SEA Change: Monitoring and Evaluation for Climate Change Interventions
Pact’s 11-month program for Southeast Asia Community of Practice for Monitoring and Evaluation of Climate Change Interventions (SEA Change) seeks to assist both practitioners and funders in leveraging the power of networking to improve organizational performance and achieve cross-cutting goals in regional responses to climate change. The Rockefeller Foundation-funded program's activities focus on identifying and operationalizing a core set of characteristics that drive high performance in learning networks, with the long-term aim of developing user-friendly tools that foster deeper understanding of how to create and sustain these networks. Research activities directed at these goals are carried out by two coalitions of participants: The first includes researchers and thought leaders whose professional work centers on networks for learning. The second coalition includes representatives of NGOs, CSOs, local municipalities and other groups who actively participate in such networks to develop capacity in core performance areas.
Results
The two research coalitions have helped Pact to identify gaps that exist between network theory and practice. Of the approximately 115 users reviewing the research findings online, over 80% have endorsed Pact’s framework and applied it to their own networks. Over the second half of 2010, the members created the following goals for the community of practice (CoP):
- Fostering partnerships and building member capacity for strengthening discourses and practices on M&E in climate change
- Sharing best practices, lessons learned, guidelines, approaches, methods, tools and innovations to improve M&E practices, particularly in relation to M&E of adaptive responses to climate change
- Influencing policy and practice around the M&E of adaptive responses to climate change interventions
A needs assessment conducted for members of the CoP has highlighted a number of communication strategies that will best contribute to a strengthened learning network focused on climate change, monitoring and evaluation and donor relations. The CoP will benefit from a website under development that can serve as virtual learning space to improve access to relevant information, including through email announcements, webinars, directories of organizations and individuals involved in relevant fields, case studies and calls for proposals on climate change projects.
