Around three hundred evaluators and development professionals from 20 countries attended the four-day event that Community of Evaluators (CoE), South Asia/ Nepal began in Kathmandu on 26 February 2013 with the support from International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Rockefeller Foundation, among others. This is the second event organized by CoE.
Evaluator experts and development professionals shed light on the issues and challenges concerning evaluation of development interventions. Katherine Hay, a consultant with IDRC who had been instrumental for the institutional development of CoE emphasized that evaluation should be able to "measure what the [target communities] treasure". Giving background to need of addressing gender based violence, she emphasized that GDP along will not suffice to compare the human development in different countries. Marco Segone shared that EvalPartners, a forum of evaluators is growing with the interest and partnership of development organizations and universities. Vice Chairperson of National Planning Commission of Nepal shed light that the event would add a milestone to improving the evaluation policies and practices.
There were thematic panels and workshop that provided fora for learning and sharing the experiences. AEA 2010 awardee Evaluation Veteran, Jim Rugh shed light on real word evaluation based on his book. He shed light that intent of the organization that commission evaluation and level of rigor sought matter in guiding the scope of evaluation. Sometime, the evaluation ToR limits to evaluating the real world. He emphasized that donors are most often confined to commissioning project completion evaluation. Rather, they need to be interest to commission post-project evaluation as well. Because, in many cases the control groups are found doing better than intervened after the termination of the project. He viewed that in absence of baseline data, secondary sources, project records, recall, key informant or participatory methods could be imperative to generate information indicative of the baseline status.
The Evaluation Conclave 2013 ended on 1 March 2013 amidst the evaluators and development professionals, some of whom were the surgeon of Paris Declaration and others young graduates looking future in the field of evaluation in international development.
The event remained exciting with the video conference with Michael Q. Paton who had inspiring presentations covered: 1) globalization of professional network of evaluators; 2) new framework and criteria; 3) importance of joint evaluation; 4) multiple and mixed methods: triangulation and synthesis; 5) visual data; 6) evaluation capacity development; 8) seeing through a complexity lens and 9) process use.
"Ask Them! and They Can Do It!!" were two inspirations of Robert Chambers, supported by Mallika Samaranayake, to the lovers of participatory approach.
Two books and three discussion papers were launched in the event. "Who Counts?: The Power of Participatory Statistics", written by Jeremy Holland with an afterward by Robert Chambers; and "Evaluating Communication for Development: A Framework for Social Change" by June Lennie and Jo Tacchi drew the attention of the participants. Likewise, Discussion Papers 1) Quasi-Experimental Designs for Impact Evaluation, 2) Scaling-up of Social Innovations: The 4D Model and 3) Monitoring and Evaluation of Non-Communicable Diseases: Some Issues published by Sambodhi Research and Communication, New Delhi are expected to be the good learning materials in evaluation.
Conclusively, the event shed light that the evaluators need to market their expertise and learning for better evaluation policies, bye-in by international development decision makers and contributing to better living of the marginalized people. Institutional and capacity building are important dimensions in that direction. Getting evaluators and development professionals' membership to Voluntary Organizations of Professionals for Evaluation (VOPEs) could be an entry point for cross-learning and sharing. International Organization for Cooperation in Evaluation (http://ioce.net) is the global federation of VOPEs. The ethics of evaluators and international development agencies commissioning evaluation are always important for "real world" evaluation. There are tremendous number of tools and techniques available in the market. However, "Cutting one's coat according to the cloth" has and will always be there for appropriately selecting the tools and techniques in the given complexity, interrelatedness and holistic context.
The organizers had put almost all their efforts to make it remarkable. Although noting is cent percent perfect, availability of all presentation materials either in paper form or through uploading in the web could instantly provide reading materials to the participants. Besides, some declarations at the length of the event could have been better for effective evaluation policies and practices.
It is posted at:
http://evaluationconclave2013.org/reflections/
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