1.1 Roles and responsibilities of monitoring and evaluation

Many team members will have responsibility for monitoring and evaluation activities in a humanitarian response. Therefore it is important that a member of the response team is assigned to the function of coordinating monitoring and evaluation activities. This is usually a full time position. It is critical that the CO’s M&E unit is closely involved with the response team from the very outset of the humanitarian crisis. Thus ideally, the response M&E team should be led from the onset (including during needs assessments) by the CO’s M&E coordinator. Where this capacity does not exist, it is important for the CO to appoint or recruit a M&E Coordinator for specifically for the humanitarian operation as quickly as possible. During a fast onset or large scale emergency the CARE emergency response roster can identify and mobilize additional capacities especially during the surge and scale-up phases. In certain cases the M&E Coordinator function can be combined with the function of leading Accountability and Learning initiatives – the MEAL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning) approach (see CARE’s commitment to Quality and Accountability in Humanitarian Programming).