Technical Director, Strategy, Performance, & Learning Social Impact, United States
Evaluating the impact of P/CVE interventions requires a more cohesive system for assessing individual and collective attitudes, behaviors, and relationships than is typically offered by one-off traditional formative and summative evaluations of specific activities. Any system with this goal needs to rigorously and regularly assess factors as varied as the perceived fairness of governance institutions, access to social and economic opportunities, and the ability of communities to manage grievances and conflict. Furthermore, it needs to do so with a contextually aware approach, rooted in on-the-ground realities, while delivering timely and concise utilization-focused evidence to decision-makers and program managers. While specific solutions vary for understanding the effectiveness of P/CVE programs and learning from what has and has not worked in the past, the experience of USAID/Somalia and its evaluation partners provides useful principles: -Test, refine, and revisit theories of change (TOC) when evaluating. -Apply flexible evaluation systems that allow programming to be assessed by intervention type, domains of change, and geographic areas, as relevant for decision-making. -Build on the knowledge and learning generated by development partners on the ground, engaging them in collective sensemaking. -Monitor contextual factors influencing intended results. -Apply frameworks to ensure evaluations answer questions which would be useful and actually used by decision makers, like contribution analysis for adaptive management. Social Impact will share a story of its experience in developing a portfolio monitoring system in a fragile and conflict-prone context in collaboration with USAID and development partners in Somalia to inform evaluation of P/CVE programs.
