Training Opportunities

Dates: Tuesday & Thursday February 21 & 23, 3:00 PM to 4:30 PM Eastern Time. For one registration fee, participants may attend 1 or both sessions.

Length: 3 contact hours

Description: Empowerment evaluation builds program capacity, fosters program improvement, and produces outcomes. It is used throughout the world, ranging from Australia to Japan and Brazil to New Zealand. Empowerment evaluation teaches people how to help themselves by learning how to evaluate their own programs. The role of the evaluator is that of a coach or facilitator in an empowerment evaluation, since the group is in charge of the evaluation itself. In addition, empowerment evaluation produces both a learning organization and measurable outcomes. This eStudy will introduce you to the steps of empowerment evaluation and tools to facilitate the approach.

This eStudy will occur in two 90-minute sessions and will include preparation assignments and materials sent before, between, and after the sessions.

Day 1 – This session will cover principles guiding empowerment evaluation, such as improvement, capacity building, and accountability. The session will also briefly discuss theories, such as process use and theories of use and action. Concepts covered will include: critical friend, cycles of reflection and action, and a community of learners. This session will also present the steps to plan and conduct an empowerment evaluation, including: 1) establishing a mission or unifying purpose for a group or program; 2) taking stock – creating a baseline to measure future growth and improvement; and 3) planning for the future – establishing goals and strategies to achieve objectives, as well as credible evidence to monitor change.

Day 2 – This session will highlight the use of basic self-monitoring tools such as establishing a baseline, creating goals, specifying benchmarks, and comparing goals and benchmarks with actual performance. In addition, this session will respond to critiques in the literature. The session will also cover how to select appropriate user-friendly technological tools to facilitate an empowerment evaluation, aligned with empowerment evaluation principles. Although questions will be entertained throughout the two sessions, this session will conclude with a formal question and answer period focusing on questions such as: when it is most appropriate to use an empowerment evaluation approach, common challenges, and effective techniques to implement high quality empowerment evaluations.

Presenter: David Fetterman is president and CEO of Fetterman & Associates, an international evaluation consulting firm. He has 25 years’ experience at Stanford University in administration, the School of Education, and the School of Medicine. He is the founder of empowerment evaluation and the author of over 10 books including Empowerment Evaluation Principles in Practice (Guilford) with his collaborator Abraham Wandersman. He is a past-president of the American Evaluation Association and co-Chairs the Collaborative, Participatory and Empowerment Evaluation AEA Topical Interest Group. He is a highly experienced and sought after speaker, facilitator, and evaluator.

Register: https://www.eval.org/webinar_reg/Registrationtop.asp ($75 full members, $40 student members, $100 nonmembers, $55 student nonmembers)

Last day to register Tuesday February 14, 2012

Professional Development Course
“Realist Evaluation and Dealing with Complexity” – Book these dates now!

May 3-4, 2012

To be held at the Federal Office of Personnel – Berne, Switzerland

The University of Fribourg, Sociology, Social Policy and Social Work Department in association with Marlène Läubli of LAUCO Training and Evaluation and the Swiss Evaluation Society (SEVAL) are pleased to announce that their next professional development course in evaluation will be held in Berne on May 3-4, 2012. For on-line registration and more information about the course, please go to www.unifr.ch/travsoc/fr or get in touch with severine.moll-lauper@unifr.ch

The topic will be realist evaluation and complexity and will be run by Dr. Gill Westhorpe, Director of Community Matters, a research and evaluation consultancy specialising in realist methodologies. She is also a recognised expert in realist synthesis and is currently a member of the core research team developing publication standards and guidance materials for realist synthesis. She has provided professional development programs in realist evaluation and realist synthesis around Australia and in England, Scotland, the Netherlands, the Czech Republic, New Zealand, America, Canada and Vietnam. She regularly presents at national and international conferences.

One of the greatest challenges for evaluation is demonstrating causality - contribution analysis provides a step forward in the right direction – but there are still unresolved difficulties. On the one hand, the same program can generate different outcomes in different situations. On the other hand programs can be implemented very differently in different contexts but generate similar outcomes (at least part of the time). Complex programs in open social systems don’t behave in the ways that linear program logic models suggest, and the interactions between programs and their contexts can be almost impossible to unpack. Realist evaluation offers a substantially different way of dealing with these challenges – it offers a different way of understanding how programs work, and of analyzing the importance of context.

