Working with SenseMaker - experiences from the field with UNDP

If you’re thinking of running a SenseMaker project – I’d strongly recommend reading these first.

In recent years, the Narrate team has been working closely with UNDP staff on SenseMaker projects across Eastern Europe, Central Asia and the Middle East. UNDP staff regularly blogged about their experience of using SenseMaker in field on the UNDP website, but those posts disappeared following the redesign of the UNDP website. (So the Narrate blogpost signposting all those posts is now defunct.)

After a few recent requests, I've managed to find copies of the old posts, via the wonders of the Internet Wayback Machine, along with some recent additions that arose from the Fragments of Impact programme and more recent work.

If you’re interested in learning from people who have been applying micro-narratives, self-signification, SenseMaker® and collection to real-world problems, look no further.

• UNDP – An introduction to the positive disruptive potential of narrative research

• UNDP – why do micro-narrative research at all?
• UNDP – partnering up for real-time monitoring
• UNDP – the challenge of collecting SenseMaker data
• UNDP – overview, context and detail – why narrative research over traditional approaches
• UNDP Kyrgyzstan – micro-narratives within a portfolio of approaches to give young people a say in future policies
• UNDP Belarus – Empowering people with disabilities through storytelling
• UNDP Georgia – Understanding citizens’ priorities better
• UNDP Georgia – Lessons so far in collecting micro-narratives
• UNDP Kyrgyzstan – Results and next steps for youth unemployment with SenseMaker
• UNDP Yemen - Collecting stories from chaos

Since these initial posts, UNDP have continued to use SenseMaker® - the projects that I know of include

• UNDP Tajikistan on Female Entrepreneurship (basic level report available here)
• UNDP Georgia on Peace and Reconciliation,
• UNDP Belarus on Green Economy
• Understanding Roma populations in Serbia, Bosnia, Albania, Kosovo, Montenegro and Macedonia - on employment, environment and migration
• UNDP Jordan measuring impact of programmes building Sustainable Livelihoods and Preventing Violent Extremism for Jordanian nationals and Syrian refugees

UPDATE ADDED August 2020

• UNDP Yemen YSP - sustainable livelihoods, psychosocial support for populations in conflict zones (public report expected in Q3 2020)
• UNDP Yemen SPCRP - perceptions and improvement possibilities for health facilities
• UNDP Yemen SPCRP - attitudes and programme adaptations for sustainable livelihoods and psychosocial support
• UNDP Yemen ERRY II - impact measurement of programmes running 2020-2021