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Editorial: Forward Looking with EvalYear Focused Activities Around the World

The International Year of Evaluation is being celebrated in more than 68 events all over the world. Parliamentarians are preparing to gather in three regions to organize themselves to address evaluation challenges. This is an important move as the Global Parliamentarians Forum for Evaluation will be launched at the parliament of Nepal in November. VOPEs are busy reporting results of Peer-to-Peer projects supported by EvalPartners. New networks are emerging in addition to existing EvalPartners task forces. All these particularly voluntary contributions of committed evaluators are exciting milestones that lead to the final EvalYear event, the Global Evaluation Week and upcoming Global Evaluation Agenda for 2016-2020.

Let’s all join forces to ensure the International Year of Evaluation will be a true global movement influencing international and national development!

Marco Segone and Natalia Kosheleva, Co-chairs

A successful rendez-vous for the CES, its 36th conference “Evaluation for the world we want”

The 2015 International Year of evaluation (EvalYear) was at the heart of the CES/SCE conference! Nearly 500 participants from over 20 countries representing Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Latin America, North America, and Oceania gathered in Montreal from 24 to 27 May. Special panels were organized as part of EvalYear, including one that brought together the presidents of 10 VOPEs and one on international partnerships organized by EvalPartners, presentations in English, French and Spanish, a special attention to emerging evaluators through the launch of the Francophone Network of Emerging Evaluators and the Student Evaluation Case Competition 2015, the launch of the special French edition of the African Evaluation Journal, a consultation on the Global Evaluation Agenda 2016 - 2020, social activities and networking events that were very popular. These were some of key moments that contributed to the success of this conference and have shown the richness of the dialogue with the global evaluation community!

Somali Development Evaluation Association P2P Project Experience

In April, 2015, SOMDEA carried out an evaluation advocacy project in Somalia supported by the Peer-to-Peer initiative of EvalPartners. The project had two components: (1) Public sector monitoring and evaluation training for Somali government civil servants and (2) evaluation awareness social marketing campaigns. The main goals of the project were to develop the national evaluation capacity of the Somali public sector and to increase Somali public awareness of the importance of evaluation in order to create an enabling environment for evaluations in Somalia. The short-term outcomes that were partially achieved through this project were: (1) Government employees gained evaluation knowledge, (2) positive government attitude towards evaluation, and (3) government evaluation champions have emerged.

Continuing Parliamentarians Initiatives in MENA, Asia and Latin America

The Parliamentarians Forum for Development Evaluation, UNICEF, UN Women, UNEG, UNDP, EvalPartners and IOCE together with regional VOPEs are organizing pioneer Face to Face Meetings in East Asia, MENA and in Latin America leading towards the establishment of Parliamentarians Forums for Development Evaluation in those three regions. These activities are part of the preparations towards the launching of the International Parliamentarians Forum on Development Evaluation in Kathmandu in November this year.
The East Asia meeting will be held in Bangkok on 10th and 11th August; while  the meeting in MENA region will be held in Cairo on 15th and 16th September, supported mainly by the UN Women regional office,. And the Latin America meeting will take place in Panama on 17th and 18th September. All meetings will have audiences made of parliamentarians, government officials, UN staff and representatives from Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs). The overall objective of the above-mentioned initiatives is to create an enabling environment that fosters and promotes development of evaluation policy and practices which enhances accountability and transparency in countries. For more information please contact Ada Ocampo (aocampo@unicef.org), Mona Selim (mona.selim@unwomen.org) and EvalPartners Executive Coordinator Asela Kalugampitiya (coordinator@evalpartners.org).

EvalPartners Networks and Task Forces

At the 1st Global Evaluation Forum in Chiang Mai in December 2012 EvalPartners launched a number of taskforces: Enabling Environment, Peer-to-Peer (P2P), Equity-Focused & Gender-Responsive Evaluation (EFGRE), VOPE Institutional Capacity Toolkit, and Knowledge Management.  More recently, networks have been added. While Task Force members join as individuals, Network members join as representatives of their own VOPEs/organizations. The new networks include EvalYouth, EvalGender+, EvalSDGs, while a new task force on Professionalization was also created. To learn about any of these initiatives you are invited to see the postings and, in some cases, concept notes, on specific discussion forums on the IOCE website forum. EvalPartners invites individuals who are interested, on behalf of and with the support of their national VOPE, to contribute to the work any of the taskforces. To do so, individuals should describe to their Regional VOPE Representative on the IOCE Board how their engagement with EvalPartners can be reflected at an institutional level that serves the EvalPartners Theory of Change (individual, institutional, enabling environment).  Names and email addresses of IOCE Board members can be found on the IOCE Board directory.

Jim Rugh, EvalPartners Coordinator

Introducing New Network: EvalSDGs

From 2000-2015, the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) focused global efforts towards achievement of human development goals. In September 2015, the new Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) are expected to be adopted by world leaders. The SDGs will promote effective and accountable leadership, innovation and the ability to measure and demonstrate achievement.  EvalPartners has established a strong evaluation partnership with the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) to provide a platform for interested and skilled policy makers, institutions and practitioners who advocate for the evaluability of the performance indicators of the new SDGs and support processes to integrate evaluation into national and global review systems. If you are interested in being involved in this network please contact, co-chairs Dorothy Lucks (sdfglobal@sustain.net.au) and Colin Kirk (ckirk@unicef.org)