Rapid Rural Appraisal

The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is an international financial institution and a specialized United Nations agency dedicated to eradicating poverty and hunger in the rural areas of developing countries. Working with poor rural people, governments, donors, NGOs and many other partners, IFAD focuses on country-specific solutions to empower poor rural women and men to achieve higher incomes and improved food security....

Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of development activities provides government officials, development managers, and civil society with better means for learning from past experience, improving service delivery, planning and allocating resources, and demonstrating results as part of accountability to key stakeholders. Within the development community there is a strong focus on results—this helps explain the growing interest in M&E....

This article critically examines the ongoing debate between PCIA scholars and practitioners by highlighting five key issues which have arisen during the debate: needs of aid agencies, flawed generic peacebuilding frameworks, causality and attribution, PCIA methodology is not empowering in itself, and the need to place PCIA in a wider context of instruments used for peacebuilding.  ...

Rapid Appraisal (RA) is an approach that draws on multiple evaluation methods and techniques to quickly, yet systematically, collect data when time in the field is limited. RA practices are also useful when there are budget constraints or limited availability of reliable secondary data....