At Wasafiri, we spend a lot of time wrestling with big, messy questions and one of the biggest is this: How do we measure change in complex systems?

Traditional monitoring and evaluation (MEL) tools can feel like trying to catch smoke in your hands when you’re dealing with complexity and uncertainty. So we decided reflect on our work across systems in food, climate, peace and livelihoods, and ask ourselves what’s working, what’s not, and how do we learn and adapt as we go?

The result is this new paper: “MEL for Systems Change”.

It’s a reflection on what it takes to meaningfully track and support change in complex systems.

We highlight some of our challenges, and offer stories from the field where learning has led to insight, and sometimes, to real transformation. If you’re navigating the same messy terrain, we think this might resonate.

We’d love to hear what you think. Whether this sparks new ideas or challenges your own approaches to MEL, drop Carolin a line at [email protected].