This is a recording of the M&E Thursday Talk from July 13th, 2017 which was hosted by Anita Ernstorfer & Lillie Ris who led a discussion on “Emerging Approaches to Prevent and Counter Violent Extremism.”
M&E Thursday Talk – Emerging Approaches to Prevent and Counter Violent Extremism from DME for Peace on Vimeo.
Efforts aimed at ‘preventing’ or ‘countering’ violent extremism (P/CVE) encompass a range of initiatives that aim to directly and indirectly address the drivers of violent extremism and the factors that enable it. As P/CVE programming is increasingly well funded, recent years have seen heightened interest in understanding both what P/CVE programming can achieve and how it can do so more effectively. Correspondingly, there has been an increase in interest in how established design monitoring and evaluation (DM&E) methods and related experiences from development and peacebuilding efforts in conflict-affected contexts can support P/CVE programming. DM&E systems are not merely technical processes through which to quantify project deliverables.
Robust DM&E systems enable in-depth thinking and ongoing reflection, and ideally ongoing learning, about the overall approach, strategy, and theory of change of an initiative, its applicability in a given setting, and the type of results it can yield, as well as ways to incrementally track progress and facilitate adaptation and improvement during implementation. Anita and Lillie discussed why the field has struggled to effectively design, monitor and evaluate programmatic efforts and offered insights on how methodologies developed for and lessons learned by the fields of peacebuilding and development can be applied to address current challenges. Check out the briefing paper here!