Breaking the silos and integrating M&E in the programming with CLA

Over the past six years, the National Democratic Institute (NDI) has been dedicated to strengthening democratic pluralism in Serbia through capacity building of political parties, civil society organizations, and governmental institutions. In 2023, we faced a pivotal challenge: to keep up with Serbia's evolving political landscape, our Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) system needed to become more dynamic and useful for our program teams. Recognizing this need, we overhauled our collaboration, program planning, and country-wide Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning Plan (MEL Plan). 

As the first step in this process, in April and May of 2023, MEL Team conducted an internal revision of the MEL Plan to better understand its reliability. This process revealed that our MEL system was unable to accurately capture the impact of our work leading to a two-months long collaborative process of MEL system adaptation. Building on this initiative, MEL Team organized a "pause and reflect" session in August and September 2023, to present the results of data collection processes and collect inputs for additional adaptations.

As a result of the collaborative process, staff understands better and accepts MEL's role in the organization and allows activity planning that ensures long-term impact of our work in advancing Serbia's democracy. The new system has led to more effective data management, improved program impact tracking, and more efficient allocation of resources, ultimately enhancing NDI Serbia's ability to support its partners and democratic development through a systematic, data-driven approach to local activities with NDI Serbia partners.