Driven by a wish to learn more from what goes wrong in our programming, and to examine where changes to the broader organization and system can improve our programming and impact globally, in 2019 CARE undertook its first evaluations-based failure meta-analysis. This analysis draws learning and evidence from 114 evaluations of CARE’s work from 2015-2018 to understand the patterns and trends in what goes wrong. This helps us take a data-driven approach to strategic investments and action plans to live out CARE’s commitment to high program quality and continuous improvement across the board.
The review draws from project specific data, but deliberately anonymizes the data and focuses on overarching trends to remove blame for any specific project team or set of individuals. This exercise is designed to help us learn more about how we can change our processes and patterns of support and engagement around weak areas to improve our work. CARE is using this data to build action plans and next steps to continuously improve our programming.