Evaluations are an opportunity for a programme or project to examinehow well it is implementing its activities, to take stock of progresstowards results, and to formulate lessons learned. From the largerperspective, evaluations present an opportunity to determine if theprogramme strategies are working, or are the most appropriate. A participatory or collaborative evaluation approach provides thepartners and stakeholders involved with hands on practical,experiential training in monitoring and evaluation techniques. It cancontribute to the institutionalization and use of information for projectimprovement by local actors. The manual is also based on experiences that the author has had in the past 10 years using the participatory methodology in evaluations ofcommunity and district health programmes in different countries. Thoseevaluations were carried out in Burkina Faso (AFRICARE), TheGambia (GAFNA/CRS), Nigeria (AFRICARE), Cameroon (ILO),Senegal (World Vision), Senegal (ILO), India (CRS), Bangladesh(CARE) and Sierra Leone (CRS). Each of those experiencescontributed to the development of a practical, yet conceptually soundapproach to evaluating programmes withprogramme implementers. Many lessons for other countries are identified in this paper. This manual is intended as a tool for PVO staff and their NGO and government partners to use in evaluating development projects and programmes. The evaluation approach presented here is particularly relevant to process evaluationsin which the aim is to assess the programme implementationprocess. This manual provides readers with practical guidelines for carrying out aparticipatory evaluation.