Blog: Participation
Sustainability Ready: what it takes to support & measure lasting change webinar
On June 24th under GLocal's UNConference, "Co-creating our future stories of hope and action", Jindra Cekan, Holta Trandafili, and Isabella Jean presented their work on sustainability evaluations and exit strategies via local voices. We chaired a 2-hour discussion...
Sustaining “Sustainable Development”
Sustaining "Sustainable Development"? As a global development industry, we have almost no evidence of how (un)sustained the outcomes or impacts of 99% of our projects because we have never returned to evaluate them. But from early indications based on...
Assuming Sustainability and Impact is Dangerous to Development (+ OECD/DAC evaluation criteria)
Assuming Sustainability and Impact is Dangerous to Development (+ OECD/ DAC evaluation criteria) We all do it; well, I used to do it too. I used to assume that if I helped my field staff and partners target and design funded projects well enough, and try...
Setting a higher bar: Sustained Impacts are about All of us
Setting a higher bar: Sustained Impacts are about All of us Global development aid has a problem which may already affect impact investing as well. It is that we think it's really all about us (individuals, wealthy donors and INGO implementers) not all of us (you, me,...
Building the Evidence Base for Post Project Evaluation: A report to the Faster Forward Fund
Building the Evidence Base for Post Project Evaluation: A report to the Faster Forward Fund We are delighted to share Valuing Voices' report on the value added of post-project evaluation, which compares findings from eight end-of-project and subsequent...
Leading in Challenging Times: Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation (SEIEs)- reposted from Medium.com
Leading in Challenging Times: Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation (SEIEs) Some American organizations are retrenching, focusing more attention on domestic rather than international programming. Some are pulling back from critique of international...
Making up your mind. Prioritizing and making it happen
Making up your mind. Prioritizing and making it happen * As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. said, "every man must decide whether he will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness". ...
Maximizing what we’ve got… Time is now!
Maximizing what we've got... Time is now! We had a stirring conversation here in D.C. with someone very knowledgeable about sustainability; this person is a strong proponent of local ownership of all development. They also said...
PARTICIPATION BY ALL: The Key To Sustainability of CRS/ Niger’s Food Security Project
PARTICIPATION BY ALL: The Key To Sustainability of CRS/ Niger’s Food Security Project Valuing Voices is delighted to share our sustainability evaluation of Catholic Relief Service Niger’s PROSAN project [1]. This project that ran from 2006-2012 in Niger...
What happens after the project ends? Country-national ownership lessons from post-project sustained impacts evaluations (Part 2)
What happens after the project ends? Country-national ownership lessons from post-project sustained impacts evaluations (Part 2) In Part 1 of our blog on lessons learned from post-project evaluations, we explored: How we do it matters for great results...
Learning about Sustainability and Exit Strategies from USAID’s Food Assistance Projects
Learning about Sustainability and Exit Strategies from USAID’s Food Assistance Projects USAID overall and Food for Peace (FFP) specifically have become far more progressive in the Obama Administration and under Administrator Rajiv Shah, with a much...
Who is responsible for sustaining development?
Whose responsibility is it to sustain project activities? Billions of dollars are pumped into development activities in developing countries all over the world. Communities getting involved in these projects have a clear objective, which is to have their lives...
The Disruptive Potential of Feedback (reblog from NonprofitChronicles.com)
The Disruptive Potential of Feedback by MARC GUNTHER, OCTOBER 18, 2015 ( reblogged http://nonprofitchronicles.com/2015/10/18/the-disruptive-potential-of-feedback/) Few institutions in the US are as undemocratic as endowed foundations. The executives in...
Sustainable Development Goals and Foreign Aid– How Sustainable and Accountable to Whom? Reposting Blog from LinkedIn Pulse
Sustainable Development Goals and Foreign Aid– How Sustainable and Accountable to Whom? Jindra Cekan, PhD of ValuingVoices World leaders will paint New York City red next week at the UN Summit adopting the new post-2015 development agenda. The agreed...
Face our fears! Learn from failure…
Face our fears! Learn from failure... Global Giving has a nice example of getting participant feedback success/failure of a project their fundraising funded. The organization failed, which was sorrowful to the players in West Africa and funders worldwide (I, too am a...
IEG Blog Series Part II: Theory vs. Practice at the World Bank
IEG Blog Series Part II: Theory vs. Practice at the World Bank In Part I of this blog series, I described my research process for identifying the level to which the World Bank (WB) is conducting participatory post project sustainability...
A Missing Piece In Local Ownership: Evaluation Reblog from InterAction (US’ NGO Umbrella Organization)
A Missing Piece In Local Ownership: Evaluation (Reblog from http://www.interaction.org/blog/missing-piece-local-ownership-evaluation Grino and Levine) Ten years ago, ownership was established as a key principle of aid effectiveness. Although understanding...
IEG Blog Series Part I: Pick a term, any term…but stick to it!
Pick a term, any term...but stick to it! Valuing Voices is interested in identifying learning leaders in international development that are using participatory post-project evaluation methods to learn about the...
Listening better… for more sustainable impact
Listening better... for more sustainable impact Are we listening better? Maybe. As Irene Gujit states on Better Evaluation, Keystone’s work on ‘constituent voice’ enables a "shift [in] power dynamics and make...
Making money– is this a way to sustainable livelihoods? PACT’s Nepalese Lessons
Making money-- microenterprise-- is this a way to sustainable livelihoods? PACT's Nepalese Lessons Many Americans are steeped in the belief that we must 'pull ourselves up by our bootstraps', that hard work and especially faith in small businesses is the...
