Pradan work in the poorest districts of India, transforming lives and choices of poor communities. They really understand how to engage and include their beneficiaries in the work they do and have recently been implementing a Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning (MEL) data collection process using CommCare and Samsung tablets. 1000 women from the villages they work with have been employed and trained as data collectors and have just started collecting data about the work Pradan is doing.

In the past a paper based process was used to collect this data and Pradan created some basic reports from these. The team members would have to process the raw data to help with their decision making. The new method will provide more detailed information, which will be available more readily. Our task was to find out how this MEL data can be used to help them make decisions and achieve their goals, making recommendations for an MEL information system.

Firetail commissioned us to work with Pradan and help them run this participatory discovery process. Pradan started 30 years ago with the idea that ‘the brightest must work with the poorest’ and has helped change the lives of one million people. They are pioneers in the promotion of Self-Help Groups (SHG) in India, having formed its first SHG in Alwar, Rajasthan, in 1987.

We travelled to India to facilitate a number of workshops so that we could understand the needs of different potential users of the data. We wanted to find out what information people need, what will help them achieve and what format would be most useful to them.

The workshops were focused around two key things that we asked the groups to create, User personas and User stories. These were then translated and typed up after each workshop. When we returned home we started processing the information and pulling it together to create some preliminary designs and recommendations based on what the stakeholders we met and shared. Pradan will be taking this report and using it to inform how to go about building an MEL information system to help their work.

We have written about the process in detail here.