Have you had the experience of being asked to perform an evaluation of a project that was almost finished, there was no baseline, and there can’t be a comparison group, yet your clients expected “rigorous impact evaluation”? Not only that, but as you were negotiating the terms of reference you discovered that there is a short deadline and a rather limited budget for conducting the evaluation! Have you had to deal with political pressures, including pre-conceived expectations by stakeholders?
This workshop presents a seven-step process, a checklist and a toolbox of techniques that seek to help evaluators and clients ensure the best quality evaluation under real-life constraints like those described above. The RealWorld Evaluation approach will be introduced and its practical utility assessed through presentations, examples from international experiences, and small-group exercises. The intention is that participants will mutually learn and share practical techniques for dealing with real-world constraints.
You will learn:
Jim Rugh has had over 45 years of experience in international development, 30 of them as a professional evaluator, mainly of international NGOs. He headed the evaluation department at CARE for 12 years. He has led many evaluation trainings and conducted agency-level evaluations of a number of international agencies. Along with Michael Bamberger and Linda Mabry, he co-authored the book published by Sage in 2006: RealWorld Evaluation, Working Under Budget, Time, Data and Political Constraints.