This is from Justus M Kavoi again (previous message was nr. 36). I agree with the views of many participants in the on-going electronic conference on ex-post impact assessment - quite often, whenever a new development project is being designed, in most cases, the issue of participatory monitoring and evaluation (PM&E) is overlooked, especially more so with respect to the budget to carry out PM&E. PM&E is at times viewed as a stand-alone project activity. PM&E needs to be embraced by all development partners and stakeholders that PM&E is part and parcel of the entire project and should be planned for right from the inception meeting of the new project, while taking care/note of the kind of data to be collected - when, by who and for whom; how the collected data will be analyzed and the results/report shared; feedback provided to all the concerned stakeholders at the right time in the correct form of report presentation. It should be noted that "P" in PM&E stands for Participatory and not for planning as often taken. Instead, even in the project planning stage, the planning itself should be Participatory - where all the stakeholders and project implementers can have the opportunity to positively engage each other in sharing responsibilities/roles and the available meagre resources. Justus M. Kavoi, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI) Katumani Research Centre, P.O. Box 340-90100, Machakos Kenya Email: jmkavoi (at) yahoo.com ; j.kavoi59 (at) gmail.com Cellphone: +254 733 573 387; +254 726 250 090 [To contribute to this conference, send your message to [log in to unmask] For further information, see http://www.fao.org/nr/research-extension-systems/res-home/news/detail/en/c/217706/ ]. ######################################################################## To unsubscribe from the Impact-L list, click the following link: https://listserv.fao.org/cgi-bin/wa?SUBED1=Impact-L&A=1