After the completion of the Icco-EED-EU supported SISIN Consortium Programme, this is the first time we are using the now established annual Effects Monitoring exercise to glean Outcomes and Results from a bottom-up exercise conducted in all the Cluster Meets, using systems and procedures developed in the previous 2 exercises.
Towards the end of June 2007, our 4th Effects Monitoring exercise got under way. This time we decided to tighten up the data a little bit and insisted that the Cluster Meets provide more Hard Data than Soft Data. There are 8 Main Effects and 36 Sub Effects in the current ADATS/Coolie Sangha LogFrame. We identified 101 "pieces" of Primary Data needed to measure Results.
As a first step, each of the 85 Cluster Review Meets would provide these "pieces of Primary Data" in as authentic a manner as possible. It was not always possible to do so in a single sitting of a Cluster Meet. Very often they had to send for "people who remembered", or even go back to their respective villages to determine, for example, exactly how many young mothers underwent family planning operations after just 1 child
The next step was for them to assess their Results as Very Positive, Slightly Better than last year, No Change, Slightly Worse than last year, or Very Negative.
After that, each Cluster Review Meet pondered on the Factors that contributed to these Results that the Primary Data suggest.
They then provided short Stories that could better explain their Results in a way that the numbers (hard data) could not. For the sake of brevity, these have not been included in this 4th Effects Monitoring Report
It was then our job to put everything together and compile a Super Report which, hopefully, did not miss out on any of the valuable information that the 85 Cluster Review Meets provided.
The final step was to introduce so-called "secondary data" on, for example, Membership details, Sangha Funds, School Enrolment, CCF functioning, Staff Performance, etc. These are actually not "secondary" at all. They are data generated from our computerized database as and when activity processes are implemented. We, the secondary stakeholders, can vouch for it all. But we still call it "secondary data" because it did not directly emanate from the primary stakeholders during the annual Cluster Review Meet sittings of Coolie Sangha functionaries.