The Sobambisana evaluation was the first attempt in South Africa to develop a local evidence base for interventions to improve social sector early childhood development (ECD) services. It focused on a range of programs offered by five not-for-profit organizations. Three classes of evaluation were conducted: implementation evaluation, outcome evaluation and impact evaluation. The sourcing of appropriate measures, the need for adaptation not only for a South African population but also across urban, rural and peri-urban communities and the processes of adaptation, for instance, the challenges of identifying and training suitable local language speaking assessors, are all relevant to issues of measurement in low- and middle-income countries. In this case, they led to the development of a standardized, low-cost South African Early Learning Outcomes Measure, available in local languages, which can be administered by a trained ECD practitioner.