Organization and Management

Monitoring and Evaluation

It is proposed that a specific monitoring and evaluation system be developed under the tea component to review progress in component implementation and success in meeting its objectives. This should have a two pronged approach: (i) continuous monitoring of project impact on poverty and other socio-economic conditions of beneficiary households; and (ii) monitoring the overall progress of the processes of component implementation and that of the service providers, and provide project management with independent information on the performance.

The PCU Tea component Manager will be responsible for M&E of the component. With the assistance of the project M&E, the Tea component Manager will develop a comprehensive result-based M&E plan and an action programme. The M&E action program will depict the target objectives, monitoring indicators, means of verification, required activities, expected time of completion, financial plan, quantitative targets, measurement of status, agency/persons responsible, the assumptions and the issues.

The field staff especially the tea extension/development officers will be responsible to monitor their activities and outputs. In order to review the quantitative performance, information should be collected periodically by way of reports and sent regularly to the PCU. These data will be used for the measurement of physical and financial progress of the component. The qualitative assessment will usually be done during the visits to the beneficiaries by the extension staff. These observations made at field visits will be reported back by extension staff at regular intervals. The information will include progress, bottlenecks, development constraints and any other information that needs attention of the management. The M&E system will also focus on process monitoring. The component will use service providers and the process monitoring should include monitoring the service providers, their out put and the quality. A participatory monitoring system will be developed focusing especially on impact assessment of the target group beneficiaries. Since the extension staff will routinely visit the beneficiaries, indicators need to be developed to assess the impact. Beneficiaries and extension officers will be trained to carry out participatory monitoring.

However, mission’s interventions at different levels both in the Project and at field level indicate that there is a lack in the identification of indicators that would be used for impact monitoring at all levels. Assessing impact implies the measurement of change, which presumes knowledge of the pre-change situation and of indicators by which to measure the change. If the impact of project interventions on rural poverty was to be quantified, selected baseline impact indicators should have been clearly identified prior to or early in the Project. They should thereafter have been monitored as part of a regular management information system or a series of specially focused case studies or small scale surveys/assessments. Suitable indicators would reflect and be measured in terms of the people’s stated objectives and expected components/activity outputs. A list of performance and impact indicators is given in Appendix 5. This list will be finalized by the PCU Tea component Manager, the project M&E responsible and the Manager of the NTF.

Finally, the specific M&E system of the tea component will be integrated in the project M&E system.