Flipping the Power Dynamics in Measurement and Evaluation: International Aid and the Potential for a Grounded Accountability Model Open Access

One of the often‐overlooked barriers to localizing international aid is buried in its foundational principle: the concept of accountability. Because bilateral and multilateral donors often lack the capacity to engage with communities directly, they work through civil society organizations and government contractors to redistribute funds through enacting projects and activities.¹ In this relationship, organizations and contractors are expected to be accountable to both donors and the communities they engage. However, there are structural barriers embedded in broader systems of international aid and development that hinder efforts to both define and operationalize accountability toward program participants.

The recognition of localization as an essential factor in aid efficacy has gained considerable traction among donors (Mansuri and Rao 2013). As this special issue of Negotiation Journal highlights, numerous institutional hurdles impede localization efforts, including procurement issues, logistical complexities of fund allocation, and legal and bureaucratic constraints (see other contributions in this issue). Another significant obstacle lies in the way we approach knowledge creation, particularly in the realm of monitoring and evaluation (M&E). Much of the existing discourse hails M&E as a virtue due to its role in maintaining accountability. M&E is expected to verify strategic objectives, planning, programming, and resource allocation and also shed light on lessons from previous programs that may inform future activities (Dazzo 2022). International NGOs have long used M&E to report back to their funders, in large part because donors make this expectation explicit and establish mechanisms of reporting (Stein 2008; Dazzo 2022). Yet, a critical examination of M&E practices reveals inherent issues that go unaddressed by simply appending localization to traditional methodologies.

This article argues that the conventional M&E practices—which are structured to satisfy donor accountability—restrict the participation, creativity, and flexibility needed to localize programming in conflict‐affected settings. These stringent requirements reflect the constraints imposed on donors, who are in turn accountable to their respective governments, trustees, foundations, and the general public. In the case of multilateral donors, they are accountable to the individual countries that are members of, and contribute to, the organization (O'Dwyer and Unerman 2007, 2008; O'Dwyer and Boomsma 2015). Nevertheless, we propose that there are feasible strategies that donors can adopt to report to their constituents effectively while also allowing their grantees to engage participants of their programs and local communities more meaningfully.

To achieve this dual objective, it is imperative to revisit our approach to knowledge creation within M&E processes. It requires a departure from the traditional technocratic and deductive approach, primarily guided by a positivist framework. Instead, it calls for an integration of more inclusive and flexible structures into M&E practices, encouraging a bottom‐up flow of information that values and incorporates the insights and experiences of local communities. Shifts in M&E's approach that honor local knowledge can enhance localization, improve program effectiveness, and maintain a robust standard of accountability to people at the receiving end of programs as much as to donors.

In both practical analyses—rooted in real‐world scenarios—and academic examinations of accountability in development sectors, “downward accountability” refers to obligations toward aid recipients, while “upward accountability” signifies responsibilities to funders. Practical examinations typically involve empirical evaluations of actual projects and communications (Anderson 2009). It is often the donors who define what success in a project looks like, by detailing the desired outcome of a project in calls for proposals (Eyben 2008; Eyben et al. 2015). Following this, success is measured most commonly in short‐term and quantifiable metrics that are translated easily to donors.

Activities and outputs are easy to measure and can be used to demonstrate short‐term successes. Theories of change, such as the “if x, then y” models, often gauge success by measurable outputs (Munro 2016). For instance:

In such a model, the most tangible metric is conflict resolution education and training. This can be meticulously developed, executed, monitored, and evaluated. Understanding whether a conducive environment for dialogue and mutual understanding has been cultivated, however, poses significant challenges. Yet, the effectiveness of the project hinges not just on the completion of training sessions or the number of participants, but also on the secondary and tertiary effects, the intangibles that so often go unrecognized. Balancing the tangible metrics of training with the less quantifiable aspects of fostering understanding and dialogue emphasizes the need for both upward accountability to donors and stakeholders, who often prefer concrete data, and downward accountability to the communities served, who experience and value the less easily measured outcomes.

Accountability through M&E, however, is primarily a one‐way street, and does not prioritize the involvement of local or recipient communities. Recently, M&E acronyms have begun incorporating both “learning” and “accountability,” turning M&E into MEL (monitoring, evaluation, and learning), MEAL (monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and learning), or MERL (monitoring, evaluation, research, and learning) (Walden 2013). Although learning is often said to be included in M&E efforts, as the frequent use of these acronyms suggests, the learning too is more often shared with donors and perhaps other implementers, but rarely with community beneficiaries, and therefore rarely leads to community engagement.

We build on other scholarship examining institutional knowledge creation processes in M&E between donors and implementing organizations to demonstrate that technocratically led, deductive, and static measurement systems are exclusive and limit localization (Fast and Neufeldt 2005; Neufeldt 2011; Denskus 2012; Pearson d'Estree 2020; Bächtold 2021). Although arguments for a greater emphasis on qualitative and ethnographic M&E in peacebuilding resonate (Denskus 2012; Millar 2018), we also recognize the time and capacity limitations of donors and implementers. Therefore, we propose a middle‐ground approach that allows for more inductive, interpretivist approaches, but speaks to donors in a language they can understand and manage. However, we also demonstrate how donors must restructure their approaches to knowledge creation in the M&E sector in order to accommodate new ways of meaning making that allow for a more localized approach.

