Monitoring and Evaluation: Civil Society Organisations' Competitive Edge in Effective Poverty Alleviation (Growth AND POVERTY‪)‬

Partnership between public, private and civil society organisations has become an unavoidable reality of service delivery and programme implementation, especially in poverty alleviation and community development. The PPAF being an apex body and an indigenous funding agency truly appreciates and acknowledges the fact that the success of its programme hinges upon delivery of services through effective partnership with Civil Society and Private Sector Organisations with close interaction with communities. What makes the civil society organisations different from the public sector organisations? Fundamentally two things; these are non-governmental and non-profit. However, the real difference is in the way civil society organisations are managed. It includes leadership, commitment, professionalism, systems and practices, thrust of work and most of all result oriented performance. Good performance is attributed to all the above key elements; however, the competitive edge is attained by following a strong value system of responsibility, accountability and transparency. Thus the monitoring and evaluation (M&E) comes into play. The M&E system looks at the organisation's strategic and operational goals as well as its own objectives being pursued and attained on continuous basis. It can be applied in a comprehensive or a concise manner depending on the size of the organisation, its nature and volume of work and priorities in issues. The most important point is the recognition of the true role of Monitoring and Evaluation in development. Developing countries, like Pakistan face peculiar problems in monitoring and evaluation systems because of various levels of expectations between donors, implementers, and the local communities. PPAF, while working through its partner organisations across country with regional and socio-economic diversity and varying community needs emphasises strengthening of monitoring and evaluation systems for accurate poverty targeting and effective delivery of programme. To improve an M & E mechanism which could grasp diversity of its partner organisations and communities, and be efficient as well, the PPAF recognises the need to understand the already M & E systems in place in these organisations, and compare them with other systems reflecting good practices in monitoring and evaluation. It also focuses on strengthening capacity of its partner organisations in this respect. In order to achieve this purpose, PPAF undertook a comprehensive research that analysed prevailing M&E systems and suggested guidelines for improvement. 1. MONITORING AND EVALUATION (M&E)--A COMPETITIVE EDGE