Eagles Relief and Development Programme – Malawi

How this story represents an international-local faith partnership in Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability and Learning (MEAL): International Christian donor & National faith-based Christian organisation, partnerships with local churches in Malawi.

Living Waters Church established Eagles Relief and Development Programme in Malawi following a devastating famine in 2002. The work of Eagles focuses on three main areas: having enough food, helping the vulnerable, and caring for the environment.

Eagles’ MEAL plan was reviewed in 2019. The review took place following feedback from communities who felt that current MEAL approaches were not working for them, as they were perceived to be overly complex and designed with the Eagles-donor interface in mind. The Eagles team therefore decided to find a different system that could be fully  owned by churches and communities, while meeting donors’ data needs by finding synergies with MEAL approaches that are valuable and relevant in communities’ lives. A pilot of the new community-led MEAL approach, which was developed with the support of an external consultant on the basis of the organisation’s Theory of Change, was scheduled for later in 2020 and 2021 due to delays caused by COVID-19. It was developed through a participatory process.

Click here for the Compendium of Good Practices on Conducting MEAL and Faith.