INVITATION: Building the Evidence to Reduce Poverty – launch of the public consultation on DFID’s new Evaluation Policy

Date: Tuesday 9th December, 2.30pm
Venue: Department for International Development, Room 3W11, 1 Palace Street, London, SW1E 5HE

Chair: Sue Owen, Director General of Corporate Performance, DFID. With presentations from David Peretz, Chair of the Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact; Nick York, Head of Evaluation Department, DFID

RSVP Kirsty Burns, Evaluation Department, Venue: kirsty-burns@dfid.gov.uk, 01355 84 3602, by Friday 5th December 2008

Background notes

Development is about achieving results that make a difference for the poor in their daily lives.
Evaluation is a key instrument both to inform decision makers and to hold DFID to account for its choices and actions.

The Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact (IACDI) was established in December 2007, with members selected for their international development and evaluation expertise. Its formation was an important step forward towards strengthening evaluation for DFID. It demonstrated that the UK Government is committed to independent, open, and transparent scrutiny of its development assistance.

The new policy comes at the end of the first year of IACDI’s oversight of DFID’s evaluation work.
It is vital that we also draw on the views of our delivery partners across the world, and this is why the draft policy, along with a proposed list of topics to focus evaluation on over the next three years, is being put out for public consultation.

This event marks the launch of the external consultation process, which will be open for 12 weeks. DFID will launch its final policy in March.

You and your organisation are invited to take part in the consultation process, beginning with this event. There you will have an opportunity to put questions to David Peretz, the Chair of the Independent Advisory Committee on Development Impact, as well as Sue Owen, DFID’s Director General for Corporate Performance and Nick York, DFID’s Head of Evaluation.

Please let us know promptly if you plan to attend or if a colleague will attend in your place. Names need to be provided to DFID security staff to ensure admission.

Further details will then be sent to those joining the event closer to the time.

PERSPECTIVES ON IMPACT EVALUATION: Approaches to Assessing Development Effectiveness

An International Conference in Africa for policy-makers, program managers, evaluators, sponsors and other stakeholders in evaluation and development

Date: Sunday 29 March – Thursday 2 April 2009
Venue: Semiramis InterContinental Hotel, Cairo, Egypt

OUR INVITATION

How do we know when ‘development’ is truly successful? What can evaluations tell us about which policies, programs and projects work, why, for whom and under what conditions? How can such evaluations best be conducted to help to bring new hope and opportunities to many millions in Africa and beyond?

It gives us great pleasure to invite you to participate in one of the most exciting evaluation events ever held in Africa. The African Evaluation Association (AfrEA), the Network of Networks on Impact Evaluation (NONIE) and the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie) have joined forces to bring to Africa some of the best expertise from all continents on one of the most discussed topics among evaluation and development communities worldwide.

For the conference we define impact evaluations as those studies which concern themselves with determining and understanding the short, medium and long term outcomes or impacts of projects, programs and policies. We do not limit the term to any specific methodology in any particular discipline.
Continue reading “PERSPECTIVES ON IMPACT EVALUATION: Approaches to Assessing Development Effectiveness”

IPEN Conference on “Ensuring effective performance through evaluation”

Date: 25-27 September 2008
Venue: Yerevan, Armenia

(via Xceval email list)

Dear colleagues,

we have the pleasure to inform you that the 2008 IPEN (International
Programme Evaluation network) Conference will take place in Yerevan,
Armenia, September 25/27. IPEN is the Evaluation network covering the
countries of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS).

The 2008 Conference theme is “Ensuring effective performance through
evaluation”. Fourteen parallel sessions facilitated by international-level
specialists from the region and worldwide are foreseen, as well as three
one-day Pre-Conference training.

The Conference programme, including the pre-Conference training, is now
available on-line (English and Russian) at
http://eval-net.org/view_konf.php?id=2008

Best regards

Marco Segone
Regional Chief, Monitoring and Evaluation
UNICEF Regional Office for CEE/CIS
Tel: +41 (0)22 909 5550
Fax: +41 (0)22 909 5909
Email: msegone@unicef.org
Web: www.unicef.org/ceecis

Measuring Effectiveness – Participation, Empowerment and Downward Accountability

Date: 25th-26th September
Venue: Melbourne

Greetings

The annual Measuring Effectiveness conference is now only 6 weeks away. Online registrations are open on the website : https://www.worldvision.com.au/learn/conferences/me/Register.aspx

The conference will be held on Thursday 25th and Friday 26th September, 2008 in Melbourne, Australia. This year the conference is being held in partnership with The Australian National University. The 2008 conference will explore the themes of “Participation, Empowerment and Downward Accountability.”