We take inspiration from activist roots in the peacebuilding field that advocate for a return to the ways in which organizations in the sector once were more accountable to communities than they were to donors (Mac Ginty 2012). Methodologies such as Paulo Freire's popular education (PE) and other participatory action research (PAR) tools have inspired more grounded ways of establishing accountability between organizations and communities. Yet, bilateral and multilateral donors working in fast‐paced environments have struggled with using these approaches since they are often complex and not adapted to their needs. Therefore, in this article, we focus on the Grounded Accountability Model (GAM), which aims to co‐construct accountability between the external groups supporting international efforts (e.g., NGOs), and the communities that participate in the development, peacebuilding, and human rights work supported by international donors. Co‐created by Search for Common Ground, Everyday Peace Indicators (EPI).³ and Humanity United Foundation in the United States, and Asociación MINGA and COSURCA in Colombia, as key partners, GAM seeks to incorporate program participants and community residents into the decision‐making processes, thereby identifying the desired changes and establishing how to monitor those changes. This approach facilitates accountability for both donors and local communities in a manner that suits the fast‐paced dynamics of the international aid industry.

GAM situates the practitioners' approaches within the cultural contexts of the communities they serve. It prioritizes these communities in both the design and evaluation of aid projects, eventually redefining the power dynamics in assessment. As its name implies, grounded accountability is a concept that emphasizes accountability practices and mechanisms that are rooted in the experiences, needs, and perspectives of target communities that international organizations aim to serve. Going beyond traditional top‐down accountability structures, the grounded accountability approach seeks to hold donors and implementing organizations accountable for their actions and decisions, fostering a more nuanced and empathetic understanding of these projects.

This article explores how the GAM can be operationalized at different levels—in both national‐level organizations that align with activist principles, and in larger international NGOs that may grapple more with the complexities of the donor funding frameworks of multilateral and bilateral institutions. Our aim is to understand how GAM can be adapted and applied in these different contexts, thereby showcasing its versatility and its potential for broader implementation.

For our analysis, we present case studies that focus on two organizations' experiences with applying GAM. The two cases represent a significant contrast in terms of organizational scale and focus. The first case, Asociación MINGA, is a smaller, grassroots human rights organization with a specific focus on social movements and environmental justice in Colombia. MINGA strives to foster democracy and peace—interwoven with social and environmental justice—from a grassroots level. In contrast, our second case study, Search for Common Ground, is one of the world's largest peacebuilding organizations with a global reach and a broad range of program areas. Search for Common Ground operates projects and structures across 36 countries, with programs ranging from social cohesion to stabilization, governance, and mediation. By examining these two case studies, we aim to shed light on how GAM can be adapted by organizations with different sizes, scopes, and objectives, highlighting potential challenges and opportunities in each case. Both organizations, in their own ways, are engaged in activities related to accountability, social justice, and peacebuilding. This alignment with the core objectives of the GAM makes them suitable cases for analysis. This article proceeds by discussing the relationship between technocratic knowledge in M&E and localization. It then looks at how we can begin to find new ways of knowledge creation, taking into consideration the restrictions that donors face with M&E. We explore in detail what we can learn from organizations that have a history of taking a more activist approach to peacebuilding and human rights work and then discuss how GAM builds on that work.

Technocratic knowledge refers to information derived from scientific, technical, and specialist expertise. It is characterized by its perceived objectivity, precision, and systematic method of production (Jasanoff 2003). According to the World Bank Group, “Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is the process of determining the worth or significance of a development activity, policy or program to determine the relevance of objectives, the efficacy of design and implementation, the efficiency or resource use, and the sustainability of results” (IEG 2013). Its principal aim is to enhance the management of outputs and outcomes, and ultimately, the impact of interventions (Kusek and Rist 2004).

Multilateral and bilateral donors operate within frameworks that necessitate the consumption of information in specific formats and structures. The way they demand and process knowledge is dictated largely by their institutional, bureaucratic, and legal obligations. Consequently, the accountability of donors, which may be to their taxpayers, private donors, or other funding sources, often influences their preferences for information and dictates the form and type of M&E reports they require.

Technocratic knowledge is prioritized in M&E for several reasons. The impression of scientific rigor and objectivity it provides is appealing in an age where evidence‐based policymaking is paramount (Cherney and Head 2010). Furthermore, technocratic knowledge is viewed as more credible and legitimate than more tacit or intuitive knowledge, enhancing the acceptability of the findings derived from it (Littoz‐Monnet and Uribe 2023). Additionally, technocratic M&E practices are often perceived as efficient, offering a cost–benefit advantage, particularly in resource‐constrained settings (Bamberger, Rugh, and Mabry 2012).

The history of emphasizing technocratic expertise—and particularly its translation to deductive and quantitative methods—emerged in the peacebuilding realm in the last two decades. During the late 1990s and early 2000s, there was a surge of interest in evaluating peacebuilding efforts and assessing the outcomes of peacebuilding projects. Two influential studies published in 2003 and 2004 had a significant impact on shaping the discourse around peacebuilding evaluation (Scharbatke‐Church 2011).

In 2003, Mary B. Anderson and Lara Olson published Confronting War: Critical Lessons for Peace Practitioners, which challenged the peacebuilding field to evaluate its contribution to achieving “peace writ large” (PWL) (Anderson and Olson 2003). The report highlighted the importance of projects' ability to articulate their role in this broader context. From an evaluative standpoint, this posed several methodological challenges and became a popular topic of discussion. The following year, the Joint Utstein Study of Peacebuilding revealed a strategic deficit in peacebuilding efforts and recommended that actors shift the focus of evaluation from the project level to the strategic level (Hauge 2004). The evaluation community was urged to recognize that assessing impact solely at the project level was not useful because impact could only be established at the macro level. The Utstein Study, which was the culmination of analyzing roughly a decade of work described as “peacebuilding,” emphasized the challenges of linking outputs to outcomes with respect to social change in violent and complex contexts.

