MEAL consulting · Monitoring, evaluation, accountability, learning
I help humanitarian organisations structure their monitoring and evaluation: indicators that measure what matters, data collection tools teams know how to use, accountability that works, and analyses that arrive in time to make decisions. Seen through the eyes of someone who has held these roles in the field.
In many programmes, monitoring and evaluation mostly produces reports for donors. Indicators are filled in, surveys are run, and yet programme teams rarely use them to adjust what they do.
The causes look alike from one organisation to the next: logframes written to win funding rather than to steer, too many indicators, questionnaires rebuilt for every assignment, analyses that arrive after the decision has been made, and complaint mechanisms communities do not use.
I spent eight years on the other side of these findings: M&E officer, MEAL manager, then programme coordinator. That is where I work with you from.
What is collected, by whom, with which tools, what is done with it, and what gets lost along the way. The diagnosis measures your system against your donors' requirements and the sector standards: the Core Humanitarian Standard, Sphere and the OECD DAC criteria.
Theory of change, logframe, indicators, M&E plan: documents that help you steer, with a number of indicators your teams can actually report on.
Needs assessments, baselines, post-distribution monitoring, satisfaction surveys, data quality assessments: sound methodologies and questionnaires, and an analysis that answers the questions asked at the outset.
Complaints and feedback mechanisms, handling of sensitive cases, reporting back to communities: an accountability system people actually use, and that changes something when they do.
Training and coaching for teams, from junior officers to managers: survey design, XLSForm and data collection tools, quantitative and qualitative analysis, and sensible use of AI in M&E work. Built on your own tools and your own data.
A MEAL system is rarely built from scratch. Your teams have tools, habits and time constraints. I start from what they already use, and keep what works.
I look for the simplest system that meets decision-making needs: fewer indicators, better tracked, questionnaires reusable from one assignment to the next, analyses delivered on time. An M&E plan the team has no time to apply helps nobody.
I work with the teams: what they have built with me, they can keep running after I leave.
I write regularly about these topics, in French, for example on logframes that do not help anyone steer, on the sections often left out of post-distribution monitoring, or on XLSForm, Kobo and ODK.
I have held most of the roles along the MEAL chain: volunteer in the Democratic Republic of Congo, M&E officer in Sudan, M&E manager in Ukraine. Along the way I led a needs assessment across twenty locations, ran satisfaction surveys, harmonised monitoring frameworks, delivered training and managed a complaints mechanism.
I then coordinated a programme portfolio in the Central African Republic, and today I coordinate development and quality in Burundi. So I also know M&E from the side of those who have to use it to make decisions, and to account to donors.
Finally, I designed Opti', an AI-assisted M&E platform. You do not need it to work with me: your current tools are enough.
Thirty minutes is enough to see what can be simplified, and where to start.
