Christian Aid Ireland’s adaptive programme management

This paper is the product of a collaboration between ODI and Christian Aid Ireland to assess the relevance of adaptive approaches.

Governance, gender, peace building and human rights

Tackling the problems of poverty, vulnerability and exclusion that persist in parts of the world that continue to be affected by violence or political insecurity is difficult for several reasons.

For one, because of the complexity of the prevailing social, economic and political systems, solutions to chronic problems are far from obvious.

One response to this aspect of the challenge is adaptive programme design and management.

This paper, 'Learning to make a difference: Christian Aid Ireland’s adaptive programme management in governance, gender, peace building and human rights', is the product of a multi-year collaboration between ODI and the core team of Christian Aid Ireland to assess the relevance of adaptive or trial-and-error approaches to the field of governance, peace building and human rights.

It explains the basis on which Christian Aid Ireland’s current five-year programme funded by Irish Aid has become committed to an adaptive approach.

It then describes and seeks to draw lessons from the programme’s first year of experience, considering the possible implications for implementation over the coming years.