Toward the end of the decade, there was a resurgence of interest in outcomes‐focused evaluation related to peacebuilding (Scharbatke‐Church 2011). M&E roles within agencies expanded, accompanied by a rise in outcomes‐focused evaluations. Outcomes‐focused evaluation approaches often lend themselves to quantifiable metrics and can effectively demonstrate return on investment. By focusing on measurable outputs, such evaluations provide concrete evidence of the results achieved. This emphasis on outputs—often treated interchangeably with outcomes in the absence of strong, measurable outcomes—allows for a tangible demonstration of “success,” even though it may not signify broader, long‐term change. As others have observed, due to the lack of distinct, quantifiable outcomes, reliance on outputs becomes a prevalent method to gauge success (Bush 2003).

The emphasis on product‐over‐process, linearity, and “results‐based management” has created a method regime within the peacebuilding world (Denskus 2012). A method regime describes “a special kind of socio‐material arrangement, which has to do with the production and validation of knowledge, rather than knowledge claims that directly delineate the way specific objects of global governance are constituted. By designating which methods of knowledge production are ‘right’, they directly regulate and control the kind of evidence that is deemed to be accurate and relevant for the governance of global problems” (Littoz‐Monnet and Uribe 2023: 2). The notion of method regimes, originally coined by Littoz‐Monnet and Uribe to describe other areas of global governance, is equally relevant in the context of peacebuilding. The selection and evaluation of evidence, as well as the underlying politics of methods, play a crucial role in shaping the practices and approaches employed in peacebuilding efforts. The establishment of dominant conceptions of what is considered valid and scientific influences the generation and validation of knowledge in the field, ultimately impacting the policymaking and decision‐making processes within peacebuilding initiatives.

When peacebuilding gives priority to certain approaches and perspectives, such as product‐oriented methods, linear thinking, results‐based management, and Northern control, along with a particular emphasis on external technocratic expertise as a form of knowledge, the long‐term consequence is the systematic exclusion of the voices of communities affected by violence and conflict. This approach divorces the worlds of policy and practice from an understanding of how conflict is truly lived and experienced by those on the ground. As a result, the complex realities of conflict are often sanitized and reduced to mere statistics, focusing on the percentage of people who received trainings—or similar quantifiable outputs—rather than addressing the complexities of conflict and its impact on communities. The prioritization of specific forms of knowledge and approaches in peacebuilding poses several challenges for localization efforts. Firstly, there is little opportunity for learning to occur when dominant methodologies and practices are imposed without considering the specific context and needs of local communities. The lack of flexibility and adaptability in approaches hinders the potential for local actors to develop innovative solutions and contribute to knowledge generation (Mac Ginty 2011; Firchow and Gellman 2021).

The emphasis on predetermined methodologies and external expertise often leads to a limited contextual understanding of the complexities of violence and conflict. Localization requires a nuanced understanding of local dynamics, historical factors, and cultural influences that shape the conflict landscape (Richmond 2014). When these perspectives are marginalized, there is an increased risk of implementing interventions that do not resonate with local realities, with outcomes ranging from potentially ineffective to actually counterproductive.

The narrow focus on measurement—on quantifiable indicators—is a reductionist approach that overlooks the complex and multifaceted nature of social and political development. It fails to capture the broader social, economic, and psychological dimensions of peacebuilding. As a result, the local circumstances experienced by communities are not adequately addressed, limiting the effectiveness of localization efforts (Merry and Wood 2015).

The marginalization of diverse perspectives under the dominance of external technocratic expertise also hampers meaningful participation and excludes many actors. Localization necessitates the active involvement in decision‐making processes of those directly affected by violence and conflict (Paffenholz 2015). When their voices are excluded, the legitimacy and ownership of peacebuilding initiatives are undermined. Local actors have unique insights and knowledge that can contribute to more contextually relevant and sustainable approaches; thus, their participation is crucial (Firchow 2018).

To navigate the constraints that donors encounter with M&E, it is crucial to revisit the activist foundations of peacebuilding. We delve into the participatory methods employed in the field's infancy, prior to its evolution into a more technocratic discipline (Mac Ginty 2012). While international and local NGOs increasingly have adopted culturally sensitive and locally pertinent practices for data gathering and interpretation (Akinola and Uzodike 2018; Appiah‐Thompson 2020), their methodological approaches remain largely inclined toward top‐down definitions that claim scientific rigor (Dazzo 2022).⁴

By “activist peacebuilding and human rights organizations,” we refer to entities that take a political stance in their program implementation and community engagement. Many of these organizations have their roots in the transformative post‐WWII era, during which nonviolence and women's rights organizations (among others) came into existence. This period marked a shift toward more inclusive and locally grounded methodologies in peacebuilding, an approach we wish to underscore and bring back to prominence in contemporary peacebuilding practice and evaluation.

