Using participatory impact diagrams to evaluate a community development project in Kenya

Kariuki, J. and J. Njuki. 2013. Using participatory impact diagrams to evaluate a community development project in Kenya. Development in Practice 23(1): 90-106.

Participatory approaches for impact assessment are increasingly becoming popular with development organisations for engaging multiple stakeholders. We present our use of participatory impact diagrams as an evaluation tool within a mixed methods impact assessment of several drought-reduction interventions in Kenya. Results show that because men and women have different roles, their experiences of interventions vary. We discuss how this methodology encouraged communities to describe various intervention outcomes including unintended impacts, often overlooked by conventional impact assessment approaches. Methodological challenges included the integration of quantitative data; opportunities for its application within the wider discipline of monitoring and evaluation are considered.