ABSTRACT
Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) of development activities, such as public health nutrition, provides development managers, civil society and government officials with information for improving service delivery, learning from past experiences, formulating future strategy and plan as well as in providing information for allocating resources and in demonstrating result with reference to accountability to key stakeholders [1]. Monitoring and evaluation are two distinct sets of organizational activities, related but not identical [2]. M & E is an essential management tool to assist the project or the implementers of the programme to assess
the progress that is being made against the defined objectives as well as to analyse the constraints and positive attributes for helping in making adjustments for ensuring efficient smooth progress and desirable impact. M & E therefore assist us to know when plans are working and when circumstances have changed. Plans are essential but they are not set in concrete or in a totally fixed mode. If they are not working, or if the circumstances change, then plans need to change too. It is aptly said that “Getting something wrong is not a crime. Failing to learn from past mistakes because you are not monitoring and evaluating is …”. Both monitoring and evaluation are geared towards learning from what one is doing and how one is doing it. Both focus on efficiency, effectiveness and impact (Box 37.1).
