I have been grappling with the challenges of using theory of change in development programs in ways that are useful for the project team and clearly tells the story of how their piece of the jig-saw links to the big picture. Many aid professionals have been stressing the difference between shared development outcomes and aid outcomes. The shared development outcomes ‘belong’ to the partner country and achieving these will require long term commitments by various levels of Government, civil society and donors. Then we have the aid outcomes, which are the results we expect an aid program to achieve. It is very hard to set these aid outcomes at an appropriate level . As they need to be a) meaningful to development and be worthy of funding b) yet modest enough to be at a level where there the aid can make a measureable difference .

So I have been experimenting with using theory of change to map out both development outcomes and aid outcomes. I think I have finally had a breakthrough! In the last couple of days I was using theory of change to clarify the design of a sector specific government strengthening program in Indonesia. Firstly we used theory of change to map what we felt the system should look like in future, and we also broke it down into intermediate outcomes that would need to be in place to get to that future state. Secondly we did some work around what the program could offer, and the principles of engagement. Then we identified points in the system where this aid might best be applied. Then we looked across this picture and synthesized it to create a theory of change for the aid program - and it worked! So, we ended up with two inter related theory of change models, one for development and one for Aid. Of course the development theory of change is best developed with partners.