A participatory approach to peacebuilding evaluation in Seke district, Zimbabwe

Abstract

Mainstream monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of peacebuilding tends to be mainly practitioneroriented, while under-reporting initiatives by ordinary people who develop an interest to learn from their own practice. This study aims to fill this gap, by reporting the evaluation of a self-initiated peace committee by ordinary people in the Seke district, Zimbabwe. The study revealed that local communities currently possess the propensity to work as a collective with shared experiences and perceptions, and the linkages between these attributes and participatory peacebuilding initiatives are natural. Furthermore, it emerged that action research can be a useful methodology, with the potential to create space for ordinary people to participate in the design, implementation, M&E of peace initiatives in their villages. Although this study examined the role of self-initiative monitoring and evaluation destined to become an alternative to technocratic M&E, it acknowledges the value of top-down M&E of peacebuilding and does not seek to replace them, rather, to bring bottom-up M&E practices into the mainstream M&E of peacebuilding using local initiatives as a vehicle to create a greater impact on peacebuilding interventions.