Include people with intellectual disabilities when planning how to monitor and evaluate the project.

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The best way to make your monitoring and evaluation accessible and inclusive is to involve people with intellectual disabilities through their representative organizations.

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Engage OPDs representing people with intellectual disabilities in M&E planning, and aim to have self-advocates sit on your M&E committees and planning groups.

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This means all of your internal communications about M&E should be easy to understand so everyone can take part.

Present the planned outcomes and activities in a way that is accessible and easy to understand.

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Complicate workplan spreadsheets and results framework documents are not easy to use or understand.

 

Consider using a narrative format instead, or working with a person with an intellectual disability to develop a template that is more inclusive.

Present the monitoring, evaluation and learning plan in a way that is accessible and easy to understand.

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Narrative formats may be better than complicated spreadsheets. 

 

Better yet, include the monitoring plan in the description for the different activities planned on the projects. Having information about how implement the activity and how to monitor the activity in two different documents can be confusing and not user friendly. Aim to streamline where your M&E information is as much as possible.

Build in extra time to projects to allow people with intellectual disabilities to take part.

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Start planning for M&E earlier, and build in more time to ensure that people with intellectual disabilities can fully participate in the process of developing any tools.

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This process may take longer, but the result will be much more inclusive tools that any project participants with intellectual disabilities will find it easier to take part in.

Use accessible evaluation tools, for example interviews, focus groups or accessible surveys.

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Any surveys or other tools that you use to collect information from the staff working on the project, the people participating in the project, and others in the community need to be fully accessible.

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This is also true when people with intellectual disabilities are not the primary target group in your project. Whoever your project is working with - whether it is refugees, school-aged children, or another groups - there are people with intellectual disabilities in every community, so the tools must always be fully accessible. This also makes the data collection tools easier to use for everyone!

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Learn more about accessible focus groups and surveys here.

Involve people with intellectual disabilities in decisions about how to adapt the project based on monitoring and evaluation.

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If your project feedback is telling you something isn't working, engaging people with intellectual disabilities in finding the solutions.

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People with intellectual disabilities and their families are the experts on their own experiences, and they will have suggestions for you about how the project could be working better.

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Including people with intellectual disabilities on your M&E team, meaningful engagement of OPDs representing people with disabilities, and consultations with people with intellectual disabilities are the best way to do this.

Make sure results and learning from the project is shared in accessible formats.

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Often project learning and evaluation doesn't make it back to the communities involved at all, and when it does, it isn't usually in an accessible format.

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Share your learning and evaluation with the people who participated, and make sure this information is easy to understand. Using a video to summarize instead of a report is a good way to do this. When sharing written information, make sure it is in plain language.