Blog: Post Project Evaluation
Can We Assume Sustained Impact? Verifying the Sustainability of Climate Change Mitigation Results (reposting a book chapter)
So excited to have our chapter verifying the 'sustainability' of the Global Environment Facility Trust Fund (GEF) funded projects through examining two tranches of evaluations. My co-writer colleague Susan Legro did a brilliant job pointing out GreenHouse Gasses (GHG)...
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Funding and Accountability for sustainable projects?
Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), Funding and Accountability for sustainable projects? What are Sustainable Development Goals? " the United Nations adopted the new post-2015 development agenda. The new proposals - to be achieved by 2030- set 17 new 'sustainable'...
Interactive Webinar: Sustained Exit? Prove it or Improve it! (Nov 6 2020)
Sustained Exit? Prove it or Improve it! (reposted from Medium https://jindracekan.medium.com/sustained-exit-prove-it-or-improve-it-702ac507e2a5) Do we exit global development projects knowing our impacts are sustained? We hope so. As Professor Bea Rogers of Tufts said...
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...
Learning from a river of ex-post project evaluations, tools and guidance… Thanks USAID!
Learning from a river of ex-post project evaluations and tools... Thanks USAID! Dear ex-post aficionados. It's raining ex-post project evaluations. Here's hoping learning from such evaluations in water/ sanitation, maternal/child health and even capacity building/...
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,...
Investing in Youth for Project Effectiveness and Sustainability
Investing in Youth for Project Effectiveness and Sustainability One out of every six people on earth is between the ages of 15-24, says the UN. That is 1.2 billion youth. As one young leader says, “if the world’s problems are to be solved, it’s not going to happen...
Local Accountability and Transparency… During and Post Project?
Local Accountability and Transparency... During and Post Project? Local development partners? Check. Long-term transparent and accountable investments through them as “local solutions” partners? Not so much. While President Obama and former United States...
Impact Investing – International Development’s New Holy Grail?
Impact Investing - International Development's New Holy Grail? There are so many things I love about the private sector such as Forbes 18 Dec Quote of the Day: "You’re going to be wrong a fair amount of times. So the issue is, how do you be wrong well?"...
Can’t wait to learn from post-project sustainability evaluation? If not why?
Can't wait to learn from post-project sustainability evaluation? If not why? A colleague who has been promoting ex-post sustainability evaluation in her organization questioned my claim that doing them had “benefits” for future programming. It was an...
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...
How ‘new’ are our projects… and who is aiming at the right outcomes?
How 'new' are our projects... and who is aiming at the right outcomes? Valuing Voices exciting news is we have received research grant funding from the esteemed evaluator, Michael Scriven's Faster Forward Fund. We're looking into the value-added of...
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...
What happens after the project ends? Lessons from post-project sustained impacts evaluations (Part 1)
What happens after the project ends? Lessons from post-project sustained impacts evaluations (Part 1) We talk a lot about impact of our interventions, but far less is analyzed about the sustained impact of our work in the years after projects close out....
Sustained Impact post-project (ex-post)? Little proof at 3ie
Sustained Impact post-project (ex-post)? Little proof at 3ie Surely an organization that has received tens of millions of dollars of funding must track 'impact' as the actual long-term impact of projects. That is what I thought when I first began...
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...
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...
Altruistic Accountability… for Sustainability
Altruistic Accountability... for Sustainability Many of us in international development feel a sense of responsibility for others to be well, and for our work to improve their lives as well as for the work to be done in good stewardship of aid resources and optimizing...
Longing to do an Ex-post Sustainability Evaluation? How to support this work…
Longing to do an Ex-post Sustainability Evaluation? How to support this work… Just back from Niger where Catholic Relief Services, Rutere Kagendo and I are doing a fascinating post-project evaluation. Fresh on my mind is the commitment we all had to make...
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...
When Funders Move On (Originally published by Stanford Social Innovation Review 03/15)
When Funders Move On: Donors and nonprofits need to learn more about how to help program participants keep progressing after the support ends. Imagine standing in Detroit or South-Central Los Angeles. A team of experts has come to help you out of grinding poverty....
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...
Learning from the Past… for Future Sustainability
Learning from the Past... for Future Sustainability Heading up Food Security for Catholic Relief Services (CRS) was my first international development job in 1995-1999 and I have watched this organization grow in its commitment to program quality and learning/...
Czech it out! Great evaluation happening in the Czech Republic
Czech it out! Great evaluation happening in the Czech Republic One of the delights of living in another country is the surprises one encounters. For me, coming back to our second 'home', it was an evaluative surprise. For by connecting to the Czech Foreign...
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...
Sustainability SPRINGing out all over the place… and Disrupting!
Sustainability SPRINGing out all over the place… and Disrupting So what is sustainability? You may think it's the climate's long-term wellbeing and how to gauge changes to that. You may think it's linked...
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.