• This practical, hands on workshop will use case studies, practical examples and participants’ own evaluation projects to help participants understand realist evaluation and approaches to using it with complex programs.

Dates: Wednesdays March 7, 14, & 21 11:30 AM to 1:30 PM Eastern Time. For one registration fee, participants may attend 1 or all sessions.

Length: 6 total contact hours

Description: This eStudy course will provide an overview of program evaluation for participants with some, but not extensive, prior background in program evaluation. The session will be organized around the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) six-step Framework for Program Evaluation in Public Health as well as the four sets of evaluation standards from the Joint Commission on Evaluation Standards. The six steps constitute a comprehensive approach to evaluation. While its origins are in the public health sector, the Framework approach can guide any evaluation. The course will touch on all six steps, but particular emphasis will be put on the early steps, including identification and engagement of stakeholders, creation of logic models, and selecting/focusing evaluation questions. Several case studies will be used both as illustrations and as an opportunity for participants to apply the content of the course and work through some of the trade-offs and challenges inherent in program evaluation in public health and human services.

This eStudy will occur in three 2-hour sessions and will include materials sent before, between, and after the sessions.

Day 1 – An overview of the evaluation framework steps and standards and zoom in on the importance of program description and stakeholders. Participants will work thru a few exercises on building simple but effective logic models and using those for stakeholder engagement.

Day 2 – The different types and phases of evaluation, show how to best set your evaluation focus, and then show how to convert that focus into specific evaluation questions and indicators. Participants will set an evaluation focus and define questions for some of the same cases used in Session 1.

Day 3 – How to make effective choices of data collection sources and methods, including mixed methods.  Some general issues in analysis and reporting will also be addressed. Participants will work thru several cases and illustrations to show how data collections sources and methods fit each situation.

Presenter: Thomas Chapel is the Chief Evaluation Officer at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, GA. He serves as a central resource on strategic planning and program evaluation for CDC programs and their partners. Before joining CDC, Tom was Vice-President of the Atlanta office of Macro International where he directed and managed projects in program evaluation, strategic planning, and evaluation design for public and nonprofit organizations. He is a frequent presenter at national meetings, a frequent contributor to edited volumes and monographs on evaluation, and has facilitated or served on numerous expert panels on public health and evaluation topics.

Register: https://www.eval.org/webinar_reg/Registrationtop.asp ($150 full members, $80 student members, $200 nonmembers, $110 student nonmembers)
Last day to register Wednesday February 29, 2012

Course: Participatory Planning, Monitoring and Evaluation - Managing for Impact

Location: Wageningen, The Netherlands

Organisation: Wageningen UR Centre for Development Innovation

Deadline for scholarship: 1st October!

Dear colleagues,

We have been successfully running this course, even in 3 parallel groups over the last few years due to high demand. During the training we organise a public event on 'developmental evaluation' by the widely renowned evaluation expert
Dr. Michael Quinn Patton! More info on the event will follow later.

If you want to apply for scholarship, please be fast as the deadline for scholarship is 1st October!

More info can be found: http://www.cdi.wur.nl/UK/newsagenda/agenda/Participatory_planning_monitoring_and_evaluation.htm

'The course recognises that in much of international development we just cannot work with so-called blue-print approaches to planning and management. Though the difference we want to make (impact) needs to be clear, we are often in need of more flexible, adaptive and process-oriented approaches that guide a course of action in navigating complexity and moving forward in making that difference. For this purpose we need learning-orientated M&E that supports managers on an
on-going basis in dealing with a complex and changing context. At the same time, funding agencies, governing agencies and other stakeholders put demands on accountability and transparency. These necessitate effective Planning and M&E systems and processes that guide towards and inform about the progress and impact of development projects and programmes and on other specific information requirements each stakeholder may have'.

