Colonial and racist legacies have historically shaped research and evaluation practices, often excluding or misrepresenting the voices of marginalised communities. In the context of PMEL, adopting anti-colonial and anti-racist frameworks can help us make reparations for how our organisation and sector has operated, address injustices, and make sure that from our policies to daily practices, we step away from those power dynamics. Both offer powerful ways to redo the way we work, since they go beyond just pointing to the structural problems in our sector – they actively champion better ones. Action research at its best. 

Anti-colonial approaches start at a higher level and emphasise the importance of dismantling the power structures that have historically allowed powerholders  to impose their world views and agendas on communities. In PMEL, this might mean rethinking who controls the evaluation process, what questions are asked, and whose knowledge is valued. For example, rather than using only ‘Western’ or evaluation metrics, like KPIs, we can rethink the type of indicators we seek. Instead of defaulting to counting the number of people attending a workshop, get creative – how can you know that the workshop has been successful? What will its facilitators observe, what will the environment feel like, what would you like participants to say during and afterwards? 

Anti-racist frameworks similarly start at a systemic level, and look at racial and other power hierarchies and systemic barriers. Translating that to your day to day work, and using the example above – who would facilitate the workshop, and why? How are they representative of the people attending, the community you work with, the country you work in? If the answer is ‘hmm, not so much’ – rethink it. Or if you need to have an ally or outsider facilitating, maybe because of a funder demand, think about how they can structure it in an anti-racist way. Questions about how your organisation works for example, can help to surface recommendations and critical feedback from participants so it can help your organisation reflect on your anti-racist practices and approaches. From that, you can examine how racial hierarchies and systemic biases are embedded in traditional evaluation practices. Starting at the basic level – what assumptions had you been making about your work, which have been disproved through the workshop? 

There’s a real potential for anti-colonial and anti-racist approaches, if applied with care and meaning and not performatively, for us to expand our definition of what M&E means and can do for our work. It can help us become better at our work, and avoid reproducing the oppressive dynamics that all our work should ultimately aim to challenge.