In the next section, we delve into the origins of participatory approaches to peacebuilding, aiming to draw inspiration from past successes that may have been overshadowed in an era dominated by quantification. By revisiting the activist foundations of peacebuilding, we can rekindle the spirit of grassroots engagement, community empowerment, and bottom‐up approaches that were once integral to the field. This entails shifting away from a purely technocratic and results‐driven mindset toward more inclusive and participatory methodologies.

Meaningful participatory approaches prioritize the voices and experiences of those on the ground, allowing for a more holistic understanding of the complex dynamics at play (Firchow and Gellman 2021). Learning from successful examples in the past, where participatory methodologies were utilized effectively, can serve as a source of inspiration. These examples remind us of the power of qualitative insights, participatory processes, and narratives, and the richness of local knowledge.

While donors may face limitations and pressures in terms of M&E requirements, finding innovative ways to incorporate participatory methods can foster a more inclusive and contextually grounded approach to knowledge creation (Chambers 2003). This should revolve around collaborative partnerships between donors, practitioners, and local communities to co‐design evaluation frameworks that capture diverse perspectives and produce insights that go beyond top‐down quantitative metrics. We give some context and history of participatory approaches used by activist organizations and explore a more recently co‐designed evaluative framework, the GAM.

To understand the history and current applications of participatory methods by activist organizations and their adoption by donors, we present a case study of Asociación MINGA. Established in 1991 in northeastern Colombia, Asociación MINGA originated as an interdisciplinary collective of professionals and social leaders. It has evolved to become a human rights organization associated with various social movements, advocating for the realization of these movements' objectives and for the sustained and dignified existence of communities within their respective territories. “Territories” here refers to the specific geographical contexts in which these movements and communities are located and operate. With over 30 years of experience in managing projects backed by international cooperation, MINGA provides a pertinent example of how an activist organization navigates M&E processes in collaboration with global donors.

An activist NGO refers to an organization that actively works to promote, impede, direct, or intervene in social, political, economic, or environmental reform with the desire to make changes in society. These organizations are typically driven by a specific set of values or beliefs and aim to bring about change through various forms of activism (Daubanes and Rochet 2019). Many activist NGOs see donor agendas as vehicles for pressuring them to instrumentalize communities to obtain resources for advancing issues that are not in their own interest or to carry out activities that do not contribute to long‐term processes and commitments.⁵ In their perspective, this is a consequence of the international community's tendency to impose its objectives on local communities regardless of their needs. For activist NGOs, local processes and a long‐term outlook must be at the heart of planning; this is why they always have relied on participatory approaches to program assessment⁶ and have seen traditional M&E as perpetuating the agendas of outsiders.

Activist NGOs shun funders that use traditional M&E and seek out funders who will work with them to carry out and measure activities jointly. MINGA, for example, maintains constant engagement with its partners, which are primarily community‐based organizations, and invites them to seminars where they evaluate their strategy using the participatory processes described below. Yet even MINGA recognizes that it is not always possible to gather community perceptions themselves from people's everyday lives, nor is it easy to communicate the complexity of community needs to funders or find ways to create consensus within very heterogeneous communities. This is where GAM can be valuable, as it enables learning from the daily experiences and realities of communities, which is crucial for integrating M&E methodologies into their projects effectively. The insights derived from everyday experiences are essential in comprehending local needs, leading to the design of projects with a higher potential for meaningful local impact. An indicator is a reliable variable, either quantitative or qualitative, used to measure or monitor intervention achievements or changes. In this context, indicators are designed both to represent the everyday realities of communities and provide clear, measurable insights to address donor concerns, striking a balance between the depth of qualitative data and the succinctness required for effective project evaluation and reporting. By bridging the gap between grounded, everyday experiences and donor requirements, GAM (described in detail in the following section) offers a more inclusive, nuanced, and ultimately effective approach to project design and monitoring and presents a way for donors and activist organizations to work together.

The efforts by activist NGOs like MINGA to integrate more holistic and grounded methodologies into project assessment echo the aspirations of Latin American scholars and activists during the 1960s. The drive to counter externally imposed models and to emphasize local and community practices is a shared thread between the endeavors of past scholars and today's NGOs. This shared principle of prioritizing local realities and collective welfare over decontextualized, individual‐centric models forms the link between historical and contemporary approaches to social change and development.

In Latin America in the 1960s, in the midst of social tensions generated by poverty and inequality, and inspired by the Cuban revolution, social protest was on the rise. The United States established the Alliance for Progress in 1961, an international development initiative that offered financing to countries to promote democracy and expand access to education and land, among other efforts to achieve meaningful social change and reduce social unrest (Torres 2007). Presented with this opportunity, Latin American scholars and social activists started exploring alternatives to conventional organizational structures, such as collectives and cooperatives, alongside NGOs. They delved into autonomous production—self‐sustained and independently managed modes of producing goods or services—as a means to establish self‐reliance and reduce dependence on external entities. They undertook this exploration not only to question the imposition of external models but also to actively resist, and present alternatives to, models perceived as imposed, external, and decontextualized, which typically prioritized individual gains over collective welfare. By centering discussions on societal well‐being and emphasizing localized and community‐centric practices, they championed approaches that were more harmonious with collective values and community needs. During this period, approaches such as PE and PAR emerged (Jara 2018).

PE, developed by Paulo Freire in Brazil, posits that a critical and reflective understanding of one's context, paired with educational dialogue, is a transformative and liberating force for marginalized communities. Freire emphasized not just local peoples' inherent understanding of their surroundings, but also the empowerment derived from critically examining and acting upon their sociocultural and economic conditions to effect change and counter oppression (Torres 2007). This participatory methodology endeavors to foster comprehension of oppressive situations based on people's reality, fostering tools for social change. In this process, individuals are viewed not as passive recipients of information but as active participants.

