Posts in Learning and Evaluation
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning on Interfaith Cooperation: Lessons Learned in Five Interfaith Programs

The purpose of this research was to assess the effectiveness of interfaith cooperation programming across the peacebuilding landscape. This report explored the general characteristics of five interfaith cooperation programs – including explicit indicators, common measurement trends, and indicator examples – to determine what these interfaith cooperation programs were seeking to change, how they sought to do it, how they measured their success, and the degree of confidence in which we hold the reliability of the indicator. This report curated and analyzed reports covering five programs related to interfaith cooperation, using their evaluation reports.

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Monitoring Dialogue in Conflict-Affected Contexts: Guide for Practitioners

At a time of increasing conflict around the globe and uncertainty about resources for peace efforts, developing robust evidence of dialogue effectiveness is needed to demonstrate dialogue’s impact and value. This guide, developed over several years with the input of numerous colleagues and partners, merges theoretical insights with practical tools to present an innovative dialogue monitoring approach designed to help practitioners and monitoring and evaluation (M&E) professionals identify and track meaningful progress made by dialogue programs in conflict-affected contexts. It supports a shift toward more systematic, evidence-based monitoring practices necessary to document the complexities and impacts of a diverse range of dialogues.

This guide can also be a resource for funders and implementing organizations as they strive to increase accountability for the design and implementation of effective dialogue programs. Learning at an organizational level requires a shared framework to analyze comparable data across diverse programming contexts and interventions. This guide will encourage the kind of comparable data collection needed to enable peacebuilders to better assess and document dialogue outcomes in more standardized ways. By helping funders and implementers gather and analyze data about dialogue outcomes across programs and types of interventions, the guide will facilitate the assessment of intervention effectiveness and identify areas for growth.

The purpose of this guide is to:

  • Equip dialogue practitioners to monitor dialogue projects;

  • Facilitate project- and organizational-level adaptation and learning about dialogue program implementation; and

  • Contribute to evaluation and scholarly study of dialogue practice and effectiveness by developing the evidence base for tracking contributions of dialogue to peaceful conflict resolution.

LEARNING AND EVALUATION

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Key themes from digital workshop on Building Evidence Based Practice in Peacebuilding

The Alliance for Peacebuilding, Better Evidence Project, and One Earth Future organized a Digital Workshop to promote collaboration among global peacebuilding practitioners on advancing the field’s evidence-based practice. Alliance for Peacebuilding’s Jessica Baumgardner-Zuzik and One Earth Future’s Conor Seyle presented findings from their recently released report: Some Credible Evidence: Perceptions about the Evidence Base in the Peacebuilding Field. Here are key themes from the event.

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Failing Together: Key lessons on how to have constructive conversations about failures in development and peacebuilding

Development and peacebuilding is about tackling complex problems with different stakeholders in contexts that change every day. There is no way to solve these problems without failing. But we are reluctant to talk about failure, especially on the record. Veronica Olazabal from The Rockefeller Foundation, Lane Pollack from USAID, and Leslie Wingender with Humanity United recently spoke about what it takes to learn from failure as part of the InterAction Evaluation & Program Effectiveness Community of Practice.

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