Activities

Chumbaka Asia

Contributing to Chumbaka Asia's efforts to implement sound monitoring and evaluation by providing basic training and developing the monitoring and evaluation framework jointly with the Chumbaka team. The starting point was sorting out project logic of selected work streams and differentiating between different types of clients, such as private and public sector schools, and considering the perspectives of diverse stakeholders (including intermediary target groups and final beneficiaries, government and funding agencies).

Contributing jointly with colleagues Messrs. Codo and Fagla to a bilateral cooperation program in the Republic of Benin by structuring information on employment, education, private sector development, labor market policies and overall conditions in the country using data analysis, qualitative research and stakeholder discussions, and running a computer-based systems analysis over the information gathered. This kind of analysis is capable of evaluating the roles of different elements (such as: policy, economic and education sector trends, institutional strengths and weaknesses) in the given situation and thereby identify those elements which are the most effective for improving overall system results The analysis includes the effects of feedback loops, thus enabling more concerted, holistic strategies and selecting better pathways for reaching results.

Thinking in Systems

Applying ethics is at the core of best evaluation practices and requires continuous effort and determination. There are different protocols for all kinds of participants in our evaluations. For example, before we interview or organize focus group discussions with minors, specific procedures are established which ensure that participants and, where required, their guardians truly consent to the interviews or discussions. The children or adolescents need to have an understanding of the activity they are participating in, and they need to voluntarily agree to participate. They also are made fully aware that they may at their own discretion renegotiate this consent or withdraw from the activity. In the adjacent photo we are in the process of discussing the procedures with a mixed group of students in a secondary school of an urban area.

Informed Consent

For evaluations, we usually work with the standard OECD-DAC criteria set, supplemented by any further criteria the client may have. This core set of six different criteria (relevance, coherence, effectiveness, efficiency, sustainability, and impact) is a time-tested and useful framework for conducting evaluations of specific projects and other actions. In the adjacent snapshot we are, for example, implementing an evaluation of a public-private partnership project the field of skills training, implemented by a specialized organization of the United Nations with support from an established manufacturer of heavy-duty vehicles (trucks and buses) in order to contribute to reducing road accident fatalities and injuries as well as to reducing fuel consumption and CO2 emissions. The OECD-DAC framework can be applied to many different types of projects, from grass-roots all the way to policy levels.

Applying Standard Criteria

Agglomerations have always been a center of human activities and the number of people living in them as well as their share is on a continuous rise. They are complex systems of human interaction with a geographic, economic, and cultural environment in an increasingly interconnected world. Good, forward-looking management of the urban space supported by integrated planning and consultation with all relevant stakeholders, is a key for solving some of the most pressing issues of our days, among them climate change and organizing responsible production and consumption, while providing for the basic needs of housing, education, and more general wellbeing of their population. Picturesque historical city centers, moreover, may run the risk of seeing their processes overwhelmed not only by mass tourism, but also by competing interventions of international and bilateral agencies who seek to profit from the special branding the association with these sites offer to these external contributors. Evaluation in this context depends on a wide range of skills and a capacity to understand and manage holistic processes. The adjacent shot was taken during one of the different probes of an evaluation of a project with a strong smart grid component targeting an urban space notably governed by state, city, and local territorial units, and which was financed by an important environmental facility focusing on reducing greenhouse gas emissions while being fully subcontracted by a specialized agency of the United Nations to a national executing agency.

Integrated Planning for Sustainable Urban Spaces