What is RADIQUAL?

RADIQUAL is a manifesto, framework, and methodology I developed in 2018 and use across my M&E work. It also informs how I run my business.

The Course

I prepared a course bringing The RADIQUAL Manifesto, The RADIQUAL Framework, and The RADIQUAL Methodology to M&E and social impact.

The RADIQUAL Manifesto and Framework

It collects my experiences and the lessons I’ve learned from a decade in our industry. It looks at how we design our projects, do M&E, and engage with each other and our communities. It’s inspired by participatory action research, localisation, community-led movements like #Shiftthepower, and many others.I wanted to build a new framework that would represent my values, and how I practice innovation in PMEL and JEDI+. The framework was nameless for a long time – it just existed.

When it came around to finding a name for it, since I was sharing it with clients and using it more publicly in my work, I wanted something that aligned with my political beliefs and that would contain acronyms.

I am politically liberal, and some of the values I hold mark me as a ‘progressive’ or ‘radical’, depending on who you talk to.

I am also Leslie Knope in real life, and a sucker for a good acronym.

I used keywords that come up often about me, my political beliefs, and my work. I fed those into Chat GPT along with a short description of the framework and methodology.

People have always called me and my politics radical. Over the years it’s become a real badge of honour. I’m not sure I’d agree with that, since I don’t see what’s particularly radical about my beliefs and practices.

I don’t see what’s radical about needing to blow up the entire system and start from scratch. To calling out performative allyship and calling for people to translate their supposed values into action.

Or to make reparations for historical injustices and war crimes, to teach colonial history and the transatlantic slave trade in their full brutal truth so we hopefully never make these mistakes again. I don’t see what’s radical about making every company and organisation adhere to truly sustainable values and a circular economy rather than destroying the planet and mass consumption. Rebuilding the tax system to make sure Starbucks and Amazon don’t run everything and run their business with human, labour, and environmental rights is just common sense.

So does calling all this out and holding people to high standards make me and my work radical? Well, OK then!

There’s a lot that’s already been said about whether evaluators – and by extension all PMEL consultants – can and even should be political. What is lost by us involving ourselves deeply in the communities rather than being objective researchers or scientists, as we should be?

I fundamentally disagree with that, for two main reasons: it’s impossible to be apolitical, and the traditional system is outdated. 

I don’t think an apolitical life is for anyone who lives on the planet. We can’t detach ourselves from global geopolitics, climate change, our local party politics, or anything else. I live on this planet and I’m part of this world so I also wanted my framework to clearly show my political engagement and activity.

The traditional scientific system of inquiry and analysis is fine – or at least, I don’t know enough about traditional science to make that call. However, social science applies traditional science too rigorously, and we never work in sanitised laboratory conditions.

The assumption that an evaluator or researcher should be separate to the work being studied is based on traditional science, and by missing out on the ‘social’ element of social science, a lot of nuance and humanity is lost by trying to make our work sterile.

We have to bring a deep cultural, historical, and sociopolitical understanding of our work and its communities to each project. Not just to make the project more effective, since a one-size-fits-all never works in our industry, but also to remind ourselves that this is the real world with all its complexity, geopolitical complexity, and our project should reflect that.

I have the privilege of choosing my clients for example, and have never worked with anyone who represents values I abhor, or who is complicit in struggles I care about. That’s an important element of my work I insisted on having when I built the company.

I wanted to clearly signpost the values I care about as a person, those with which my business and work operate, and the ones I believe we should uphold in our industry. I see it as a shield-bearer for my work, which clearly communicates how I think and work. Maybe it could help start conversations around apolitical work in our industry and why we need to be more politically active.

What’s progressive about wanting us to represent the values of the United Federation of Planets? I love Star Trek for many reasons but among them, the sheer optimism of thinking that one day, maybe we’ll get it right, and not destroy the other creatures on our planet, and be able to live with respect and dignity for each other.