Programs - Monitoring & Evaluation

Room to Read is committed to the highest quality programs that provide the greatest benefits to children in the developing world. To this end, we carry out monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of our programs on an ongoing basis to:

  • Track project information to ensure that we work effectively toward our goals and objectives
  • Identify strengths and weaknesses to inform program decisions and make timely improvements
  • Facilitate dialogue with stakeholders regarding progress toward desired objectives
  • Provide accurate, relevant and timely data and information to stakeholders

Room to Read has hired an M&E Director and Associate at our Global Office in San Francisco, an M&E Director at our Asia Regional Office in Delhi, as well as M&E Program Officers at each of our Asia Country Offices to manage all M&E related activities.

Monitoring

Our in-country staff and partners visit our programs regularly and use a variety of methods, such as interviews and surveys, with key stakeholders, students, and teachers to gather information about program effectiveness. Through this monitoring, our staff is able to provide regular feedback to highlight areas for future improvement for each program in each country.

One example of this was the development of our Local Language Publishing Program. In 2003, Nepalese students indicated to our local team that our libraries were not being optimally utilized because of a lack of Nepali children's books. We quickly realized that there simply were not many children's books available in Nepal. We started sourcing and self-publishing culturally-relevant, brightly-colored children's books written in Nepali. We are now one of the largest publishers of Nepali children's books, and this successful program has been expanded into all of our countries - we have published 226 new children's titles to date and will publish an additional 101 titles in 19 local languages in 2008.

We have also made other modifications as a result of monitoring feedback, including:

In 2007 we focused our M&E efforts on strengthening our monitoring system. We refined the goals, objectives, and indicators for our programs; and developed country monitoring plans for each program. We are now implementing these monitoring systems.

Evaluation

In 2005 we conducted our first external evaluation of five programs (School Room, Reading Room, Room to Grow Girls' Scholarship, Computer Room and Language Room) in four countries (Cambodia, India, Nepal and Vietnam) to assess program effectiveness and identify areas for improvement. This evaluation asked 880 teachers and students about their involvement in these programs, as well as their perceptions about the quality of operations and the value and impact of the programs. For further information, please download a summary of the 2005 Independent Monitoring & Evaluation Study (Adobe PDF, 138kB).

At the end of 2007, each Room to Read country in Asia conducted an evaluation of the Reading Room and Local Language Publishing programs. The evaluations were managed by our in-country M&E Program Officers and designed and conducted in collaboration with our in-country program teams. Countries chose evaluation topics based on what they considered most important to their programs including access and usage of library resources, relevance of the library management training program, and the extent to which Local Language Publishing books are age appropriate and relevant. For further information, please download a summary of the 2007 Reading Room and Local Language Publishing Evaluations (Adobe PDF, 161kB).

If you have further questions regarding monitoring and evaluation, please visit our Frequent Questions.