13 November 2025: Early on a dark Copenhagen morning, from a converted courthouse holding cell, systems-MEL thinker and evaluator Zazie Tolmer joined Squirrel Main for a lively conversation about the newly released MEL 360 Systems Guide.

Community First Development has announced the release of its new guide, Right Way Evaluation: Telling Our Own Stories of Change, designed to support practitioners, researchers, and governments working in partnership with First Nations' peoples. This guide offers a culturally responsive approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning, centered on self-determination, community leadership and strengths-based practice. 

By Thushara Dibley and Lena Etuk

Australia is a culturally and linguistically diverse country. According to the 2021 census nearly half of all Australians (48%) had at least one parent born overseas, and nearly one third (28%) were themselves born overseas (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022a; 2022b). One fifth of Australians (22%) speak a language other than English at home. Of those, 15% have low English proficiency (almost 1 million people) (Australian Bureau of Statistics 2022a). These statistics make it clear that Australia is a culturally, linguistically and ethnically rich and complex country. 

By Eleanor Williams and Skye Trudgett

Most people who have worked in evaluation have some kind of picture in their head of what it feels like when an evaluation partnership is going well. There are some common threads – a clear scope of work which has been well communicated, well-mapped aims and desired outcomes for the program, and easily-accessed data to allow for evaluative judgements to be made. The relationship between commissioner and evaluator might be described as professional but friendly with regular and frank communication flowing in both directions. Everyone involved in the evaluation – including those delivering and receiving the policy or program – have the opportunity to genuinely contribute to the evaluation and benefit from its findings.

In June this year ALNAP (Active Learning Network for Accountability and Performance in humanitarian action) brought together hundreds of practitioners across the sector to validate proposed updates to the OECD-DAC criteria. Together, they have been reviewing the original ALNAP guide published in 2006, to support greater precision in humanitarian evaluations and address significant changes in the humanitarian landscape since. 

By Samantha Abbato and Kate Sunners

Pictures, storytelling and fun are essential in the evaluator's change management toolbox and for evaluation capacity building. In this blog, Samantha Abbato (Visual Insights People) and Kate Sunners (ARTD) unpack why this is and provide some ideas for your engagement toolbox through a case study. 

It made me wonder if there wasn't a more automated and digital way to do this work. While doing some basic research, I discovered a number of platforms that usually came with a very high price tag, far out of my client's reach. Our organisation's goal is to use our natural curiosity and focus on effectively using technology to simplify and solve complex problems in order to assist organisations in reaching their full potential. So, I collaborated with leading social innovation guru, Tracy Collier to learn about the typical steps in a Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) Program and to identify some free tools that can be used at each stage. 

by Jade Maloney, Sharon-Marra Brown, Alexandra Lorigan and Rosie Dale

At AES22, ARTD Consultants' Jade Maloney, Sharon Marra-Brown, Alexandra Lorigan and Holly Kovak presented on a panel with peer researchers, Kirsty Rosie and Rosie Dale, on the practicalities of co-evaluating with lived and living experience (LLE) researchers.

Co-evaluation like co-design is informed by the principle of 'nothing about us, without us.' While co-design recognises the rights of people with lived experience to shape the policies and programs that affect their lives and the way this strengthens policy, co-evaluation recognises the expertise that people with lived experience bring to designing measures of success, collecting data and making sense of findings and the way this can strengthen evaluation.