implementation of programs to shore up the schooling status of children in urban informal settlements, and strong monitoring and evaluation of such programs to understand their effectiveness in promoting educational outcomes. Monitoring & Evaluation plan states how program measures achievements by enhancing accountability, transparency and responsibility and guides implementation by ensuring standardization and coordination and preserves institutional memory.
This paper focuses on the processes of monitoring and evaluation of an education intervention in two urban informal settlements in Nairobi. Monitoring and evaluation forms an integral part of any project that involves collecting key data related to program objectives and operations and analyzes these data to guide implementation of program activities.
The monitoring and evaluation data in this project is derived from monitoring tools used to collect data on attendance and number of after school and mentoring and parental sensitization sessions that girls and parents are exposed to respectively. This data is collected at least every week by the community M&E staff using structured uptake tools and outcome indicator protocol. These tools measure different outcomes, project uptake, tracks the program recruits and other log frame indicators captured in a mini excel data sheet from where tables are generated and an analysis done. Specifically this paper presents data derived from project implementation monitoring and evaluation reports and project implementation progress meetings where challenges, lessons learned and mitigation strategies are shared, collated synthesized and documented.
Preliminary findings of lessons learned in this paper show that the community and community leaders’ knowledge and perception of the local implementer determines the acceptability, level of support and uptake of a project in the informal urban slums where several other community based organizations work, sometimes targeting the same population. In addition, continued and consistent communication is important for better understanding and standardization in implementation processes among partners. Competing interests from other organizations doing implementation in the same areas and targeting the same group of girls, lack of feeding program in the design of the project and delegation of household chores and care of younger siblings to girls all interfere with their attendance of the after school and mentoring support sessions.
Theoretically, this study is heuristic and adds to the literature on monitoring and evaluation and community involvement in improving learning outcomes and transition to secondary education. In regards to comparative and international education, this study provides international perspectives on ways to forge collaborative partnership between researchers, non-governmental organization and local actors

Authors

• Milka Perez Nyariro, African Population and Health Research Center

• Benta A Abuya, African Population and Health Research Center