The Paradigm Shift: Equitable and Participatory Approaches to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
The Evidence and Learning Community of Practice will host “The Paradigm Shift: Equitable and Participatory Approaches to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning“ online on 19 November.
There’s growing interest among funders in trust-based and equitable approaches – removing barriers to make funding more accessible, shifting power dynamics and putting grantees in the driving seat. But there’s still a lot of debate about what these ideals really mean in practice, in particular when it comes to Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL).
How to streamline grantee reporting and collect meaningful data while minimising the burden on grantees regarding our learning needs and request? How to use qualitative information and storytelling as rigorous methods with partners? What can we learn from our grantees’ own existing systems and methods, and how to support them through co-creation? How to centre an anti-racist lens in MEL and what does it mean in practice? How can evaluation systems incorporate and value diverse forms of knowledge, particularly from minority and non-Western groups?
These and other questions that funders grapple with will be at the core of the session. Following input on the different aspects of grantee-centred equitable MEL, the meeting will provide space to discuss where we stand as a sector and to identify the main challenges to explore for the Evidence & Learning Community of Practice.
The community has until now been an informal group of foundations, gathering professionals interested in discussing new paradigms and practices on various aspects of MEL. As of 2025/2026, the community is entering a more structured phase, with the aim of building a stronger group of foundations with a long-term commitment to exchange practices and advance the field towards more effective and streamlined approaches.
The two thematic clusters for the upcoming period are, firstly, understanding how to adapt MEL approaches to capture complexities of systems change, and secondly, developing more equitable and participatory approaches to redress power imbalances in funder-grantee MEL relationships.
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