Who? Resources: people
Team (time and skills)
You may not have a team wholly dedicated to planning and doing MEL, but you will very likely need to involve your colleagues. How can they help you? Here are some questions to consider now, and revisit periodically throughout your planning.
- Who will be working on this process with you?
- How much time will they contribute and when?
- What relevant skills or experience do they have?
- Which skills and experience will you need?
- Are there any skills missing from the team?
- How could you bridge any gaps?
Activity: Answer the above questions as best you can. Put your answers in your workbook. You may need to speak to the individuals about their skills, or perhaps their manager (see also section below on support from leadership team). You might make a list, draw a table or sketch a team ‘flower’, where each petal represents the skills needed and shows who has those skills.
Activity: Add a reminder to yourself to revisit these questions and your team structure as you build up your plan. You may need to tweak a little here and there.
Project participants and other stakeholders
Involving project participants and other stakeholder groups can make for a better evaluation. Who will you involve and how? You may like to take our Stakeholder Analysis mini-course. It is a short course which explains what a stakeholder is, helps you to identify your stakeholders and presents a simple tool for determining who to involve and how.
Activity: Check out the Stakeholder Analysis mini-course now and decide whether it could help your project.
Support from your leadership team
Are your leadership team aware that you have joined Permaculture Impact? What are their priorities for evidence of impact? We recommend that you inform them that you are working on MEL for your project, and get their support at an early stage. They should be involved to some extent: they may want to add their own requirements, they might be able to provide some budget, allocate specific team members or free up other resources for MEL. In any case, they should be informed and ideally be supportive.
Activity: Plan how you will inform your leadership team of your intentions regarding MEL and how you will gather their input and get their support. Look back at your motivations for doing MEL and discuss these with your leadership team too.
Support from other permaculture projects
You are now part of an ecosystem of projects and small organisations striving to demonstrate the impact of permaculture. Tap into the experiences of others, ask questions and share your own journey. Others may have already tried what you are planning. As more people join the conversation in the forum, we will build up a pool of wisdom.
Activity: Visit the forum now [LINK] – you can browse existing posts, or create your own.