Guidelines - Responsible Exchange and Volunteering 2018

Developing your M&E Plan The first step in monitoring and evaluating a volunteer/exchange program is to identify your aims and objectives, so that you can measure the outputs and outcomes of your program. Monitoring and evaluating should occur on both the organisational and volunteer level. It should also occur in both the host and sending organisations. Ideally an M&E plan should be co-developed by both partners ensuring that overall aims and objectives are aligned on both sides. This will also encourage mutual learning as both host and sending partners strive to improve holistically, optimizing the impact on both participant and organisation level.

Outputs can include information such as:

• How diverse are our volunteers/participants? Demographic info? • How successful are our selection methods? How well matched are participants to organisations? • What is the direct benefit of hosting or sending a participant? • What is the economic value of volunteers/participants to the organisation? • What’s the volunteer/parti cipant experience? • Are volunteers/participants properly supported? • Are policies and procedures relevant? • How does the training we provide enhance the volunteer/participant experience? • Are the volunteers/participants happy? Emotional well-being? • Are expectations from both sides being met? • How have participant and / or organisational fears around exchange been realized or not? • How much do volunteers contribute towards the organisation? • In what ways have volunteers/participants benefited the organisation? • Should the M&E plan be reconsidered – ie methodology & timeframes for data collection and analysis?

Outcomes may include:

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