Monitoring, evaluation and learning

Monitoring, evaluation and learning enables organisations to monitor their interventions, using dedicated measurement tools to develop an understanding of whether initiatives have delivered meaningful and impactful change, that address the specific needs and aspirations of refugees and other displaced people.

Monitoring, evaluation and learning activities for organisations implementing sport initiatives for refugees are essential for:

• Assessing impact.  Measuring the impact and outcomes of sport activities for refugees allows organisations to determine if the programmes are achieving their intended objectives, such as promoting physical and mental well-being, fostering social integration, enhancing self-confidence, and providing a sense of belonging. By collecting data and feedback from participants, organisations can understand the effectiveness and relevance of their interventions.
• Adapting projects. Providing insights into the needs and preferences of refugee participants, it helps organisations understand what types of sport activities are most beneficial and engaging for the target population. By regularly monitoring and evaluating the initiatives organisations can adapt and tailor their offerings to better meet the specific needs and interests of refugees. This ensures that the activities are culturally sensitive, inclusive, and impactful.
• Allocating resources effectively. By assessing the effectiveness and efficiency of sport projects or initiatives for refugees, organisations can determine where resources are best used and make informed decisions about resource allocation. This includes evaluating the allocation of financial resources, human resources, equipment, and facilities. Monitoring and evaluation data can highlight areas that require additional support or where resources can be reallocated for maximum impact.
• Demonstrating accountability. By providing evidence to stakeholders, including donors, funders, and the wider community, about the outcomes and impact of sport activities for refugees, it demonstrates accountability and transparency in the use of resources and the achievement of intended goals. Regular reporting allows organisations to showcase the positive contributions of sport in refugee communities and maintain support for their initiatives
• Fostering learning.  By systematically collecting data and evaluating initiatives, organisations can identify best practices and lessons learned. This information can be shared with other organisations, policymakers, and practitioners to improve the design and implementation of sport activities for refugees globally. It helps build an evidence base for effective interventions and contributes to the overall development of the field.
• Ensuring long-term sustainability.  By continuously assessing their impact, organisations can identify strategies to enhance initiatives sustainability, such as building local capacity, fostering community ownership, and strengthening partnerships. Evaluation data can inform long-term planning, ensuring that the initiatives remain relevant, impactful, and responsive to the evolving needs of refugee populations.

• Monitoring and evaluation: Toolkit section
• Monitoring and evaluation in policy (also includes guidance relevant to practitioners)

Situation analyses and assessments

• Child Friendly Participatory Assessment Tools: A Toolbox of Ideas
  The 16 child-friendly participatory assessment tools in this set can be adapted for rapid assessments, monitoring or evaluation.
• Child Protection Rapid Assessment Toolkit
  This toolkit encourages the use of consistent assessment processes across the child protection sector to minimise required resources, collect data that can be compared across locations and time, and deliver results that are more persuasive to planners, funders and other decision-makers.
• Ethical Approaches to Gathering Information from Children and Adolescents in International Settings: Guidelines and Resources 
  This publication draws attention to commonly accepted principles of medical ethics and human rights as applied to the special needs of young people. It suggests measures that an adult working with children and adolescents must implement throughout the activity’s duration to prevent unintentional harm.
• Global Refugee Youth Consultations: Toolkit for Consulting with Youth
  A framework within which interested parties can meaningfully consult with the young people they work with. The exercises in the toolkit support young people to better understand and analyse their situations by examining causes and impacts and identifying solutions to the challenges they face.
• Listen and Learn: Participatory Assessment with Children and Adolescents
  This tool provides a practical, specific ‘how-to’ guide on the participatory assessment process with adolescents and children. It advocates a range of alternative methods that specifically target girls and boys, address the power differential between children and adults, and help build trusting relationships.
• Project Cycle Management in Emergencies and Humanitarian Crises Handbook: Situation analysis, strategic planning and monitoring
  These methodological guidelines describe approaches, attitudes, methods, techniques and tools that can be adapted for emergency and humanitarian crisis contexts. They consider specifics related to context, pace, timeframe, beneficiaries, stakeholders, needs, access, security and volume — both financial and operational.
• The Child and Youth Resilience Measure
  A tool that measures the resources (individual, relational, communal and cultural) available to individuals that may bolster their resilience. 