PE is rooted in critical pedagogies that perceive individuals as active contributors to the learning process, with education serving as a medium for dialogue that is anchored deeply in participants' lived experiences and realities. This approach fosters a pronounced linkage to context as it involves learners in reflective and critical discussions about their immediate conditions and the broader sociocultural and economic structures impacting them. In this way, the educational setting transforms into a space for collective exploration and the generation of potential solutions, maintaining a genuine connection to the learners' contextual realities. The emphasis here is not on connecting learners to their context—they are inherently connected—but on leveraging this connection for deeper understanding and transformative action (Torres 2007).

PAR has been recognized as an innovative methodology that was developed by sociologists with the intention of effecting societal transformation. Orlando Fals Borda, a Colombian sociologist who contributed significantly to PAR, grounded his work in collaborations with peasant communities and in supporting organizational processes such as communal cooperation, knowledge sharing, decision‐making processes, and collective action. PAR involves working closely with communities to identify problems, conduct research, and propose collective solutions (Fals Borda 1999), providing researchers with the means to recognize and operationalize local knowledge. This reinforces the concept of participation from the inception of the research design rather than viewing it as a component introduced merely during the data collection phase.

MINGA integrates the principles of PE and PAR in its M&E frameworks, resonating with Fals Borda's advocacy for the incorporation of community knowledge. Fals Borda defines community knowledge as “empirical, practical, common‐sense knowledge, which has been the ancestral cultural and ideological possession of the people at the grassroots, that which has allowed them to create, work, and interpret predominantly with the direct resources that nature offers to the people” (Fals Borda 1980: 22). This integration of community knowledge is a pivotal element in both PE and PAR methodologies, not an approach per se. In MINGA's execution of PE, a deep dialogue with communities is central, facilitating an enhanced understanding of their oppressions (Freire 1997). While PE and PAR are similar in valuing participatory approaches and local wisdom, PE centers around liberating educational dialogues, and PAR involves collaborative research aimed at societal transformation. MINGA leans toward the application of PE, actualizing Fals Borda's concept of community knowledge, while also intertwining elements of PAR for holistic, context‐specific transformations.

The GAM, developed in response to these challenges, proves to be pragmatic within the dynamically shifting landscape of international aid. While both PAR and PE have played pivotal roles in nurturing dialogue and enriching understanding, their inherent structures do not seamlessly integrate with the rigid measurement and evaluation frameworks that donor agencies often require. GAM serves to connect these realms, offering tangible indicators instrumental in shaping project design and aligning with donor prerequisites. This integration is accomplished not by sidelining, but by actively engaging with, qualitative and community‐centered data, ensuring a harmonious blend of local relevance and donor expectations. “Engagement” with the data means active usage and incorporation of community‐based data to derive insights and drive project directions, thereby maintaining a balance between grassroots realities and donor‐imposed frameworks, enabling a more insightful and adaptable approach in aid projects.

In the quest to flip the dynamics of measurement and evaluation, the EPI Project was initiated. This project aimed at systematically generating everyday indicators of peace (and related concepts) with communities to extend the conceptualization of peace to the local level, addressing an apparent gap in perception where peace, potentially previously viewed more as a macro‐level or state‐level condition, was not fully recognized or understood in its local, everyday manifestations and dynamics (Firchow 2018; Firchow and Mac Ginty 2020). This approach, created by academics in the peace and conflict studies sector, coincided with a renewed interest in design, monitoring, and evaluation (DM&E) in the peacebuilding sector. A number of organizations became interested in the EPI methodology and the applicability of EPI to their projects and contexts, especially its utility for M&E.

In 2018, Search for Common Ground, Humanity United, and EPI initiated discussions to explore how to integrate everyday indicators into design and monitoring frameworks in order to hold peacebuilders, donors, and practitioners accountable to local needs and experiences. With this, the partner organizations co‐developed the GAM as a way to adapt the EPI methodology to practitioners' DM&E requirements. The three organizations planned a pilot project that included two Colombian organizations—the NGO Asociación MINGA and the cooperative COSURCA. The GAM pilots were designed to test EPI adaptations at various levels, with COSURCA operating at a community level, MINGA at a national level, and Search for Common Ground at an international level. In all these undertakings, the goals were to adapt the methodology to the capacity, time, and budget of each organization and to collect the everyday experiences of the communities with whom they work to facilitate the organizations' M&E work.

NGOs have a long history of engaging local communities at the outset of programs when necessary, through needs assessments, conflict analysis, and other research approaches and tools. What distinguishes GAM from these other approaches and tools is that in engaging community members, GAM's priority is the co‐generation of everyday indicators of concepts like justice, peace, women's empowerment, and religious freedom, both to design programs and to monitor the programs' impact and effectiveness. This involves changes to the technocratic approach of employing expert‐led indicators, which traditionally are defined by specialists without community input, enabling the adoption of a more interpretive methodology. It is not merely about employing a more interpretive way of using expert‐led indicators but about selecting an entirely different set of indicators—everyday indicators—that are grounded in the daily experiences and perspectives of the communities involved. Many organizations in the peacebuilding sector as well as in the NGO realm in general recognized that concepts like peace, justice, and empowerment, around which many of the programs are built, mean different things to women than to men, to ethnic and religious minorities than to titular ethnic and religious majority groups, and to established political parties than to emerging political leaders. In adopting GAM, Search for Common Ground, MINGA, and Cosurca sought to facilitate discussions with groups of particular interest and to listen to their priorities, opinions, and concerns, in order to design evaluations, monitoring tools, and programming attuned to the everyday experiences of target communities. In what follows, we give a short overview of the experiences of MINGA and Search for Common Ground concerning the incorporation of GAM into their M&E processes. We specifically concentrate on how they utilize the outcomes from both the integration of GAM and the dialogues with the targeted communities to enhance their program design and learning.