The sessions will include case studies & panel discussions on these themes as well as looking at geographical activities in Asia, the Pacific and Latin America/Caribbean.
The draft conference schedule and session summaries will be available on the conference website within the next few days.
Continue reading “Measuring Effectiveness – Participation, Empowerment and Downward Accountability”

4th UK Social Networks conference

Date: Friday 18 July 2008 – Sunday 20 July 2008
Venue: University of Greenwich, London

“The UK Social Network Conference offers an interdisciplinary venue for social and behavioral scientists, sociologists, educationalists, political scientists, mathematicians, computer scientists, physicists, practitioners and others to present their work in the area of social networks. The primary objective of the Conference is to facilitate interactions between the many different disciplines interested in network analysis. The Conference provides a unique opportunity for the dissemination and debate of recent advances in theoretical and experimental network research.”

Editor’s note: I have included this event because I think social network analysis tools are very relevant to the task of describing and evaluating development project plans and progress. See more on this issue here http://mande.co.uk/special-issues/network-models/

AfrEA-NONIE-3ie International Conference on Impact Evaluation for Development Effectiveness

Date: 30 March -3 April 2009
Venue: Cairo, Egypt

“After four very successful conferences over the past few years (held twice in Nairobi, in Cape Town and in Niamey), AfrEA wishes to announce that its Fifth Conference will be an international event hosted in partnership with NONIE (www.worldbank.org/ieg/nonie) and 3ie (www.3ieimpact.org).

…the AfrEA-NONIE-3ie International Conference on Impact Evaluation for Development Effectiveness, which will be held on 30 March-3 April 2009 in Cairo, Egypt. This is the first time an AfrEA event will be held in North Africa. Continue reading “AfrEA-NONIE-3ie International Conference on Impact Evaluation for Development Effectiveness”

Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness

Date: 2-4 September 2008
Venue: Accra, Ghana,

In September 2008, ministers from over 100 countries, heads of bilateral and multilateral development agencies, donor organizations, and civil society organizations from around the world will gather in Accra for the Third High-Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (2-4 September). Their common objective is to help developing countries and marginalized people in their fight against poverty by making aid more transparent, accountable and results-oriented. The Third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness (Third HLF) will:

  • review progress in improving aid effectiveness
  • broaden the dialogue to newer actors
  • chart a course for continuing international action on aid effectiveness

Conference: What Works in Development? Thinking Big and Thinking Small

Date: Thursday, May 29, 2008 to Friday, May 30, 2008
Venue: The Brookings Institution, 1775 Massachusetts Ave., NW Washington, DC

Event Summary: Bill Easterly and Jessica Cohen of Brookings recently convened a conference with leading development experts to explore one of the most vexing issues of global development: what do we really know about what works and what doesn’t when fighting global poverty? The conference focused on the ongoing debate over which paths to development really maximize results: a big-picture approach focusing on the role of institutions, macroeconomic policies, growth strategies and other country-level factors; or a more grassroots approach focusing on particular microeconomic interventions such as conditional cash transfers, bed nets, teaching materials and other micro-level improvements in service delivery on the ground. The conference objective was to shed light on both schools of thought, with the goal of achieving a consensus on how to best leverage limited resources and time in the race to lift the lives of the world’s poorest.

Evaluation related papers, amongst others:

The New Development Economics: We Shall Experiment, But How Shall We Learn?
Author: Dani Rodrik (Harvard University, Kennedy School of Government)
Discussants: Sendhil Mullainathan (Harvard University) & Martin Ravallion (World Bank)

Pricing and Access: Lessons from Randomized Evaluations in Education and Health
Author: Michael Kremer (Harvard University and the Brookings Institution)
Discussants: David Weil (Brown University) & Paul Romer (Stanford University)

Conference: EVALUATING THE COMPLEX

Date: 29 – 30 May 2008
Venue: Oslo, Norway

Norad’s Evaluation Department and Oslo University College is planning to hold a two-days conference entitled Evaluating the Complex. The purpose of this conference is to promote interest in and discussions about the role of evaluations in Norway. The main target group is people working professionally with evaluation on different levels; as evaluators, researchers, administrators and users. The conference will take place in Oslo, 29-30 May 2008 at Oslo University College in Pilestredet 35.

CONCEPT PAPER
Conference presentations here

Conference: Policy and programme evaluation in Europe: Cultures and prospects

Date: July 3 and 4, 2008
Venue: European Parliament – Strasbourg (France)

Last news ! Reduction of registration fee until the 1st June

Registration on line for the symposium: http://www.sfe.asso.fr/fr/strasbourg2008/registration-form.html

Click here for the programme: http://www.sfe.asso.fr/fr/strasbourg2008/programme.html

Pre-sessions: Meetings to improve connections between evaluators

National School of Administration – Strasbourg (France), July 2, 2008

The pre-session programme is available :Click here: http://www.sfe.asso.fr/docs/site/pdf/strasbourg/programme_pre-sessions.pdf
Registration :Click here: http://www.sfe.asso.fr/docs/site/pdf/strasbourg/sfe_pre-session_bulletin_inscription.pdf

The written texts of speakers will be available on our web site in the next few days.

Best regards,
French Evaluation Society

65 Avenue des Gobelins
75013 PARIS
France
00 33 (0) 1 45 41 58 40
Contact : sfe.strasbourg2008@orange.fr
Web : www.sfe.asso.fr

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