USAID and PepsiCo support to the partnership is channeled through the Integrated Land and Resource Governance (ILRG) program, implemented by Tetra Tech and Landesa. As part of this partnership, the ILRG team has developed this monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL) plan to track progress and capture lessons learned through the partnership. The purpose of the MEL plan is to describe the overall project purpose (Section 1), identify data that will be used and describe how it will be analyzed to make the business case for women’s empowerment within the PepsiCo potato supply chain (Section 2), and describe the indicators and the data collection processes that will be used to demonstrate women’s empowerment outcomes and identify changes in PepsiCo KPIs and SFP adoption.
The MEL plan includes PepsiCo KPIs, as well as standardized performance indicators used by the United States government (USG) to report on USAID investments across the world (Section 3). Some, but not all, of these USAID indicators will be used to support the business case for women’s empowerment to PepsiCo and to demonstrate the effects and impacts of women’s empowerment on PepsiCo KPIs. In addition, some indicators are included because they flow down from the ILRG global MEL plan, or correspond to USAID global objectives with regard to land tenure. Standards and safeguards used to ensure data quality and integrity are described in Section 4.
Both qualitative and quantitative data collection approaches and analyses are required to determine the extent to which changes in women’s empowerment affect PepsiCo’s bottom line, and to inform the overall project approach to collaborating, learning, and adapting (CLA) (Section 5). Due to the innovative nature of the partnership, it is critical to collect and analyze data frequently to determine when course corrections are needed, and to determine the efficacy of approaches to increase women’s empowerment. A robust learning agenda (Section 5.2) is particularly important to document lessons learned, identify best practices, and facilitate adapting approaches and tactics as needed.
Detailed indicator descriptions are included in performance indicator reference sheets (PIRSs) in Annex 1, and data collection forms are included in Annex 2.