PMEL stands for Planning, Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning. JEDI+ stands for Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion. Plus more.

Why do I use the terms I use? Why not just stick to calling it M&E or DEI? What is with this obsession with acronyms, right?

Here’s why I prefer JEDI+ to DEIB, and it’s not only because of my lifelong love of Star Wars. DEIB stands for Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging. I like its focus on Belonging, and I toyed with using that as my acronym for a while.

DEI work is needed because many things are broken in the global systems we have to live in. It is our responsibility to centre justice as the main goal. It isn’t right that certain groups are oppressed more than others, and that things continue as they are. I like that focus on fairness and a shared sense of what’s right.

But without knowing where to start it can get confusing. Starting with justice allows us to figure out what we want to see – what would justice look like?

To me, JEDI’s focus on justice as our first challenge towards social change starts with the following simple questions:

Why does it have to be like this?

Who says?

Who is in power and why?

Why can’t we do better?

What do we want to see?

For example, within the organisations and companies I work with, calling it JEDI allows us to examine shared values. How does justice in our company look? What is ‘the right thing’ for us?

Once we have that vision, we can build an equity, diversity, and inclusion policy that works and is aligned with culture.

JEDI+ is aligned with reality and has our specific end goal in mind rather than a vague vision of ‘world peace’. That approach, which I’ve seen all too often with generic ‘DEI’ training, can get nebulous and makes holding people to account basically impossible.

If you don’t have a specific goal in mind, how do you know if you’re on track? If you don’t have a shared foundation of values, how do you know you’re working towards the same goal instead of against each other? I’ve often found that my approach opens up the first conversation for an organisation or company to think about terms like justice and equity.

I like bringing this ‘big picture’ idea down to the day-to-day.

Sometimes justice can look like a clear and accountable chain of command for pay equity and having regular conversations around compensation. This may sound simple, but if that’s the first time the whole company has sat down to talk about it rather than whisper around the water cooler or shield information in memos, that’s a gigantic first step.

I also like adding a ‘+’ to the end so it shows that the work doesn’t stop with just these four (albeit complex) concepts. The work continues, leaving space for us to add more ideas as we evolve the sector.

As for PMEL, I like the cyclical nature it gives our work.

You can read more here. I’ve written about what each of these terms means to me – planning, monitoring, evaluation, and learning – why I chose this cycle, and how they fit together.

I’ve found it’s the most thorough process to ensure our programmes are meaningful to the people we work with and impactful.

Planning means designing not only your project but the child protection programme it would sit under, the latest strategy cycle for your organisation, and bringing a human-centred design approach to your work.

You then monitor and evaluate that project and its role in your communities – as well as your role. But leaving it at M&E means there’s no accountability once the donor report is sent, which is false. We have to set aside regular moments to reflect and learn from what we’ve done so that we can implement more relevant projects. Learning also means capturing lessons and ideas to support the next project you design. And the cycle continues.