To adapt the Everyday Indicator process to MINGA's design and monitoring needs, the NGO initiated a pilot focus group that received training on the EPI process and then co‐developed indicators of peace in collaboration with local people. MINGA's adaptation utilized cards that were placed on a wall, enabling the group to review and verify the indicators collectively, a process in which the community examines the proposed indicators and either amalgamates them, discards them, or confirms them as appropriate and reflective of their context. Each indicator was read aloud, and questions were asked to ensure the final wording was clear to everyone. The participants then voted on the indicators, marking those that resonated most. MINGA found that articulating the indicators aloud enriched community participation in the selection and refining of the final indicators. This adjustment fostered a more community‐centric approach, rather than merely eliciting reactions to experts employing specialized terminologies. In practical terms, this added steps to mitigate the dominance of technocratic power—embodied by the authority and influence wielded by specialists through the use of technical data and language—in their daily operations (Littoz‐Monnet and Uribe 2023).

Leaders who had participated in MINGA's activities in different municipalities of the Macizo Colombiano subregion of the department of Nariño participated in the process. These leaders were members of a peasant organization, Comité de Integración del Macizo Colombiano CIMA – Nariño (Colombian Massif Integration Committee). Within the pilot project focus groups, two were organized to discuss peace, one composed of adults over 24 years of age, and the other of younger people, with both groups comprising men and women. As the focus group discussions unfolded, the indicators were identified and documented in real time with the participants. The crafting of these indicators underwent a simultaneous verification process, in which the community scrutinized the proposed indicators, thus making the overall process more efficient and coherent. Following this, a methodological tool called “World Cafe” was employed. This involved each group visiting the other and providing feedback on the indicators they had developed.

The process concluded by categorizing the indicators. This involved grouping them in a participatory manner and assigning labels to each of the categories based on how the community perceived them. These were the resulting categories: economy, organization, territory and environment, education, health, human security, culture, and sports. When asked what signs indicated peace in their communities, the most frequently chosen indicators included: “the State recognizes by law the peasantry as subjects of rights,” “there are roads in good condition to transport products,” “young farmers have access to land,” “there is no exploitation in the territories,” and “universities reach the territories.”

Among the conclusions reached following the process, MINGA found that GAM allowed for the collection of indicators that could signify how peace and the permanent presence of the communities in their territories might be achieved. This methodology enabled MINGA to strengthen their understanding of the territory, allowing them to comprehend the communities' perceptions.

MINGA also highlighted the importance of GAM in reflecting the needs and realities experienced by the communities using their own language. Moreover, they found the ability to distinguish between genders to be vital, as the same topic can yield different results when discussed by different genders. In acknowledging the benefits of GAM, MINGA noted, “The methodology has proved important to be implemented across all the territories we support, because, beyond gathering the populations' perceptions about peacebuilding, it allows us to establish diagnostics about the knowledge of the territory and various issues, and facilitates the construction of agendas for the different organizational processes.”⁷

While MINGA had been implementing methodologies that were deeply rooted in the Latin American tradition of PAR and PE, aligning significantly with co‐design and learning, they found the everyday indicator methodology to be particularly resonant with their goals. This was chiefly because, unlike the methods they had used previously, the everyday indicator approach allowed communities not only to define their own subjective concepts but also to be involved integrally in the monitoring process. This approach, thus, extended beyond their previous practices, enabling a more profound and comprehensive level of community participation and co‐learning. GAM proved to be a fitting solution for them, allowing adaptability in its implementation. They modified the original methodology to conduct indicator drafting and verification simultaneously, promoting a more streamlined and inclusive process. Furthermore, the community was enlisted to aid in categorizing findings, ensuring their active participation throughout the entirety of the process, aligning with MINGA's overarching approach of maximizing community involvement at all stages.

Having explored the successful implementation and adaptation of the GAM in the context of Asociación MINGA—a national‐level Colombian organization—we now shift our focus to the international arena. Our next case study involves Search for Common Ground, the world's largest peacebuilding organization, and offers a contrasting perspective on the applicability and adaptability of GAM when used by a larger, international nongovernmental organization.

Search for Common Ground first piloted the GAM approach in 2020–2021 in Afghanistan, Pakistan, South Sudan, and Tunisia. In each instance, the aim was to co‐develop localized indicators of peace and other related concepts, such as justice and religious freedom, with the intention of informing their M&E or programming based on the indicators derived. After the initial pilots, the organization implemented GAM more comprehensively, and as of 2023, 21 country teams have utilized this approach at various stages of their programming.

