Self evaluation:

evaluation which is owned, controlled, and often carried out by the project‘s participants, primarily for their own use, as an integral part of the organisation‘s life. It is a learning process which actively involves participants in reflecting critically on their organisation, and the issues to which it is responding.

In the self evaluation approach, there has to be a balance established between seeing it as:

• a way of promoting learning and helping a NGO become more effective and accountable
• part of meeting the control and inspection needs of funders

The benefits of self evaluation

For all the groups, being involved in self evaluation has real gains:

• Workers and volunteers discover what difference their hard work makes for people, and areas where it can be improved or developed.
• Board members, where active, really discover about what the organisations they are governing are doing, and gain access to key information to improve their future decision making.
• users can find their experiences and needs starting to influence what organisations do and deliver.