Violence against women and girls is rooted in an unequal distribution of power and resources, reinforced through harmful social norms, behaviours and practices. To address this, programming should advance rights-based social norms, attitudes and behaviours at societal, community and individual levels. An effective way to do this is through an inclusive, locally-driven, participatory approach to programming, including in monitoring, evaluation and reporting processes.

To understand how participatory approaches can help address gender inequality and unequal power dynamics, see how the approach compares to conventional MER:

To implement a PMER approach consistently and across the programme cycle, it can be helpful to convene working groups on strategic PMER development and implementation. Members of the working group should represent a variety of local stakeholders, including civil society, rights holders and key stakeholders (including women and girls, feminist and women’s rights activists and organisations). As an example, the role of the working group could include:

• Providing strategic advice on the overall scope and direction of the PMER approach and strategy.
• Providing technical advice on implementing PMER.
• Feeding into existing or upcoming PMER exercises/processes, at country, regional or global level.
• Facilitating systematic feedback (including technical advice) and engagement of key stakeholders, including marginalised groups, in relevant Monitoring, Evaluation and Reporting processes.
• Participating in monitoring visits, as needed, and engaging in broader consultations with groups and networks, especially at the local and grassroots levels, at regular intervals to update them and solicit input on the performance of the programme and to inform the annual programme reports.
• Supporting efforts to collect promising and good practices, impact stories and lessons learned from implementing PMER at country/regional programme level, and dissemination of lessons to other programmes.

PMER aims at effectively tracking programmatic achievements and challenges, while acknowledging and addressing deep-rooted power imbalances often reproduced by development programming. It’s therefore important to prioritise relationship building, moving at a pace which fosters trust for genuine collaboration and is flexible enough to support meaningful engagement around PMER, and ultimately contribute to movement building.

The following conditions can support efficient implementation for using participatory approaches:

• Time: Participatory approaches take time and resources, and the process of change is often not linear, with iterative learning throughout. Allocating adequate time is therefore central to the success of PMER.
• Organisational culture: PMER requires negotiation about who will participate, what will be monitored or evaluated, how and when data will be collected and analysed, what the information means, and how findings will be shared, and what action will be taken. Creating an environment where participants can provide open, honest, and constructive feedback, and disagreements/tensions/conflicts can be managed and resolved productively, will be conducive to this approach.
• Implement findings into the decision-making process: This requires establishing and strengthening the formal and informal spaces for dialogue and exchange between the participating stakeholders, for fostering coordination and encouraging corrective action to maintain accountability.
• Accountability: In order to meaningfully implement PMER, it is important to sincerely interrogate accountability – namely, who is accountable to whom and why. This is especially important when considering the impact of multiple lines of accountability to e.g. member states and governments, donors, communities, rights holders, etc.
• Power-Sharing: Relatedly, PMER processes should genuinely engage with power dynamics. Power must be meaningfully redistributed and actually shared among stakeholders in the process.

A participatory approach will usually make use of several techniques and tools selected and combined to suit the objectives of the work and the resources available. Standard tools for data collection (i.e. key informant interviews, focus group discussions, participant observation, case studies) can be used in a participatory approach if facilitated in a manner which supports deeper participation of stakeholders, rather than extract information.

Some specific tools have been designed to support PMER, often based on visual aids and using locally available materials, for example:

• Stakeholder analysis: Used to develop an understanding of the power relationships, influence, and interests of the various people involved in an activity and to determine who should participate, and when.
• Collecting stories and narratives: Storytelling is useful for evaluation, and can be used to focus on a particular intervention while also reflecting on the different contextual factors that influence outcomes. These can be collected through individual or group interviews.
• Participatory visual storytelling: Use digital media (i.e. photography or video) or artistic mediums (i.e. drawing or storyboarding) to empower participants to tell their story.
• Outcome Harvesting: Process of collecting evidence of what has been achieved, before working backward to determine whether and how the project or intervention contributed to the change.
• Sensemaker: A narrative-based methodology to collect and analyse large numbers of stories for understanding complex change, with active participation of project participants. It involves a dedicated software package for collection and analysis.
• Most Significant Change: Approach seeking stakeholders’ perspectives on the impact of a programme, and how (or if) change has taken place. Can be collected through semi-structured interviews, focus group discussions, or via written formats.
• Journals or log keeping:  Process for tracking lessons learned and challenges from the perspective of those involved in a programme.
• Community Score Cards/Report Cards: Type of participatory survey to solicit feedback on the quality and performance of services or programmes in order to gauge satisfaction and opportunities for change.