Walking in our participants’ shoes, Doing Development Differently
Walking in our participants' shoes, Doing Development Differently You and I like to make informed decisions. We go to restaurants recommended by Yelp or Facebook friends. We refer to Consumer Reports' rankings before we buy appliances and read Amazon...
What should projects accomplish… and for whom?
What should projects accomplish... and for whom? An unnamed international non-profit client contacted me to evaluate their resilience project mid-stream, to gauge prospects for sustainable handover. EUREKA, I thought! After email discussions with them I...
Times are a Changin’ in those who Fund Listening, then Doing
Times are a Changin' in those who Fund Listening... then Doing So you've been helped by an organization. You think it has a good mission and have actively participated in its activities yet one day (somewhat arbitrarily in your view), it takes you off its...
What’s likely to ‘stand’ after we go? A new consideration in project design and evaluation
What's likely to 'stand' after we go? A new consideration in project design and evaluation This spring I had the opportunity to not only evaluate a food security project but also to use the knowledge gleaned for the follow-on project design. This Ethiopian Red Cross...
Data for whose good?
Data for whose good? Many of us work in international development because we are driven to serve, to make corners of the world better by improving the lives of those that live there. Many of us are driven by compassion to help directly through working...
See how it turned out! Feedback loops for implementation and sustainability
Reposted from Feedback Labs: http://feedbacklabs.org/see-how-it-turned-out-feedback-loops-for-implementation-and-sustainability/ See how it turned out! Feedback loops for implementation and sustainability When I met Aminata in a central Malian village, she asked...
Youth Series Part III: The Role of ICT4D (Information and Communications Technology for Development) in Empowering Youth
Youth Series Part III: The Role of ICT4D (Information and Communications Technology for Development) in Empowering Youth Youth Series Part I here Factors Hindering Youth Participation in Development Youth Series Part II here How Technology Enables Youth Participation...
Youth Series Part I: Factors Hindering Youth Participation in Development
Youth Series Part I: Factors Hindering Youth Participation in Development My most recent research has been focused on global youth and their capacity (or incapacity) to be integrally involved in their own development process. With such huge youth cohorts...
Pineapple, Apple- what differentiates Impact from Sustainability Evaluation?
Pineapple, Apple- what differentiates Impact from Sustainability Evaluation? There is great news. Impact Evaluation is getting attention and being funded to do excellent research, such as by the International Initiative for Impact Evaluation (3ie), by donors such as...
What to consider for sustainability….
What to consider for sustainability…. Recently I read an article on “how to make a computer lab sustainable”. I read it with interest because I find the question about sustainability in international development fascinating. What do we mean by...
Stepping up community self-sustainability, one [Ethiopian] step at a time
Stepping up community self-sustainability, one [Ethiopian] step at a time Having just come back from evaluation and design fieldwork for an Ethiopian Red Cross (ERCS)/ Swedish Red Cross/ Federation of the Red Cross and Red Crescent project, the power of...
Aminata and I both want to be proud…
Aminata and I both want to be proud... I met Aminata in Mali in 1990 during my doctoral research. She was a Bambara farmer and an impressive woman, with pride in her community. She was a helpful informant during my research on how communities cope with...
Prospects for long-term sustainability…or lack thereof at the Macro Level (Part 2)
Prospects for long-term sustainability... or lack thereof at the Macro level (Part 2) During 2003-2004, the OECD conducted a very interesting Ex-Post Evaluation Sustainability Summary that synthesizes four separate Regional Rural Development (RRD) projects,...
What are the prospects for self-sustained impact at the Macro level? (Part 1)
What are the prospects for self-sustained impact at the Macro level? (Part 1) After studying various impact evaluations, it became clear that different development projects also have different scales, with multilaterally-funded macro-level being focused on higher...
Partners For Democratic Change: Promote Capacity Building to Achieve Self-Sustainability!
Catalyst organizations are those whose focus is on implementing programs with community level involvement during projects and local feedback loops to inform post-project evaluations for impact self-sustainability. An excellent example of this is Partners for...
What can we learn from Ex-Post (Post-Project) Evaluations?
What can we learn from Ex-Post Evaluations? In trying to learn more about sustainable development solutions, the first place to look for information is in ex-post evaluations, also commonly called post-project evaluations, which are conducted by either...
How do we define Sustainability?
How do we define Sustainability? Sustainability is a key success outcome for which a project is assessed, one of the five OECD DAC Criteria for Evaluating Development Assistance, which also includes relevance, effectiveness, efficiency, and impact....
Twigas (Participant self-sustainability) throughout ‘development time’- Design, Implementation, M&E and beyond
Twigas (Participant self-sustainability) throughout 'development time'- Design, Implementation, M&E and beyond What if we saw our true clients (sometimes vulnerable twigas) as our project participants and wanted the return on investment of...
Development= A Jeep (motor optional).. Resilience? If within 5 years!
Development= A Jeep (motor optional).. Resilience? If within 5 years! Imagine being given a lovely new Jeep. You get a driver (remember driving school) to help you learn to steer it around the pothole-strewn, scantly lit roads. Eventually you take over the...
Jindra Cekan, Ph.D. has used participatory methods for 30 years to connect with participants, ranging from villagers in Africa, Central/ Latin America and the Balkans to policy makers and Ministers around the world for her international clients. Their voices have informed the new Sustained and Emerging Impacts Evaluation, other M&E, stakeholder analysis, strategic planning, knowledge management and organizational learning.