From start to finish: adaptive MEL design and full-cycle assessment with CIVICUS’s Local Leadership Labs

CIVICUS is a global alliance of civil society organisations advocating for civic space and citizen action worldwide.

CIVICUS’s Local Leadership Labs brought together Global South convening partners to build initiatives rooted in their own contexts in a landscape that has rarely made space for that kind of ownership. We designed and book-ended a full adaptive MEL cycle: mapping the donor and policy ecosystem, co-producing indicators, conducting in-depth interviews to assess participation, trust and co-creation, and tracking change through to an endline evaluation across partner capacities, funder commitments and ecosystem behaviours. What has emerged is a story about what becomes possible when local organisations are given genuine access and ownership: tangible innovation at the local level, partners extending their reach to communities at the margins of formal development structures, and evidence that reflects not just outcomes but the conditions that made them possible.

We also designed two PDFs of the outcome findings, including the methodology documentation and theory of change diagrams and process.

Read more about Local Leadership Labs initiative here.