| Session Title: Establishing a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) System for Policy Reform: Lessons From Oxfam America’s Advocacy on More Country Ownership of United States Foreign Aid |
| Expert Lecture Session 849 to be held in Texas C on Saturday, Nov 13, 1:40 PM to 2:25 PM |
| Sponsored by the Advocacy and Policy Change TIG |
| Presenter(s): |
| Omar Ortez, Oxfam America, oortez@oxfamamerica.org |
| Abstract: Thanks to a Gates Foundation grant, Oxfam America is innovating with practical methodologies to establish a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) System within its Aid Effectiveness Team to measure the effects of policy-advocacy on making US foreign aid more country-led. We have organized policy reform asks along a three-dimensional Ownership framework: information, donors informing recipient countries of what they are funding; capacity, helping countries manage their own development and supporting citizens to hold them accountable; and control, letting countries lead their development agendas. The MEL system tracks how these concepts are entering the discourse of USG policy makers and influentials in the international development community; and how their positions shift over time. It also tracks how specific policy asks are influencing legislation and operational processes where aid reform is actually taking place. It ultimately aims at closing the feedback loop between new policies adopted and their actual implementation. |