Pelican Initiative

This initiative uses information and communication technologies (ICTs) to create and sustain an online community of communication for social change practitioners around the world who are interested in exploring monitoring and evaluation (M&E) issues related to their work. The three specific themes around which the community is organising itself are:

1. Evidence and learning for policy change
2. Learning within organisations and among partners
3. Society-wide learning among a multitude of stakeholders

Practitioners explore these themes together through an interactive virtual process that begins by a free registration process within the Initiative's online space. Here, participants can make their own views and experiences available to a wider community of practice by sharing (uploading) case studies, background resources, and events postings that they have found useful or thought-provoking, or that they believe may be of interest to others in this field of work.

In an effort to open this process to as broad a community as possible, the Pelican Initiative has a limited fund available to help support Southern organisations in documenting their experiences for sharing with this community of interest. This fund support the writing up of either case studies or "nuggets of experience", shorter examples that illustrate a certain viewpoint based on experience, provide a particular example, or highlight a specific question with evidence and experience. Typically, these "nuggets" are new contributions that have not yet been documented.

This interactive space is designed to allow for ongoing email discussions among registered participants. The moderated online forum will use existing cases and experiences posted on the website as a backdrop to exploring cross-linkages between M&E, learning, and communications. The discussions will also be guided by a number of resource persons, specialised in the three main themes noted above, to draw out different strands of analysis and ask thought-provoking questions in an effort to push the communication for social change agenda further. In this sense, advocacy is one of the initiative's strategies.

In addition to putting forth their own experiences and resources, registrants are invited to collaborate together on a series of publications based on materials and interactions on the platform. During the course of the inception phase, one Discussion Paper (in both English and French) and 1-3 Policy Management Briefs will be published by ECDPM and distributed to a wide audience of policy-makers, donors, and practitioners in the development field.

Communication Impact, Sustainable Development.

Organisers explain that communication practitioners typically "learn from what we do through monitoring and evaluation (M&E), participatory inquiry, research or combinations of these. We have made a lot of progress in developing better approaches and methods to allow relevant stakeholders to participate in such processes. However, to allow for broadened social interaction around evidence and widespread learning for development, insights need to be communicated effectively."

While the moderation language of the website and discussions is English, organisers state that translation of key summaries of email interactions and cases into French and Spanish will be carried out based on need. Click here to join.