
An adaptive Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (ME&L) system has been designed and is being tested to carry out the quantitative and qualitative evaluation of our interventions and to measure our impact towards our bioregional plan and systems change goals. The Secretariat produces quarterly and annual reports to present our progress and challenges in relation to  the priorities set by ASHA’s General Assembly.   

Currently, our Alliance through its organizational structure holds retreats 1 to 2 times per year with its various bodies (members’ assembly, its Secretariat staff and board) to collectively review and evaluate our successes, failures and the latest developments in order to harvest our learnings and set priorities.  Our methods of evaluation have been mostly qualitative and on occasion our advocacy and legal actions report clear outcomes: halting mining or oil drilling, upholding Indigenous rights, defeating harmful legislation, and public actions such as the Yasuni referendum.

We also have developed a novel framework and metrics for specific projects such as Living Amazon School (EVA) related to Indigenous youth developing leadership and technical skills to monitor their ancestral territories and a dashboard of results for the reforestation program.  

The Communications department at ASHA does extensive work by recording the reach of specific campaigns and events, compiling this information in an extensive communications report (in Spanish) that can be provided upon request. This report includes social media reach and impression, attendance to online events, mentions in the media and articles where ASHA is featured, among others.  Even so, our monitoring learning and evaluation systems across all of our programs need further evaluation systems.

In response to this need, ASHA’s Research and Learning working group was established in late 2022 to enhance our understanding of our Alliance’s impact on the Amazon Sacred Headwaters bioregion. This group has produced and proposed a number of tools and processes that once fully implemented would enhance our Alliance’s capabilities to ask the right questions and gather both quantitative and qualitative information to be able to “see” and evaluate the system's dynamics and trends and the impact of our interventions, identify how we could adapt and learn from these patterns to more effectively deliver our mission to protect the headwaters.   
