Critical Reflection about Knowledge Management in a Participatory Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation Course

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 highlights the difference and principles which distinguish conventional M&E from participatory M&E. For Göergens 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 strengthening primary stakeholder involvement when applied to village participation in rural development. 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.