Authors: Jill Juliane Wai, Vanuatu Australia Education Support Program, Fremden Yanhambath, Vanuatu Australia Education Support Program, Ellis Silas, Vanuatu Skills Partnership
How can MEL stay grounded in communities while producing findings useful to decision-makers and participants? Panel draws on the Vanuatu Australia Education Support Program and Vanuatu Skills Partnership to explore ethical MEL guided by Beauchamp and Childress’s principles. Leaders trace an MEL cycle: co‑design with communities, participatory collection and analysis, and intentional report‑back. Methods include outcome harvesting, positive deviance, and strategic communications to surface local knowledge and influence reform. Participants will examine examples and strategies for integrating community feedback into evaluation design.
Key insights:
1. Enabling conditions: institutional permission, trust, leadership.
2. Community‑defined success.
3. Decolonising reporting to inform reform.