With kind regards,

Cecile Kusters
PPME-M4I course coordinator
Participatory Planning, Monitoring & Evaluation - Managing for Impact
Multi-Stakeholder Processes and Social Learning
Centre for Development Innovation
Wageningen UR
P.O. Box 88, 6700 AB Wageningen, The Netherlands
Tel. +31 (0)317 481407 (direct), +31 (0)317 486800 (reception)
Fax +31 (0)317 486801
e-mail: cecile.kusters@wur.nl
website: www.cdi.wur.nl
PPME resource portal: http://portals.wi.wur.nl/ppme/
MSP resource portal: http://portals.wi.wur.nl/msp/

The Italian National Rural Network, Task Force “Monitoring and Evaluation”, organizes a cycle of meetings involving national and international experts and practitioners on the topic: “The effective use of evaluation results”.

Introduction
Within the framework of rural development programming 2007-2013, the introduction of on-going evaluation requires a reflection on the definition of adequate models of organization of evaluation activities and structures of governance, to improve the quality of the research and give back to the policy-makers and to the other stakeholders of the programmes timely and accurate information on the implementation and effects of policies. It follows that the function of the evaluation to accompanying the implementation of rural development programmes and its actors is strengthen. And the relationship between evaluation and policy is enriched with new food for thought on whether to expand the scope of the research, beyond the community "theory-based" approach, to draw and explore paths to growth the skills that strengthen the relevance, usefulness, understanding and use of evaluations, encouraging the definition and implementation of better policies (evidence-based policy) and more close to the needs of the territories.
In this context, the National Rural Network, within the activities of the “Monitoring and Evaluation" task force, promotes the reflection of the different actors involved in the evaluation process on the topic of the effective utilization of the programme evaluations’ results, encouraging the growth of the ownership of evaluation and of the professional skills, the dialogue and the comparison on different experiences.

Aim
The aim of the meetings is to contribute to the growth of widespread evaluation thinking among the actors involved in defining and implementing evidence-based policies: administrators, evaluators and stakeholders. Throughout the meetings a learning route is set, about useful and usable evaluations, effective communication and evaluations follow up.

More information about this training course available here 

This annual training programme by the International Human Rights Network aims to enhance substantive knowledge and practical skills of sector personnel, consultants, managers etc, in applying human rights based approaches to reform of the justice sector.  The programme is designed for people working in the justice sector (with state or non-state institutions) or undertaking Rule of law/Governance (eg UN, EC Framework Contract Lot 7) as well as justice sector personnel wishing to adapt their expertise for international consultancy work – programme formulation, management evaluation etc.

Knowledge and skills enhanced include:

• The legal principles, policies & practice underpinning human  rights based approaches to justice sector reform
• The inter-linkages between justice sector institutions and their core functions (law enforcement, judiciary, diversion/corrections/rehabilitation, etc)
• The relationship between the justice sector and related terms; 'security sector', 'rule of law', 'good governance'
• Human rights based needs assessment, programme design, implementation, as well as monitoring & evaluation
• Programming tools & checklists (including benchmarks & indicators of human rights change in the sector)
• Substantive and Country case studies as well as international field missions (including conflict and post-conflict contexts)
• Teamwork, advocacy, strategic partnerships and consulting opportunities

Further information, trainee testimonials, application details at: http://www.ihrnetwork.org/justice-sector-reform_202.htm

This International Human Rights Network training programme aims to enhance the substantive knowledge and practical skills of sector personnel, consultants, managers etc, in applying human rights based approaches to reform of the health sector.  The programme is designed for people working in the health sector (with state or non-state institutions) or undertaking global health assignments (eg UN, EC Framework Contract Lots 8) as well as health sector personnel wishing to adapt their expertise for consultancy work in international consultancy work – programme formulation, management evaluation etc.

Knowledge and skills enhanced include:

• The legal principles, policies & practice underpinning human  rights based approaches to health sector reform, core legal obligations and other principles (MDGs etc)
• Sectoral approaches and the relationship between the health and other sectors (education, justice etc) and between the right to health and the “underlying determinants of health”
• Human rights based needs assessment, programme design, implementation, as well as monitoring & evaluation
• Programming tools & checklists (including benchmarks & indicators of human rights change in the sector)
• Case studies of national contexts, specific groups (children, women, persons with disabilities etc) & thematic issues (HIV/AIDS, Maternal, child & reproductive health, neglected diseases etc)
• Teamwork, advocacy, strategic partnerships and consulting opportunities

Limited scholarship support will be available from the IHRN-Dr. Noel Browne Scholarship Fund. Further information, IHRN trainee testimonials, application details see http://www.ihrnetwork.org/health-sector-reform_238.htm