Maartje OpdeCoul (One World, NL)

Maartje is talking about the importance of civil society organizations evaluating their own role. She has been active of One World’s pilot projects, for instance tele-centers in development countries. These activities were partly set up to be monitored and researched, so lesson could be take out from them. If a pilot project stops, the funding of these projects stops too. So there should be an emphasis on accountability of these projects.
Then Maartje discusses different research methodologies. Outcome mapping is a research methodology which examines the difference in behaviour of the participants of a project. Ethnographic mapping looks at the different communication needs in a community and then tries to understand what kind of impact for example tele-centers have. Another possible research methodology mentioned is gender evaluation, which examines the role of women in ICT projects. Finally Maartje disagrees with the argument that there are too many case studies circulating out there and that they are not representative enough. What has to be done is to take all these case studies together and make draw general conclusion out them and make use of this information.

— Daan