Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning

When accepted in 2007, CARE’s proposal to the Gates Foundation included 120 different milestones—many times more than were needed. This ambitious approach was a reflection of the pilot nature of the project and a feeling that comprehensive monitoring was necessary to identify leverage points within a relatively broad strategy. There were three fundamental challenges to this undertaking that had to be factored into the new project. First, CARE Bangladesh’s earlier foray into the dairy sector several years previously had resulted in the construction of a couple of milk chilling plants that sat empty—classic symbols of a well-intended intervention that had failed miserably. Second, there was limited data on the dairy sector available from government sources, and information that was available was of questionable accuracy.1 Third, CARE had never done a value chain initiative of the size proposed, and their monitoring and evaluation (M&E) staff, having experience primarily with traditional development projects, were unsure of how best to proceed.