There are at least four kinds of reports that an effective monitoring system produces:

This section requires the names of the persons/departments who need the collected information and will use it. It can be a person like Project Manager, M&E Manager, HR Manager etc or even a department like Finance Department, HR Department, Admin Section etc. Every information collected has some application and use. Before collecting information it must be known what the collected data will be used for? Write clearly the purpose so that during collection of data the data colletor has the whole context and knows about the intended use of the information.

Moving on with the capacity building process, we have developed manuals in all of the core identified areas of HR, Finance, Procurement, M&E and IT which will be later on supplemented with a software . Some of you have already participated in the validation process of the HR and Procurement manual and later on in the HR Management Training. It is with great pleasure that we are now ready to impart training on Monitoring & Evaluation manual to institutionalize the M&E standards/best practices in your respective organizations.

During the planning process of the M&E study that you are going to conduct you will need to decide what data and information to collect to support you in measuring and assessing the progress. Also devise way of how you will collect the data using these methods. Data collection methods will depend on the kind of indicators and the key questions that you have identified and other required information.

Indicators are clues, signs or markers that measure one aspect of a program and show how close a program is to its desired path and outcomes. Indicators are realistic and measurable criteria of project progress. They should be defined before the project starts, and allow us to monitor or evaluate whether a project does what it said it would do. In project planning; indicators form the link between theory and practice. An indicator is a tool to help you to know whether your work is making a difference. Indicators usually describe observable changes or events which relate to the project intervention. They provide the evidence that something has happened – whether an output delivered, an immediate effect occurred or a long-term change observed.

An indicator is a variable whose value changes from the baseline level at the time the program began to a new value after the program and its activities have made their impact felt. At that point, the variable, or indicator, is calculated again. An indicator is a measurement. It measures the value of the change in meaningful units that can be compared to past and future units. This is usually expressed as a percentage or a number. Good Indicators must have the following qualities

It serves as a reference document that contains the targets, definition of each indicator (in the context of the project), the methods of data collection and frequency of data collection for each indicator, who will be responsible for collecting the data and how will the collected data be used. Basically it is required by USAID from the grantee. The grantee has to document and report its M&E system in the PMP. Receiving the M&E performance from all the grantees on one specific format helps the USAID to compare/analyze the performance of grantees with each other.

This program is made possible with support from the American people, through the U.S Agency for International Development (USAID).

In today’s fast changing world, knowledge acquired in the past becomes redundant, if not upgraded through continuous learning and training. All institutions, whether in the corporate sector, not for profit sector or public sector need to re-tool their professionals to meet the challenges of timely and cost-effective delivery of services to the citizenry.