What if you could hop on a call and receive personalized expert advice to help you understand, measure, and optimize your project's social impact?

If you need quick, expert feedback related to your project's monitoring and evaluation (M&E) framework...

...or just a sounding board for M&E ideas that you already have in mind...

...then the advisory or coaching calls may be for you!

With the objective of ensuring that your project's M&E is as robust, practical, and transformative as possible, the calls are customized to your specific situation. The end-goal is to maximize the potential that your project delivers measurable people-positive results.

The advice and coaching that you receive is based on international good practices and real-world experience across multiple sectors.

The sessions will help you gain clarity to ensure that your project's M&E produces quality evidence to the people who need it, when they need it – without it feeling overly burdensome, complex, and time-consuming.

And aside from saving time in the long run, you also reduce the need to outsource M&E activities by gaining the needed skills. As a bonus, the approach taken in the advisory/coaching calls is grounded in broad principles that can be applied to multiple projects, thus ensuring that the insights, knowledge, and skills that you gain are transferable to other projects.

Whatever role you play in your project –

• whether you’re an M&E specialist who’d like an occasional sounding board or second opinion as you conduct, commission, manage, and/or oversee M&E for your project or your clients’ projects;
• a project board member or team leader who would like to learn how to get more from the M&E of your project or who would like to better understand how to leverage M&E to meet your targets and objectives;
• a project team member who would like to learn how to better interact with or use, or how to help improve, your project’s M&E framework; or
• a member of the community in which a project operates who would like to better engage with the project team on the measurement, management, and optimization of project results –,

or maybe you’re currently between projects or considering starting one of your own and want to learn about how make the most of M&E to maximize the potential that your project delivers positive results –,

I (more about who “I” am below) am here to serve you.

Hop on an advisory or coaching call today!

Your advisor/coach and her backstory

Kandi Shejavali

_{Hi! I’m Kandi Shejavali, graduate of New York University (NYU) and professional in international development program management, with a specialization in monitoring and evaluation (M&E) frameworks.}

_{I have over a decade of global experience applying M&E knowledge and skills to projects aimed at making a measurable contribution to positive social and environmental outcomes. The projects I’ve worked on have been at international, national, and sub-national levels, and my clients range from governments to multilateral organizations to foundations, with activities encompassing a wide variety of sectors (see below).}

_{One of my greatest joys comes from advising, coaching, and learning from other social impact/international development practitioners and helping them boost their projects' potential to deliver positive results. I’d be honored to take that journey with you!}

_{p.s. My other greatest joys include great food, reading bedtime stories to my nieces and nephews, running (well, not always a joy while doing it...), but those are for another platform!}

_{The sectors in which I have experience include:} 

_{agriculture; climate change mitigation and adaptation; communication for development (C4D); domestic revenue mobilization and public investment management; education; finance for biodiversity; financial inclusion (FSD/market development); governance/implementation management; health (including COVID-19); human and child rights protection; land; national development; oil and gas; poverty alleviation; social protection (public works as social protection); tourism.}

The projects I've worked on have been funded by entities such as the EU, FCDO, FSD Africa, GIZ, MCC, UNDP, UNICEF, corporate foundations, among others.

See what some of my corporate clients and employers have said

“[Kandi] played a key role in developing a well-received theory of change and in defining a suitable indicator framework for a complex project. Her refinement of the project’s theory of change, program logic and indicator table was drawn upon to inform similar work for other projects. … Kandi’s excellent communication skills allowed her to be widely accepted within the team. Even usually [skeptical] team members listened carefully to her counsel. Her work was well received as a result of the high quality, creativity and unwavering reliability with which she goes about it.” – Client (project in southeast Asia)

“Having worked with her since 2010, I have always experienced Kandi’s performance to be excellent, as evidenced by teams’ feedback. In particular, colleagues have remarked on her technical expertise and highly effective people skills….” – Client (multi-country project in sub-Saharan Africa)

“[Kandi’s] demonstrated high level of performance confirms that [she] is a consummate professional, possessing [the] requisite array of technical and management skills as well as the requisite passion, commitment, temperament, and people skills.” – Former employer (multi-sector project in sub-Saharan Africa)

_{(If you'd like to read more of what clients and employers have had to say about collaborating with me, click here.)}

My backstory – ‘Leave [the world] better than you found it’: the gift that informed my initial ‘why’

During one of my spring breaks as a college student, I volunteered for a project that provided lodging for homeless mothers and their children, while giving the mothers the support they needed to (re)gain their independence. Under the leadership of the childcare and education team, my responsibilities were to help support a safe and engaging learning and play environment for the children while their mothers.

At the end of my period of service, the project team offered me a gift in the form of a painted tile. On it was the image of a dreamy blue and green earth surrounded by diverse people with linked hands. (I’m sure they were singing ‘kumbaya’, but unfortunately tiles don’t typically come with audio included...at least they didn't at that time.)

Superimposed on this image, in bold lettering, was the phrase ‘Leave it better than you found it’.

