M & E Strategy/System for Gender Based Violence Program

[Nasir Ali]

Respected Members 

Hope you all are safe. 

I need your support to please share with me the M & E system for the Gender Base Violence program with me, it would help me to design M & E system for the new program. 

Thanks in advance.

Regards

Ali

[Sam Barrett]

Ali,

My name is Sam Barrett from the International Institute for Environment and Development.  I have recently done a review of approaches monitoring and evaluating GBV. 

Let me know if you want to discuss.

Sam 

[Pawan Dhall]

Dear Ali

I am a queer activist and social researcher based in Kolkata, India. I have been involved in a number of studies focussed on the nature and impact of gender based violence in the context of trans women and men who have sex with men (MSM). One of these studies was in the nature of an action research focused on intimate partner violence (IPV) in three states of India. This action research was part of a larger SRH, HIV and human rights intervention. Since I worked on these studies in the capacity of a consultant (for the qualitative elements of the studies), I won't be able to share details of the M&E system developed for the action research. But I can share the outcome indicators for the research, which I think can be a good checklist in general for many interventions in the area of GBV. These were anyway based on learning from many GBV studies among cis women.

The following list of outcomes is what we were looking for in the action research. Given that internalization of violence (especially IPV) is highly prevalent among trans women and MSM in India, we were looking at indicators that would cover an entire range of desired outcomes and began with the very issues of awareness and recognition of IPV. The rest of the M&E system relating to output and activity indicators was guided by these outcome indicators:     

1. Increased awareness and recognition of IPV among study participants
2. Increased self-acknowledgment and reporting of IPV by study participants 
3. Improved self-esteem in study participants to deal with IPV and its effects
4. Decreased endorsement of gender inequitable attitudes by study participants
5. Increased attitudes of zero tolerance for IPV among study participants

Again, I can't share the details of the findings, but I can say that an investment of resources in even the most minimal activities to generate a dialogue around IPV can yield positive results. Such dialogue must penetrate community norms that encourage silence and dismissal of IPV but can't suppress a pent up demand for measures to prevent IPV and mitigate its effects.

Regards

Pawan Dhall

[Rituu B Nanda]

Hi Pawan, thanks for bringing up these points. I wanted to learn from you. How will you measure for instance - Increased awareness and recognition of IPV among study participants. Greetings!

[Pawan Dhall]

Hi Rituu, glad to share my thoughts and experience. First of all, of course, we would have to define awareness and recognition - what these mean in the context of the intervention or the action research. Very broadly, awareness would be information that something like IPV exists and recognition would be that it exists in the community I am part of.

Self-acknowledgement would go a step further and could be about the fact that IPV has happened or may happen to me. Reporting could be at different levels - reporting to my community friends, community leaders and / or allies, or beyond to the formal legal systems. In the study I was part of, we wanted to up the bar a bit. Reporting was happening within the community and to allies. But not much at all to formal legal systems, especially to the police. We aimed for an interim reporting - to a helpline set up as part of the study. This generated data on a certain form of reporting.

This brings me to the actual measurement. The action research had a baseline and endline study involving both quantitative and qualitative investigations, as well as process documentation. So we tried to measure issues like awareness and recognition based on the definitions decided on through administered questionnaires. But qualitative measurements were also attempted through records of community meetings.

If there are resources available, we could also think of designing IEC material on IPV and use those to assess awareness, recognition and other parameters.

I hope this helps.

Pawan

[SHYAMA DANDENIYA]

If someone arranges future events on M&East or MEAL let me know pls