Monitoring and evaluation

• Better Evaluation
  This website offers extensive resources on the different types of evaluation, how to select an appropriate evaluation for your context, methods for analysing data, ethical considerations and much more.
• Child and Youth-Centred Accountability: A Guide for Involving Young People in Monitoring & Evaluating Child Protection Systems
  This guide provides a number of qualitative, participatory tools that can be used to involve young people in monitoring and evaluating protection outcomes. 
• Creating Better Cities with Children and Youth: A Manual for Participation
  A practical manual on how to conceptualise, structure and facilitate youth participation in community development. 
• Equal Access Participatory Monitoring and Evaluation Toolkit
  Module 3 of this toolkit discusses the collection and interpretation of rich qualitative data, key qualitative methods and short surveys as well as the importance of good facilitation. 
• A Toolkit for Monitoring and Evaluating Children’s Participation: Tools for monitoring and evaluating children’s participation. Booklet 5.A
  Tools to use with stakeholders, including children and young people, to gather and analyse information to monitor and evaluate the scope, quality and outcomes of children’s participation. 
• Evaluation of Humanitarian Action Guide
  This guide supports evaluation specialists and non-specialists in every stage of an evaluation.
• Impact Evaluation in Practice, Second Edition
  A comprehensive and accessible introduction to impact evaluation for policymakers and development practitioners that incorporates real-world examples to present practical guidelines for designing and implementing impact evaluations.
• A Common Monitoring and Evaluation Framework for Field Mental Health and Psychosocial Support in Emergency Settings
  Guidance for assessing, researching, designing, implementing, monitoring and evaluating mental health and psychosocial support programmes in emergency settings. 
• Inter-Agency Guide to the Evaluation of Psychosocial Programming in Emergencies
  A guide to assist organisations working on psychosocial support programmes. 

Other research, links and tools

• Football and Refugees: Addressing key challenges
  A collection of good practices shared by UEFA member associations. This guide shows how football can have an impact in lessening difficulties that have emerged because of recent displacement crisis in Europe. 
• Mapping of good practices relating to social inclusion of migrants through sport
  This study, initiated by the European Commission, provides an analytical overview of the types of sports-related projects and interventions used to support the social inclusion of migrants and identifies best practice in their design, implementation and measurement.
• Sport & Peace: Mapping the Field
  Supported by a partnership between Generations For Peace and the Georgetown University Masters of Arts Programme in Conflict Resolution, this report highlights findings from a one-year international mapping project to identify promising practices in the design, implementation and evaluation of sport for peace programmes.
• Sports as a tool for refugee empowerment
  The study explores the use of sport as a psychosocial intervention. It looks at the ways in which sports programs enhance the quality of life and improve the psychosocial development of refugees, in particular youth.
• Sport, Refugees, and Forced Migration: A Critical Review of the Literature (Spaaij et al)           
  This literature review offers an integrative, critical review of scientific literature on the topic of sports, refugees and forced migration. It analyses academic literature published in this domain derived from fourteen languages published between 1996 and 2019. 
• The Roles of Sport and Education in the Social Inclusion of Asylum Seekers and Refugees (Amara et al)
  The project was a part of a policy initiative of the Council of Europe and the European Parliament. It seeks to identify the ways in which sport has been used for the social inclusion of asylum seekers and refugees in UK contexts.
• Understanding Community-Based Protection
  Drawing on documents, interviews with practitioners and field visits, this document sets out key lessons that have emerged in recent years during the delivery of Community-Based Protection. It aims to help UNHCR staff and partners at all levels to integrate community-based approaches to protection in their humanitarian work.

Image by Olympic Refuge Foundation (ORF)/Masud Rana