Impact

Caritas Switzerland has a monitoring and evaluation system at the three levels of project, country programme and overall programme.

Projects are closely followed by our staff on the ground and at head office in Lucerne. Regular visits, together with Caritas Switzerland’s standard indicators, form the basis of detailed reports which are produced half-yearly or annually about every project. The reports provide information about project progress, the budget and the challenge. They also point out options for action if necessary.

In addition, most projects are evaluated by external specialists half-way through the project period and at the end of the project. The categories of this evaluation are relevance, cost-benefit ratio, long-term effect, possible improvements and adaptations.

Country programmes and overall programmes are observed and evaluated by means of indicators and key figures. In addition, the figures collected from the projects are extrapolated to the level of the country programmes and the general programmes.

In selected projects, we examine the long-term impact:

• Is the income situation in a village still better 5 or 10 years after the end of the project than before?
• Is the food situation of a project region still stable after the project ended despite the worsening climate crisis?
• Can the refugees use the acquired vocational skills years later and support themselves independently?
• Can the people whom we supported build a sustainably livelihood after their return to their home country?
• Do the methods and skills learnt continue to be applied and passed on?

Evaluations of the long-term impact are very time and cost intensive. For this reason, they can only be carried out periodically, e.g. at the request of funding partners such as Swiss Solidarity.

Two key aspects in monitoring and evaluation are the internal learning processes and knowledge transfer.

Employees in the field systematically collect their findings, experiences and samples in the projects. The learning processes aim at a continuous improvement and development of our projects and programmes. The findings are also used for planning and managing successive phases or similar projects. They are freely available to all projects and countries.

We actively and systematically share the acquired knowledge with our partners internally and externally. On the one hand, knowledge gained is processed, summarised and disseminated in the form of thematic papers, and on the other hand, various exchange forums are available. At the «Learning Journeys» events, employees from different teams meet with specialists to share views about a subject.