As an international organization, Search for Common Ground historically has employed a combination of research methodologies within their M&E practices, including focus groups, in‐depth interviews, surveys, and stakeholder mapping. However, with the incorporation of the GAM, the organization began a process of unlearning some of the conventional definitions of “good research and evaluation.” This process aimed to make room for broader interpretations of validity and rigor, as well as utility and relevance. The fundamental belief that communities have the best understanding of what peace means and looks like within their local contexts underpinned these efforts. As part of this process, by employing localized indicators in broader monitoring and tracking, country teams are encouraged to engage with their target communities continuously and iteratively. This approach fosters feedback loops that are more prominent than is typical in the work of international NGOs.

What transpires when an international NGO like Search for Common Ground integrates GAM into its operations? Starting from its first pilot of GAM in 2020, the organization's 17 country teams across the world have utilized this approach and engaged 1,900 individuals in co‐developing localized indicators of peace and related concepts. To provide more specific examples and allow for an in‐depth discussion, we focus on the indicators generated in one of the locations where Search for Common Ground operates, namely Sri Lanka. The Sri Lanka country team first used GAM in 2022 to gain insight into program participants' understanding and experiences of peace and women's empowerment. The localized indicators that emerged from these interactions reflected the realities of life in the target locations in Sri Lanka and were strikingly different from the indicators that the MEL plan originally aimed to track at the outset of the program cycle.

In Sri Lanka, all‐female participants, primarily civil society leaders, elected officials, and entrepreneurs, lived and worked in the Ampara district and came from diverse Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim backgrounds. Living in a post‐war context like Sri Lanka meant that communities often remained in residential spaces segregated along ethnic and religious lines and did not mix and mingle easily at workplaces. The political‐economic inequalities and grievances that initially triggered the conflict remain unresolved, and divisions have become further entrenched in the conflict's aftermath.

When asked what signs indicate peace in their communities, participants focused on five indicators, articulating them as follows:

• Peace is when there are lower numbers of conflicts due to environmental issues such as garbage dumping.

• Peace is when Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslims live in mixed residential areas.

• Peace is when more Muslims, Sinhalese, and Tamil work together in the same spaces.

• Peace is when local authorities consult with local residents when developing infrastructure.

• Peace is when community members are consulted about international organizations' programs.

As noted, participants highlighted the significance of local authorities consulting with communities, underscoring the vital role of community engagement and participation in decision‐making processes. This sentiment was echoed prominently in both focus groups, with those in the Tamil‐speaking group providing explicit examples of protests against local government entities. This serves as a reminder to international organizations to involve local communities not just during, but also prior to, the implementation of programs. Sinhala‐speaking participants pointed out the exclusion of vulnerable populations in some programs, citing the unequal distribution of dry food rations for people with disabilities as a case in point.

Both Sinhala‐ and Tamil‐speaking participants stressed the importance of expressing themselves in their native languages without encountering prejudice or suspicion. As noted, two indicators of peace were Sinhalese, Tamil, and Muslim people working collaboratively within the same spaces or on common projects, and cohabiting in mixed residential areas. This sentiment holds particular significance in the wake of recent instances of violence rooted in misinformation among these groups.

In the concluding remarks, participants drew attention to conflicts within the community that were ignited by environmental concerns, such as conflict related to garbage dumping in Alayadivembu. The salience of concern about environmental issues that can escalate into conflicts or tensions underscored the need for effective environmental management and resolution of related conflicts.

Given the program's focus on women, peace, and security issues, the Sri Lanka team solicited participants' thoughts on women's empowerment. The localized indicators of women's empowerment that most often emerged are listed in Table One. As we can see from the table, participants offered specific instances of what constitutes women's leadership. They put forth examples of capabilities and skills that women leaders should possess in order to be effective in their roles, as well as examples of how they believe the broader community should treat women in leadership positions. As shown by the indicators, domestic violence and other forms of gender‐based violence pose major obstacles to women's ability to uphold their dignity. Participants shared accounts of women subjected to abuse by domestic partners, particularly in families where spouses misuse drugs and alcohol. As shown by the indicators, participants also emphasized the necessity for police stations to respond appropriately to incidents of domestic violence.

The value of the insights gained by these localized indicators of women's empowerment becomes particularly apparent when contrasted with the conventional indicators that the program designers had decided to track at the program's inception. Table One provides a comparative look at these two sets of indicators.

As this juxtaposition shows, conventional MEL indicators that were provided by the US government and tracked throughout this program attempted to capture outcomes in a results‐ and performance‐oriented way. (For more about results‐based evaluations, see Oakley 2022.) These indicators are fundamentally top‐down and grounded in technocratic knowledge, since they were predetermined at the program's inception by program developers and the US government, who proposed these indicators as means to quantify performance and outcomes. While these conventional indicators might assist in capturing some of the program's results, they do not take into account the local knowledge and experiences of the individuals directly involved (cf. Dazzo 2022).

By contrast, locally developed indicators are rooted in local realities and emerge from discussions and interactions with participants. Stakeholders, including civil society organizations, program developers, policymakers, government agencies, and the local communities themselves, can act based on these indicators. Thus, Search for Common Ground's Sri Lanka team offered insights for women, peace, and security practitioners based on the GAM process, proposing to incorporate activities that aimed at enhancing specific skills such as proposal and grant writing, fundraising, and negotiation. As the indicators suggested, women's empowerment is not just about augmenting women's knowledge and skills—it is a relational process in which other community members need to acknowledge women's capabilities and dignity.

