Civil Society

Dear Colleagues/Experts,       The International Peace and Development Training Center (IPDTC) is inviting expert professionals, policy makers and practitioners for its upcoming Autumn Programs. The programmes are designed for UN agencies, governments and national and international organisations....

A team from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the US Institute of Peace (USIP) evaluated the programs and activities that USAID's Office of Transition Initiatives (OTI) undertook in Colombia from 2007 to 2011....

This report is an assessment by the Americas Program of the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) of the Plan de Consolidacion Integral de la Macarena (PCIM), a project that the government of Colombia is implementing in six municipalities.  First organized in August 2007, the PCIM is now a year and a half old, although it was not fully implemented until late that year....

Development and Training Services, Inc. (dTS) was contracted to conduct a mid-term evaluation of the Kenya Civil Society Strengthening Program (KCSSP). This grant-making and capacity-building program was designed to address the fragmentation, fractionalization and low constituent credibility constraining Kenya civil society from effectively playing its role in promoting political reforms and keeping government accountable to the citizens of Kenya....

In April 2006, violent clashes relating to artisinal mining resulted in four deaths. In response to this incident and the general increase in tensions and conflicts over resource access and trade, the former Vice-Governor of Katanga, His Excellency Chikex Diemu, requested assistance....

The overall goal of Pact Sudan’s Transitional Areas Peace Fund (TAPF) Program is to support sustainable peace and reconciliation as a foundation for recovery and development in the transitional areas of Sudan. The program purpose is to help create an “enabling environment” for the implementation of the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) in the Three Areas of Abyei, Blue Nile, and Southern Kordofan in Sudan....

In 1995, the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW) and The Centre for Development and Population Activities (CEDPA) began working in partnership to manage the “Promoting Women in Development” (PROWID) grants program, funded by the Office of Women in Development at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID)....

This report is largely focused on project results. Its findings are structured around the two Strategic Objectives (SOs) of the project, its stated Theory of Change, and matters of initiative sustainability. The report also provides a set of lessons learned and recommendations by different project participants, and concludes with the evaluators’ own final reflections and recommendations to CRS/JWBG regarding future youth and peacebuilding projects....

This guide introduces some of the best recent literature on the role of communication in governance. It highlights the major critical debates surrounding the relationship between communication, government accountability and responsiveness, and state-society relations in developing countries....

CRS began the Globally-Accepted Indicators (GAIN) Initiative in June 2008 to strengthen indicator practice across sectors. Globally-Accepted Indicators are those that CrS and the global development community generally consider to be appropriate and effective for project monitoring and evaluation....

This series provides guidance for designing and implementing a monitoring and evaluation (M&E) system. This series supports and complements CRS’ global M&E standards (CRS 2009). While the global standards represent the agency’s commitment to quality M&E as a key component of program quality, this series provides ‘how to’ guidance for operationalizing this commitment in practice. ...

This paper is a record of an international workshop in September 2010 on the evaluation of storytelling as a peacebuilding methodology. It includes lessons learned and useful methodological tips for evaluating the use of storytelling.  ...

Sustaining an M&E system that can produce trustworthy, timely, and relevant information on the performance of government, civil society, or private sector projects, programs, and policies requires that one overcome many M&E system challenges and approach the implementation of such a system with experience, skill, and real institutional capacity....

This essay argues that evaluation and systematic reflection provides for the learning and knowledge necessary for effective dispute resolution processes. At the same time, it poses significant difficulties. ...

This report has two purposes: to summarize what we have learned over the past 15 years about how to evaluate community change initiatives, and to identify strategies for enhancing the evidence base about what it takes to improve conditions in poor communities....

Mercy Corps implemented the two-year, $2. 5 million, Governance Promotion through Conflict Management in Iraq (GPCMI) program from January 2009 through the end of December 2010. Funded by a generous grant from the Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor at the United States Department of State, the goal of the program was to help influential Iraqi leaders from all 18 governorates gain the tools, skills, and support they needed to address a wide range of tensions and conflicts that – if left unaddressed – could have escalated to wider violence and threatened to derail Iraq’s fragile transition to peace and democracy. To support this goal, the program: 1) provided Iraqi leaders at the local and provincial level with conflict management and negotiation tools and skills; 2) worked with these leaders to use their new skills to resolve concrete disputes in their communities; and 3) created a nation-wide network of Iraqi conflict management and negotiation practitioners who would continue this work into the future. ...

This checklist provides 18 actionable points for institutionalizing evaluation in your organization.  ...