Blog: Sustainable Development
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...
It’s not just Me, it’s We
It's not just Me, it's We Many of us want to be of service. That's why we go into international development, government, and many other fields. We hope our words and deeds help make others' lives better. For 25 years I've written...
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....
Are We Done Yet?
Are We Done Yet? When are we off the hook, so to speak, for the well-being of the participants whom we said we'd make healthier, better fed, more educated, safer, etc? America’s Agency for International Development (USAID) is the main channel for...
Can development projects be sustainable? Reblog from www.evaluace.com…
Can development projects be sustainable? (Reblog http://www.evaluace.com by Inka Pibilova and Marie Korner) What remained of Mongolian kindergartens In 2012, we have ventured with my colleague Marie Koerner through steppes of Mongolia to learn what remained of...
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...
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...
Ideas we’re not ready for are the ones we need most
Ideas we’re not ready for are the ones we need most Guest Post: Barbara Geary Truan Some ideas precede and shape reality, the ones that lie behind everything we create. Other ideas lag behind an often hidden reality: they seek then find it. Galileo...
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...
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...
Youth Series Part II: How Technology Enables Youth Participation
Youth Series Part II: How Technology Enables Youth Participation See Youth Series Part I: Factors Hindering Youth Participation in Development After discussing the various challenges youth face that inhibit their potential to be fully integrated,...
Pineapple, Apple- what differentiates Impact from self-Sustainability Evaluation?
Pineapple, Apple- what differentiates Impact from self-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...
The lack of ex-post project evaluation at the World Bank: One has no power
The lack of ex-post project evaluation at the World Bank: One has no power The World Bank has a huge repository of 8,483 evaluation resources in its e-library database, so naturally Valuing Voices was very interested in investigating how many of those resources...
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...
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.