The gift seemed to validate my desire to work on projects that aim to leave the world better than we found it – which to me meant projects that created positive outcomes for all life forms and their ecosystems. Basically, making a positive difference for people and the planet, whether at a small-scale community level, at a larger sub-national or national level, or at the international level.

But that raised a key question in my teenage mind...

How can we know for sure that we’re leaving the world better than we found it?

“How can we know for sure that we’re leaving the world better than we found it?” That was the question that arose in my mind as I tucked the tile gift into my packed bags at the end of that spring break of volunteering.

A few years later, I thought I had found the answer: M&E. In my mind, the best way to know the extent and nature of the difference that is being, or has been, made was through robust monitoring and evaluation (M&E) – that is, the science of measuring, tracking, and evaluating project results.

I had found my career path!

Over the years as an M&E specialist for public/social impact projects funded by a variety of entities (e.g., governments, international agencies, private corporations, foundations, communities, individuals), my view of M&E evolved. Rather than viewing M&E as a 'just' a tool that helps us know whether we’re leaving the world better than we found it, I saw the promise of M&E as being to help ‘[demonstrate] how close or how far we are from the type of society we want’.

It was a subtle shift but one that changed my view in fundamental ways and that added an additional layer of meaning and urgency to my work.

But my questioning still wasn't done...

Why not leverage M&E not only to measure change but also to better understand and help bring about that very change we're seeking to (co-)create?

Sure, in a context of limited resources and a growing awareness that accelerated action is needed to ensure that all people and our planet can thrive, M&E is essential. Social impact projects must be accountable to funders and to affected populations by showing results. They need to ensure that their efforts are targeted to the most effective interventions.

But the M&E of these projects can and should be based on a framework that enables project teams and other individuals or groups affected by and/or interested in the project to continuously learn about what works and what does not so that they can adapt their interventions accordingly, in timely fashion. (I used to think that this went without saying, but based on the MEL acronym that has cropped up to refer to learning-focused M&E, perhaps it does need to be said. For my rant about MEL and other acronyms that have popped up to reflect various flavors of M&E, see this article. :-) )

Not only that, M&E activities should be based on a comprehensive framework that lends coherence to project (including project-related M&E) activities and that accounts for the complex systems in which projects operate.

And, beyond that still, M&E frameworks can and should adopt approaches and introduce tools that make room for 'other' ways of knowing (beyond the classic, Cartesian, dominant worldview), that question business-as-usual where necessary, and, above all, that prioritize Life-affirming action (e.g., ensuring the meaningful participation of all voices, the restoration of the appropriate relationship between humankind and nature, etc.).

All this has informed my current approach to M&E...

Let’s take a quick peek into the near future

Imagine a few weeks or months from now:

• You've received expert answers to your questions.
• You’ve applied the feedback and the skills you’ve learned to your specific project(s), confidently and effectively.
• Thanks to you, your project's M&E is more coherent (read: hangs together as a whole), robust (read: meets all relevant requirements), practical (read: less burdensome and complex...basically less of a pain :-) ), and transformative (read: holistic, taking into account complexity, interrogating the status quo where necessary, and acknowledging the sacredness of Life).
• This has led to the an overall improvement in the project team's ability to demonstrate accountability to project funders and to affected populations, track and apply learning to follow-on implementation, and communicate coherently and credibly about project results...which, in turn, has led to an enhanced capacity to build a positive image and attract supporters (e.g., funders and volunteers).
• Overall, your project’s potential to create positive social impact is enhanced. The people and communities and ecosystems that your project is aimed at serving are more likely to thrive.
• Ultimately, you’ve helped to make a lasting positive impact on the world.

Book a once-off advisory call or multi-session coaching program, and together we can help change the world for the better.

p.s. Don’t worry if your project/initiative has its own donor-specific or other requirements for M&E. The advisory calls and coaching programs teach core elements of quality M&E that are applicable to a wide variety of projects, including those whose results measurement framework may need to follow specific guidelines from the funder or other entities. The approach is in line with good international principles and practices of M&E as well as with documented new trends in results measurement and management, with the maximization of positive, transformative outcomes at the core.

p.p.s. My specialization is in M&E frameworks and related results measurement, tracking/monitoring, data quality assurance and verification, results communications, learning, and adaptation. I have also conducted evaluations and have good familiarity with evaluation approaches and methods, especially with how to integrate evaluation considerations into the broader M&E framework. However, I do not consider myself an evaluation guru, and complex analytical and statistical techniques are not my forté (power calculations? yeah, no :-) ), so if you need support in those areas I'm not your gal.

p.p.p.s. If what you've read sounds good to you and we were to work together, be assured that I'll show up fully to our sessions. I'll be 100% there to serve you. But there are also some things that I'll require from you: that you fully show up, too; that your phone is not a distraction (turned off or placed away from you); and that you'll take action on what we collaborate on during the session. Being fully present and engaged, together we can create something that will be of immense value to you.

I hope to see you on a call!

Kandi Shejavali