Consequently, Search for Common Ground's team recommended that women, peace, and security programs in Sri Lanka engage other community members at the village, township, and district levels through awareness‐raising campaigns and other activities to ensure higher acceptance and recognition of women as leaders. Finally, the team advocated that similar programs invest resources to instigate changes within police and law enforcement institutions for better support of victims of gender‐based violence. Women cannot feel empowered as politicians or entrepreneurs if gender‐based discrimination and violence are normalized.

Search for Common Ground has a long history of using participatory research and M&E methods such as rapid needs assessments, landscape analysis, stakeholder mapping, and outcome harvesting. The application of these methods was often variable due to the constant juggling of timelines, budgets, staff capacities, and varying levels of donor openness to more participatory approaches. However, with the integration of GAM, participatory methods can be mainstreamed consistently, underlining and reinforcing the inherent value of integrating local community participation in all facets of M&E strategies. Through the process of co‐developing indicators and subsequently incorporating them into broader MEL plans and program design, Search for Common Ground's research and evaluation staff members also strengthened existing critically reflexive practice. This encouraged them to question whether the measures used for concepts like peace and women's empowerment—or the methods of tracking the impact of programs—align with the core values of peacebuilding work, such as respecting the dignity of local participants and valuing their lived experiences and knowledge.

The GAM serves as a promising tool in democratizing the often technocratic and top‐down processes of design, monitoring, and evaluation in peacebuilding and community development efforts. In our exploration of Asociación MINGA's and Search for Common Ground's experiences with GAM, we find a compelling argument for the transformative potential of integrating local knowledge and fostering participatory engagement.

Acknowledging the potential limitations, it is important to note that the GAM can be resource intensive, involving both considerable costs and focused human interaction to foster meaningful community engagement. However, this intensive approach is integral, seen not as a drawback but as a foundational investment in high‐quality peacebuilding. In addition, there is a considerable risk that the model could easily be coopted by actors claiming inclusion and meaningful local engagement, but actually applying the tool in “quick and dirty” ways in order to be able to access funding earmarked for localization efforts. An inherent risk is also that NGOs apply the tool in ways that serve their agendas rather than those of the communities by steering the discussions in specific directions or omitting important issues or indicators. However, the case studies presented here illuminate how traditional technocratic approaches to M&E can inadvertently obscure the nuanced realities of local communities, potentially limiting programs and missing critical indicators of peace and development. Instead, GAM, rooted in local participation and co‐creation of indicators, brings local knowledge, experience, and priorities to the fore, strengthening the relevance and impact of any intervention.

Asociación MINGA's work in Colombia and Search for Common Ground's programs in Sri Lanka exemplify how embracing GAM can reframe the power dynamics inherent in program development, effectively challenging the technocratic norms. These case studies reveal how GAM can offer a more profound understanding of communities, allow for a better alignment of their priorities with the implementing organizations and the government, and promote an improved, localized interpretation of concepts such as peace, women's empowerment, and community well‐being.

Accountability to funders, boards, and regulatory bodies remains imperative in order to secure further funding, but it is crucial to remember that existing M&E systems already incorporate this accountability. Our aim is not to remove this responsibility but to elevate accountability to the communities at the core of our work. The focal concern should be the impact on these communities, with fiscal delineations and expenditures not overshadowing the essence of our endeavors in community development and peacebuilding. Moreover, the adoption of GAM poses a challenge to the longstanding emphasis on the “countable” outputs that donors and funders have long favored. For years, the method regimes in peacebuilding and development sectors have prioritized quantitative metrics and technocratic methods to evaluate success. Donors are not expected to forsake their reliance on quantitative metrics; rather, these everyday indicators complete the picture. They are meant to be complementary, not replacements, bringing about a richer evaluation landscape, melding standardized metrics with community‐generated indicators to provide a more holistic understanding of impacts and nuances. The engagement of, and endorsement from, donors like Humanity United, which has been a thought partner in the GAM experiment, epitomize the growing recognition and appreciation for such a comprehensive methodology, signaling a nuanced shift in donor expectations and behavior.

The focus on what can easily be counted and reported back to donors can inadvertently diminish an understanding of the complexity and dynamism of on‐the‐ground realities. It can potentially lead to overlooking significant qualitative aspects of community transformation, including social cohesion, peace, and empowerment. By embracing local wisdom and lived experiences, GAM encourages a shift toward more nuanced, context‐sensitive indicators of success, asserting that what matters most may not always be easily countable or quantifiable. This could provoke a transformation in donor behavior, where the profound insights offered by community‐led methodologies not only are appreciated but actively sought and expected in project frameworks.

In the often ambiguous and complex realm of peacebuilding, such a shift can prove particularly valuable. Peace is a multidimensional construct, deeply tied to local culture, history, and sociopolitical dynamics. By challenging these norms, GAM can potentially reshape donor expectations and reporting requirements. This could stimulate a transformation in donor behavior, whereby donors not only appreciate but also value the profound insights that such community‐led, qualitative methodologies can offer.

Finally, GAM and EPI appear to hold the potential to redefine the direction of accountability in peacebuilding and development work. In contrast to the traditional outward and upward accountability, GAM and EPI insist on a more robust, expansive, and inclusive understanding of accountability, one that recognizes and prioritizes accountability to the communities themselves. These models transform the traditional script, acknowledging that local communities, as those directly affected by programs and interventions, should have a decisive say in defining and measuring outcomes. Through these models, communities are not merely passive recipients of programs but active participants in shaping and evaluating them.

Interviews Conducted

Olga Suárez. Bogotá, January 20, 2023.

Olga Suárez. Virtual interview, March 28, 2023.