Introducing Humans of Development: Jennifer Mandel

How monitoring and evaluation professionals can have positive impacts on developing countries

What is one misconception about your work?

I am Jennifer Mandel. I’m lucky that most of those close to me don’t have any misconceptions. My father worked for USAID for 35 years. I spent my early childhood in South Asia.

As a result, I never had to explain to my family what I did or why I lived in the places I did. I grew up understanding my connectedness to others across the globe. Seeing international development in action my entire life made me a believer in the good we can do on both the individual and societal levels.

Similarly, my closest friends have a pretty good understanding of what I do as they work in related fields and/or are adventurous travelers.

When did you realize this was the work you wanted to do?

I didn’t realize that I wanted to do development work full time until I left my first career as a university professor.

I pursued academia initially because I thought it would allow me to have a “permanent” home-base while still traveling regularly to work on pressing development issues through my own research or consulting.

When I left university life and started working in development full time, the “aha” moment came in 2010 when I was in Haiti after the earthquake. I realized that it was what I was always meant to do. Doing development work is where I finally found my place and people.

This was also the most challenging job I have ever had.

The organization I worked for didn’t have a clear vision of what they wanted initially so we had to collaboratively define the scope of work, and then working with a truly shoe-string budget, I built and trained a team to do audience research.

However, it was also one of my most rewarding experiences.

The project was called Enfomasyon Nou Dwe Konnen (ENDK - News You Can Use). The data we collected through regular audience surveys and focus group discussions ended up being used by the entire humanitarian assistance community to inform their communications strategies because it told them what issues most concerned people and their trusted information sources.

This allowed organizations to be more directly responsive to the population’s information needs. Likewise, the team of 19 Haitian researchers ended up being so good that USAID supported us in helping them begin to develop their own research firm that could work to international standards.

What I loved most about my time in Haiti and elsewhere was working with people to advance development in their country rather than doing it for them.

What project significantly impacted your perspective on development work?

I worked on monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) projects, primarily five-year USAID MEL contracts, and there are many examples from that work that impacted my perspective.

One example is an evaluation I managed in Kenya of a parliamentary strengthening program. Because USAID had been implementing the project with the same partner over a 15-year period, they had applied an adaptive management approach, adjusting their focus over time as the situation in Kenya evolved.

We were able to look back over the entire 15-year period and document the difference that kind of long term deep engagement, commitment and flexibility could make.

USAID contributed to Kenya developing a bi-cameral parliament and strengthened its parliamentary system through that work.

Monitoring and evaluation can sound technical. What made it deeply human for you?

Most of us care deeply about educating children. An evaluation in Mali of a girls’ education program revealed that when schools offering the national curriculum were available free of charge, parents chose that option over a traditional madrasa.

Similarly, an evaluation of a ten-year education program in Benin showed girls’ enrollment in school increased from 30% to 80% over the project’s lifespan, which is truly remarkable. We know from extensive research that educating girls is one of the surest ways to improve a country’s development outcomes across the board.

What gives you hope for Haiti?

It may sound cliche but the thing that gives me the most hope is Haitians’ resilience and fortitude, especially the youth.

We saw the power of youth energy in the PetroCaribe Challengers, which was a youth-led movement fighting corruption in Haiti. Similarly, we can see the ways communities come together to implement their own solutions to some of the problems they face in the absence of state functions.

Sadly of the team of 19 researchers with whom I worked after the earthquake only a few remain in Haiti today. The ones that stay do so because they are deeply committed to Haiti’s development. Even if they are eventually forced to leave because of the situation, they and many that left earlier would come back as soon as there is an opportunity.

Everyone I worked with over my 6 plus years in Haiti are bright, competent, resourceful, creative people who act with integrity. They care deeply about their country, the work we did together and the people we served. They wanted to do the job right and contribute in meaningful ways to Haiti’s development.

---

Please contact Sulakshana Gupta if you’re a paid Career Pivot subscriber who would like to be profiled in a future Humans of Development post on Career Pivot and LinkedIn.