The aim of the PADev
project is to design and test a participatory and holistic methodology
for evaluating development interventions. Existing methodologies have
several shortcomings:
- They focus on too
short a period
- They are nearly
always sponsor-driven
- They are too narrowly
focused on input and output
- Projects are evaluated
in isolation of wider developments in the region
- The opinions of
the supposed beneficiaries are largely neglected
Instead of looking at
the interventions of only one external actor, the PADev method first
studies changes in a region over a specified period, and then tries
to find out which interventions contributed to which changes. This yields
extremely valuable information for NGOs in the area: they learn about
their own impact vis-à-vis other actors, and in addition, they
find out which types of projects have been most effective in that particular
geographic and cultural setting. This can be an important lesson for
future interventions.
We gather the information
about changes and the impact of interventions in three-day workshops
in which all layers of the local society participate: women and men,
elderly and youngsters, poor and rich, illiterates and university graduates,
and farmers and officials.
We organise workshops
in nine research areas: three in which there is a long-term and ongoing
presence of Dutch-sponsored NGOs; three areas in which there has been
such NGO involvement in the past; and three areas with very few external
interventions. The research areas are situated in Northern Ghana and
Southern Burkina Faso.
Click here
for a 10-minutes video in which Prof. Ton Dietz explains the methodology
of this project in more detail.
In this research project,
the University of Amsterdam works together with the University for Development
Studies (Ghana), Expertise pour le Développement du Sahel (Burkina
Faso), the African Studies Centre (Leiden), the Royal Tropical Institute
(Amsterdam) and Dutch development organisations ICCO, Woord en Daad
and Prisma.
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