Boosting impact with monitoring and learning
Opinion
MEL findings show that social workers and psychosocial support professionals in schools help learners deal with issues such as bullying, GBV, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy.
Image: Supplied/Vukile Sonandzi
IN a rapidly changing world where social, environmental, and economic challenges intersect, organisations are under increasing pressure to not only do good but to prove it.
The ability to scale their impact meaningfully depends on how well a company can learn from its actions, adapt to new insights, and stay accountable to its goals. At the heart of this approach lies a critical, often underleveraged, tool — monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL).
Since 2018, the Vodacom Foundation has embedded MEL into the core of our social investment work. This has allowed us to move beyond traditional philanthropic models and embrace a more developmental, evidence-based and evolving approach that informs decision-making and prioritises impact and learning over optics.
One common pitfall organisations face is treating MEL as an administrative task to satisfy reporting requirements and, therefore, limiting its value. To truly scale impact, MEL must be integrated at every level of programme design and delivery. This means choosing the right indicators — those that measure outcomes, not just outputs.
For example, it’s not enough to track how many women attend a digital literacy workshop. There needs to be information on whether that training changed their economic participation, confidence, or access to opportunities. Impact isn’t about numbers alone; it is about transformation.
In addition, maintaining a MEL system requires a regular and consistent flow of data, which encourages constructive feedback to help shape present and future interventions for greater relevance and effectiveness. Our MEL approach enables us to understand the real needs of communities, giving us the insights required to scale programmes effectively.
Take an orphanage we support in Soweto. While we initially financially contributed to a feeding scheme, MEL insights highlighted an opportunity for greater impact by instilling our education pillar. Through feedback from stakeholders, particularly those on the ground, we established computer labs staffed with ICT coordinators. This has enabled children who benefit from the feeding scheme and the orphanage to access computer literacy training and e-learning platforms.
A successful MEL approach should ensure the voices of beneficiaries and partners are heard and acted upon. One way we do this is through our impact videos, where beneficiaries tell their stories in their own words. These powerful narratives help us understand the human impact behind the numbers to continue to transform the communities we serve.
Embedding a culture of MEL also enables reflection. Findings from periodic evaluations provide an opportunity to sit with stakeholders to measure progress, celebrate achievements, and identify challenges. These collaborative learning moments have been instrumental in refining our programmes and driving scalable solutions.
We have seen the success of this throughout our Foundation initiatives, including our psychosocial support programme, implemented in response to the growing incidents of bullying and gender-based violence (GBV) in schools. Our MEL findings show that social workers and psychosocial support professionals in schools help learners deal with issues such as bullying, GBV, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy.
Importantly, data, insights and challenges provided by MEL systems should not be locked away in reports. Communicating learnings with stakeholders, internally and externally, upholds transparency and ensures collective ownership. Whether through data dashboards, panel discussions or storytelling in our impact videos, we seek to promote the progress of programmes and build trust through mutual accountability. This, in turn, drives support and can expand the reach of our CSI activities.
Organisations that successfully embed MEL into their culture are more effective in scaling the outcomes that matter most. MEL has become a pathway to deeper insight, better partnerships, and greater accountability. It ensures that our CSI programmes are not only impactful but also inclusive, adaptive, and resilient, helping us to fulfil our ambition of connecting everyone to a better future.
* Sitho Mdlalose is the chief executive of Vodacom South Africa.
** The views expressed here do not reflect those of the Sunday Independent, IOL, or Independent Media.