Evaluating with your target group
The potential of an inclusive approach to monitoring and evaluation
Despite the large and sustained focus of policy efforts to Roma inclusion, results remain limited. Thorough evaluation of programs and projects is crucial to identify reasons for weak performance and should ideally lead to stronger project design.
The current evaluation practice usually leaves out the perspective of the final beneficiaries: their opinions and experiences remain invisible. The experience of ERGO Network and its member organisations is that programme and project evaluations, if they are available at all, often lack depth, fail to address shortcomings and in many cases present an image that does not correspond to the reality of those the project or programme aimed to support. This represents a missed opportunity for achieving structural improvements in policy approaches to Roma inclusion.