EVALMENA Conference and Celebration of the 2015

[Kassem El Saddik]

The Fourth International Conference of MENA Evaluation Network (EvalMENA) will kickstart the celebrations of the International Year of Evaluation (EvalYear 2015) in the Middle East and North Africa.

Advocating for more visibility, acceptance, and support for evaluation in the region, the conference will convene more than 150+ evaluators and policy makers from the five national networks which form the main constituency of EvalMENA: the Evaluation and Research Network of Egypt (EREN), EvalJordan, Association Maroccaine pour l’Evaluation (AME), LebEval, Reseau Tunisien de l’Evaluation (RTE) and the Palestinian Evaluators Network (PEA). It will highlight the opportunities and challenges in mainstreaming monitoring and evaluation within the development agenda in the region during and beyond 2015.

The conference will address key contextual opportunities and challenges for more evidence-base decision-making in MENA. It will discuss means to bridge the gaps between the evaluation and policy-making processes, by addressing both the data, practice and capacities challenges. The conference will discuss the regional priorities post 2015 and attend to the implications of the proposed Sustainable Development Goals M&E framework in the region.

The conference – and for the first time since EvalMENA came to birth in 2011 – puts a particular focus on youth by reinforcing a 20% quota of young evaluators (below 35 years of age) to take part in the conference. Other thematic areas of focus include media and gender and equity.

As part of its professional development dimension, the conference includes eight pre-conference workshops in there languages (Arabic, English and French) which are also open to evaluators residing in Egypt and who are not delegates to the conference, the workshops include:

(a)  Hearing Silenced Voices: Methods to Include Traditionally Disenfranchised Populations in Evaluation

(b)  Real World and Holistic Approach to Impact Evaluation

(c)  Towards Evaluation-Informed Policy: the role of Parliamentarians

(d)  Development Evaluation: What to evaluate? How? By whom?

(e)  Communiquer et rendre compte d'une évaluation pour en favoriser l’apprentissage et l’utilisation 

(f)   Participatory Community Evaluation: Principles and examples from the field

(g)  Advanced Impact Evaluation

(h)  Real Time Evaluation for Humanitarian Action

The conference is a typical partnership event that culminates the efforts of both EvalMENA and EREN with the support of various partners, namely IOCE, EvalPartners, IDRC, UNICEF Regional Office for MENA (MENARO), the International Initiative on Impact Evaluation (3IE) and the Islamic Corporation for the Development of the Private Sector (subsidiary of the Islamic Development Bank group).

For more information and close follow up, please follow the conference on facebook and twitter...

[Rituu B Nanda]

Anyone tweeting during the Conference? Marco is tweeting and we have seen pictures and a video!

[Rituu B Nanda]

Thanks for sharing Kassem! You must be so busy but you took out time to share. If you have any documents/powerpoints do share with us. The picture is so nice, it feels as if I was with you all.