TITLE:
Critical Reflection about Knowledge Management in a Participatory Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation Course
AUTHORS:
Alberto Un Jan, Vilma Contreras
KEYWORDS:
Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation (PPM&E), Managing for Impact (M4I)
JOURNAL NAME:
Voice of the Publisher,
Vol.2 No.1,
March
24,
2016
ABSTRACT: This article reports an initiative to manage knowledge in a Participatory Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation (PPM&E) course given at Wageningen University Research Centre (WURC), from the experience of the authors when they attended the course. The United Nations Population Fund, UNFPA [1], shows the importance of participatory monitoring and evaluation (M&E), and high- lights the difference and principles which distinguish conventional M&E from participatory M&E. For Goergens and Zall [2], vital questions are: “How will we know success when we achieve it?” and “So what?”. M&E helps answer these questions. The Royal Tropical Institute [3] works on streng- thening primary stakeholder involvement when applied to village participation in rural develop- ment. The way WURC [4] looks at PPM&E is as “Managing and Learning for Impact”. WURC focuses on M&E, and relates the application of it to manage for impact. The article shows how knowledge is managed to identify the meaning, contents and application of PPM&E, based on two versions of the PPM&E course given in 2012 and 2013 at WURC. Experiences from applying the knowledge acquired in the 2012 course, after it was ended, are presented by participants who worked on PPM&E projects. The participants confirm a useful application of the PPM&E tools. Participants at the 2012 course report applications of the course to their jobs, and mention the different tools they apply. Next, experiences during the 2013 course are presented. Emphasis is given on the use of PPM&E tools during the course; assistants are reporting initial applications. The results shown explain the benefits of attending the course, for its later application. A survey has been run by the authors to both groups to measure the usefulness of the tools explained during the course. With this annual course, WURC promotes the combination of information with experience, context, interpretation and reflection; the information about experience in PPM&E has a high value for participants and is prepared to be applied in decision making and in back home action plans prepared by the participants. In this sense, WURC contributes to knowledge management. The results shown explain the benefits of attending the course, for its later application. Also, the course explains the benefit of monitoring and evaluation, and highlights the difference and principles which distinguish “conventional monitoring & evaluation” from “participatory monitoring & evaluation”. Knowledge in PPM&E has been managed in multinational, multidisciplinary teams at WURC, and the experience is repeated every year in a three-week course. Participants come from all over the world, provided that they work in PPM&E projects. Knowledge has been discovered from the experiences, examples and applications described by the participants.