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When planning development programmes for children living in poor communities with few services, all aspects of their lives need to be addressed. This report illustrates the difference a comprehensive programme can make in the lives of the children, their families and even the community as a whole. By studying two villages, one with the programme and one without, this report shows far-reaching effects in many areas. The children who took part in the programme felt emotionally secure; they were well-behaved and mixed well with their peers of both sexes; their health was better than the children of the control group. But above all, the programme children had internalised values and a sense of self - and they had hopes and dreams for the future

Describes the emerging findings from the Effecitveness Initiaitve (EI), an open and flexible dialogue between ten international sites investigating good practices and lessons in early childhood development. Includes description of a variety of tools and strategies that have been used `for listening to different voices' and for finding out information about each of the projects. These include the `river analogy', used to construct a visual history of projects in Peru and Colombia; the farm land `machamba' analogy form Mozambique that helps people to analyse the evolution of community based early childhood development sites; seasonal calenders from the Philippines; meetings and debates from Portugal; different forms of open and unstructured interviews; personal diaries and `family books'; and the analysis of anecdotes and stories in almost all the teams. This issue looks at a range of the projects and a number of issues related to the EI enquiry, such as: looking at how `Atlas-ti' qualitative analysis software has been used to identify common elements of effective programming while retaining links with the original qualitative data - charting both 'thematic affinities' and diverse local expressions of what makes for effectiveness; and how data gathered by the projects is returned to all the people who provided it for challenge and modification in open meetings; also describes the way different kinds of information were collected, compared and `triangulated' to confirm findings. Key findings include: that `credibility', built on trust and respect of local priorities, is vital; also simply creating room for reflection and research by those involved in projects is an important component of making effective programmes; and conducting research in the local language helps to get at issues that are important for participants and staff

An introduction to the basics of evaluation, its role and importance. Based on a 1997 workshop, this short paper takes a self-evaluation or learning-oriented approach with the emphasis on learning lessons for the future. It includes a discussion of qualitative versus quantitative methods, deciding on indicators, the involvement and input of different stakeholders, and issues for implementing an evaluation plan