Step 2: Clarifying your Theory of Change

Meet with your M&E team and key stakeholders to clarify how you view the problem you are addressing in all of its complexity. Even if your program is already being implemented it is important to discuss as a group what the Theory of Change is that motivates your work. In other words, why are you doing what you are doing, and what impact can you reasonably expect to have?

If the program is already underway, review all program documents to find out how the program planners or staff visualized the underlying determinants of the program’s target SRHR problem.  Look closely at:
•    the background sections of any proposals you have written
•    rationale and introduction sections of program reports
•    program planning tools that have been used when developing your program

Task 1: Write Your Theory of Change

Remember to write a statement that explains why you are doing what you are doing and what you expect to achieve based on: scientific evidence, extensive programmatic experience, and brainstorming with your M&E team and select stakeholders.

If you are doing this for an on-going program you may find that not all of your intervention is connected to a solid basis of evidence or reasoning, and that you need to re-think and perhaps re-develop part of your program.

Think about:

• the complexity of the SRHR problem (poor SRH outcomes for girls and women are linked to low levels of educational attainment; parents take their girls out of school at a young age because they don’t think girls need education; parents and society don’t think girls need an education to be good wives and mothers; the only roles that are viewed as legitimate for women are wife and mother; women only attain respect and social standing in their communities by becoming wives and mothers).
• what you believe could impact the problem (getting girls more education, in part by getting their parents to let their daughters go to more years of schooling, and to understand and believe that more schooling is better for their daughter’s health, and the health of the community in general, and providing subsidies for school fees so that families can afford to send their daughters to school).
• why you believe that a particular kind of change (for example, giving girls more education) would make that problem better (give those girls better SRH outcomes, and more potential for healthy fulfilling and empowered lives).