aes18 International Evaluation Conference

Tracy McDiarmid (International Women's Development Agency), Amanda Scothern (International Women's Development Agency), Paulina Belo (Alola Foundation)

Our organisation's work is grounded in the principles of gender equality and women's rights, delivered in partnership with inspiring organisations across the Asia Pacific region. We recognise that gender equality requires incremental and transformative change which occurs over generations, and that strengthening women's movements through collective action and learning is a key strategy in achieving change. Capturing those changes in the voices of diverse women is at the heart of our commitment to ethical, feminist, participatory evaluation.

This Interactive Session models the principles and practices of our organisation's approach.  It will explore how evaluations can be designed to strengthen the capacity of diverse women as co-researchers; to build on and generate knowledge as a resource of and for the women who create, own and share it; and to design evaluative spaces that promote authentic, inclusive forms of evidence.  

A campfire approach will  highlight our recent experience, including the design of a mid-term reflection using feminist participatory action research methodologies and the development of our Feminist Research Framework (Nov 2017), and engage session participants to enquire into, and explore other applications of these principles and practices drawing on their own experience.  Our discussion will include evaluation design (experiences, challenges, applicability to different contexts) and methodological practices such as appreciative inquiry, narrative and performative methods.  

Key learnings are envisaged on topics such as participatory design processes (ensuring delivery and community partners are involved in the development of key questions and appropriate methodologies), capacity building (empowering diverse women as co-researchers in data collection and analysis), and accessible and applicable learning (communicating and using findings relevant to diverse partners to support political, economic and social change).  Peer-to-peer exchange will be captured, and will inform the circulation of sector guidance drawing on experience and learning of session participants.