Announcing the ARA’s M&E Plan and Public Dashboard

Our Farm Program’s M&E Plan

Since launching the Alliance for Responsible Aquaculture (ARA) in 2021, we've worked to continuously improve the program's functioning. You can read more about these improvements and how the program works in our earlier posts. 

These past weeks, we have taken a closer look at how we measure and improve the program’s effectiveness, leading to a more detailed and structured Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) plan.

ARA M&E Plan

Note: Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) is the process of tracking activities and rigorously measuring impact. It ensures projects are on track and expected outcomes are achieved. You can learn more about what M&E is here.

The Goals of M&E at the ARA

The ARA’s M&E plan helps us:

• Improve and adapt our program (by tracking key indicators)

• Account for what we promised (by monitoring progress)

• Learn what works and what doesn’t (by running evaluations)

• Present the results our work has (by publishing M&E reports)

This plan is built around our theory of change (see below) which focuses on improving water quality and reducing stocking densities to increase fish welfare on ARA farms. 

The plan includes tools such as a logframe, assumptions, monitoring tools, and an indicator tracking table. It also formalizes our process of conducting evaluations to enhance our impact and evidence-base.

The ARA’s Theory of Change relies on water quality and stocking density improvements to increase fish welfare on ARA farms.

Following Our Program and Progress

We closely monitor key indicators detailed in our M&E plan. This data is collected by FWI staff who are in the field–with the farmers and fishes–almost every single day.

While we have shared our raw data before, you can now explore the program’s key metrics in real-time on our public program dashboard!

ARA Program Dashboard

Read on to learn more about the data you will find on the dashboard.

Key Numbers in One Place

The ARA program dashboard is divided into two sections: “Key Numbers” and “Our Impact: Process Insights”. 

Key Numbers detail metrics that are important to our work. You will find the number of farms currently enrolled in the ARA, how many are actively farming, and the total number of fishes we have helped thus far. This section offers a quick snapshot of our program’s reach and impact.

Process Insights provide interactive graphs referring to each step of our impact process. You can filter these graphs by region and date. Make sure to select the info icons and down-arrows for further details.

As always, we appreciate your feedback and improvement suggestions on this dashboard.

Why We Make Our Dashboard Public

We’re sharing this dashboard, as well as our M&E plan, in line with our core value of transparency. We believe this is important because it gives you a better sense of our work—to inform donation decisions and provide opportunity for external review and critique.

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Thank you to Ruben van Erk for building both the ARA’s data management tool and this dashboard from scratch and to Vegan Hacktivists for hosting the dashboard!