Evaluation and value for money

[Julian King]

Please see my LinkedIn post for a 30 minute presentation on evaluation and value for money, featuring the MUVA female economic empowerment program and an approach to VFM assessment that combines strengths of evaluative reasoning and economics. 

Yesterday I was scheduled to give a guest lecture at Auckland Uni, but all teaching has gone online for the moment. So I pre-recorded the lecture on Zoom. There’s a first time for everything! Here’s a 30-minute video of the presentation - Evaluation and Value for Money: https://lnkd.in/fgfmAEm And here’s an annotated copy of the slides, for those who prefer to read: https://lnkd.in/fg2tU24 Since a few evaluation conferences have already been postponed to next year, perhaps this is a way we can share ideas while we’re working from home?

LinkedIn post

[Julian King]

Hi Rituu, 

I think these terms 'stakeholders, rights-holders and end-users' don't have a universal definition. To me, the terms overlap but I felt it was important to mention them all. By stakeholder, I mean any person/group with an interest in the program or policy - e.g. those who are supposed to benefit from it, those who deliver it, those funding it, those who designed it, etc.

End-users and rights-holders are particular types of stakeholder. End-users are those who will use the evaluation (I'm borrowing the term from Michael Quinn Patton's Utilization-Focused Evaluation). End-users could be any of the above-mentioned stakeholders but often they are the donor or decision-making body. By rights-holders, I mean people who are affected by the policy or program, and to whom the policy, program, and evaluation have a duty of care (https://socialprotection-humanrights.org/key-issues/universality-of...). 

Of course, we don't have a room big enough make sense of the evidence with literally all of these people, but the principle I'm suggesting is that we should seek an appropriate level of dialogue and input so that their perspectives and wisdom have a bearing on how the evaluation is conducted and how findings are understood. In the end it's about power - with the evaluator having a responsibility to ensure the evaluation doesn't reinforce existing disparities by privileging one perspective over others. 

Best, 

Julian

[Rituu B Nanda]

Hi Julian,

Thanks for sharing your work. 

1. You mention- "to make sense of the evidence with stakeholders, rights-holders and end-users." Do you do this through a workshop?
2. When we work with more marginalized groups we need to invest more time and effort, I was wondering how would you incorporate this in VFM?

In case its possible please would you elaborate on this. It will be wonderful to learn from you.

Warmly,

Rituu