Given Hapunda

68 Indicators in a project, programme or policy are best understood if seen as traffic and road signs. Just like traffic or road signs, indicators in a project inform project implementers and evaluators whether they are safe to proceed with the current implementation strategy or if it is dangerous and they need to hang back, reflect and readjust the project strategy. “ Numbers do not lie ”, unless you are using a defected and unreliable device, numbers will always tell you as things are. In projects, programmes or policies, numbers can indicate if you are headed for success or failure. However, it is also important to know the voice behind the numbers. A friend of mine likes saying “it is immoral to reduce children’s voices into numbers”. What my friend means is that when you are researching on children do not just get the number of children who are traumatized for example, but also document their voices on what it means to be traumatised. In the same manner, in monitoring and evaluation, it is important to get qualitative data to back the quantitative data. This means using qualitative indicators as well. Qualitative indicators allow projects, programmes or policies to gather perceptions, views, opinions and assessments of stakeholders on a number of project components. Like a road sign showing you where, for example, Mpika, Kapiri Mposhi, Ndola, Lusaka towns are in Zambia and which direction you should be heading, qualitative indicators allow stakeholders to give their signals or marks through opinion and perceptions on how the project is progressing and where it should be heading (see Focus Box 6). Qualitative indicators suggest whether you need to change the lane in order to get to where you need to be. Reading through evaluation reports, one hardly notices use of qualitative indicators, yet they are very important as discussed above. Indicators are the heart of the monitoring and evaluation systems. Morra-Imas & Rist (2009) and Kusek & Rist, (2004) put it nicely, indicators in M&E answer the question, “How will we know Focus Box 5: Understanding Indicators Just like road traffic signs, indicators inform projects when implementation is doing well or bad, and whether a project can go ahead with current implementation strategies or need to stop and adjust the strategies. In addition, indicator inform projects how much the project has met its targets and how much remains to meet its targets. Further, they inform where the project is heading and in which direction.