Locally Led Impact: Who Defines Change?

How do we know whether a development project is actually making a difference?

For organizations that fund global development work, this is an important question. We want to know that the resources entrusted to us are contributing to meaningful change. But answering that question isn’t always as simple as counting how many activities took place.

This is where monitoring and evaluation comes in. Monitoring is the process of keeping track of what is happening during a project: How many students received meals? How many latrines were built? How many people participated in a training? Evaluation asks a deeper question: What changed as a result?

At One Day’s Wages, we believe there is another important question that needs to come first: Who gets to decide what meaningful change looks like?

For many funding organizations, donors define the outcomes and indicators that their partners are expected to report on. At ODW, we take a different approach. Because we trust locally led organizations to understand their communities, we also trust them to help define how meaningful change should be measured. Our partnership with SPRODETA in northern Malawi is helping us learn what this looks like in practice.

Start with what matters to the community

SPRODETA works with local schools in Malawi to improve educational outcomes. Their work includes providing latrines, handwashing stations, and meals for students. But their work in the community began with the question: What change do families want to see for their children?

The community was clear: they want more children to stay in school.

That shifted SPRODETA’s approach to evaluation. The latrines, handwashing stations, and meals are not the ultimate goal. They are part of a larger effort to create school environments where children can attend regularly and remain in school.

Let local partners define what change looks like

Once we understand the change a community wants to see, the next question is how to recognize that change. This is where indicators come in. An indicator is simply something we can observe or measure that helps us understand whether change is happening.

We ask our partners: What does meaningful progress look like in your community? How will you know when you’re getting there?

For SPRODETA, school attendance and dropout rates are meaningful indicators because they connect directly to what families want for their children.

Measure what matters, not just what’s easy to count

Numbers of latrines, meals, and students can be important, and they provide useful evidence that a project is being implemented as planned. But they are only part of the story. Imagine two schools that each receive a new latrine. What if attendance increases significantly at one school and barely changes at the other? These differences remind us that doing something is not the same as creating lasting change.

At ODW, we are learning to look beyond the things that are easiest to count and ask harder questions about what is actually changing in people’s lives. Even when those outcomes may take longer to see.

It’s all about trust

Our approach requires trust. When we come alongside a locally led organization, we are not only trusting them to carry out a project. We are trusting their understanding of their community. We are trusting their experience to help identify what meaningful progress looks like. And we are trusting them to help us measure whether that progress is happening.

For SPRODETA, this approach has helped them focus on an outcome that matters deeply to the communities they serve: keeping children in school. As a result, SPRODETA has seen a 30% increase in school attendance alongside this work.

The number is not the whole story. But it helps us see something that counting meals or latrines alone could not: that families are seeing greater opportunities for their children.

What we’re still learning

Locally led monitoring and evaluation doesn’t mean that measurement becomes less rigorous. In many ways, it asks us to be more thoughtful about what we measure and why. It means recognizing that communities may define success differently than funders do. And it means being willing to question our assumptions about what change should look like.

We don’t have all the answers. We’re continuing to learn alongside our partners about how to measure change in ways that are useful and meaningful.

We’re still learning, but we’re also clear: When the people closest to the work define what meaningful change looks like, we have a better chance of supporting the changes that communities actually want to see.

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Daphne Hollinger Fowler is ODW’s Global Impact Director and Interim Executive Director. She has over twenty years of experience in global development.