About the project

Whakamana te Waituna is a charitable trust with ambitious goals that rely heavily on partner organisations being able to work well together. Living Water has invested in a planning, monitoring and evaluation framework to help ensure all the partners are aligned and working collectively toward our agreed outcomes. 

The monitoring and evaluation framework for the Whakamana te Waituna partnership is based on a learning and outcomes-based approach to planning, managing and evaluating and allows us to:

• effectively and efficiently monitor progress against objectives
• understand when things are going off track and plan and execute actions that will overcome deviations

This monitoring and evaluation approach is based on a similar framework developed for the whole Living Water programme, which is a useful tool to ensure our own partnership is robust and resilient.

We believe a partnership approach is the best way to address freshwater management in rural areas because no one organisation has the skills, knowledge or influence to affect the required change on their own. Monitoring and evaluation is an essential part of determining our partnership’s success.

Progress

• A Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) Framework has been co-designed and an Action Plan developed, which provides tools to identify what to measure, when and who is responsible.
• A cost and gap analysis has been completed to help with planning and budgeting to implement the framework.

Benefits

• The M&E framework was both a process and a product. Its development involved facilitated discussion and reflection about the system/partnership, which helped improve relationships and the understanding between individuals and organisations further
• The M&E document details our objectives and what we need to measure and monitor so we have a robust understanding of progress and achievements.

What’s next?

• The Whakamana Te Waituna partnership members will use the framework and action plan as a planning and monitoring tool throughout the remainder of the partnership.