Early Child Marriage Initiative: A Monitoring and Evaluation Project

Sponsor: American Jewish World Service (AJWS)

The Advanced Centre for Women's Studies, Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), entered into a partnership in October 2014 with American Jewish World Service (AJWS) who support the project, to undertake this research on monitoring and evaluation of their Early/ Child Marriage (ECM) Initiative in India. The research is conducted in a participatory mode with grassroots organisations supported by AJWS as part of their ECM Initiative in India. Our research brings in a feminist perspective and methodology needed to address a complex phenomenon such as early and child marriage. The intention is not just monitoring and evaluation of efforts related to ECM in the conventional sense, but evolving a framework to understand and document change. The participatory mode of research elicits organisational strategies that dovetail new modes of planning and assessing change around ECM into their ongoing work. This will lead to shifts that understand change beyond result oriented impact of their work. This is achieved in the research study through revisiting and reframing the ‘monitoring and evaluation question’ through a feminist lens.