Where to go on 8 March?

There is a dedicated International Women's Day web-site - click here to find information on the day, a calendar of events where you can upload information on events you organise in your country, and resources - e.g. posters - that you can download and print out. One warning for people with a slow internet connection: animated advertisement banners may slow you down - if you don't need the pictures, better set your browser not to download images. And it may be a good idea to write to the corporate sponsors and find out whether they can support your work on women's rights! ;-)

"...and here are our raped women"

The other day a colleague told me about an evaluation in a war-prone country. The international consultant who led the exercise had called a meeting with the "beneficiaries" - women who used services designed for survivors of gender-based violence. At one point in the meeting, the consultant reportedly asked participants who had been raped to identify themselves by raising a hand.
Does this make you cringe? No? Then, please read on.

End Violence against Women Now: New Learning Modules

The UN WOMEN Virtual Knowledge Centre endvawnow.org has been enriched with new modules that provide guidance for a range of interventions to end violence against women. Jasmin Rocha and I are the authors of the "Campaigns" module - check it out and feel free to comment (click on the little envelope below) if you come across anything that needs enriching or improving! You can also register on endvawnow.org to indicate your preferences in terms of topics and languages. For the time being, only part of the site is available in French and Spanish, but eventually, everything will be translated.

Wishes for 2012 starting to come through!

The other day I wrote that I would do more to share findings from evaluations. And now I find out that Oxfam Great Britain has put my whole full big evaluation report on the "We Can" campaign, recommendations and all, in the public domain: ta-taa! Click here if you're interested in campaigning on people's attitudes on gender equality.
The link takes you to the Oxfam Great Britain Policy and Practice web-site, a commendable mine of publications linked to Oxfam work around the world. 

Good Resolutions for 2012

A very healthy and happy 2012 to everyone! At the beginning of this new year I realise how busy and stimulating 2011 was for me: I led two multi-country evaluations and two "strategic reviews", all in the complex fields of human rights, gender justice and peace building. Early in the year, I completed a "real-time" evaluation that had accompanied, over almost three years, the development of a facilitation method for strategic planning in conflict contexts. In October, I applied aspects of that method to plan and facilitate a multi-stakeholder, multi-lingual and inter-continental strategic planning workshop - an exhilarating experience. Between Christmas and New Year's Day, my occasional associate Jasmin Rocha and I made time to finally write up our article that presents the methodology we developed in 2010 to assess quality in work with survivors of violence against women.

What are my resolutions for 2012? I can think of a few:

New Call for Proposals!

Click on the link to find out more: The UN Trust Fund to End Violence against Women Announces New Call for Proposals | Say NO - UNiTE Attention: they tend to fund rather big projects. Bon courage!

Research on Gender Relations

There has been an encouraging flurry of research projects, "baseline" studies and evaluations on gender relations.  It seems that in recent years, hundreds of thousands - maybe millions - of people have been interviewed. They have been asked what they think and do about the roles of men and women, girls and boys (and maybe people who fit into an in-between category) - in the household, at school, at work, in politics and other aspects of life in society. I suspect that quite some people may have undergone several interviews by different research teams, especially in those parts of the world that receive extra donor attention - my mental map shows big blotches of donor interest around Bukavu, Goma, Kabul, Phnom Penh, to name a few places.

A commendable series of "webinars"

For free on-line seminars on evaluation, click here: Equity-focused evaluations | MY M&E! I particularly recommend the 22 November instalment with Patricia Rogers and Richard Hummelbrunner - on how to make log-frames more effective for complex interventions.

A women's classic, 2011 edition!

Hooray - "Our Bodies, Ourselves" has been updated, 40 years after the first edition of this classic on women's health and sexuality. Find the table of contents, the introduction, readers' praise and more by clicking on this link: Our Bodies, Ourselves 2011 Edition - Our Bodies Ourselves

Tips for Multi-Everything Facilitation

Just got back from an exhilarating multi-country, multi-disciplinary, multi-stakeholder, multi-language planning workshop. So much "multi" can make workshop planning quite an adventure: Will the participants understand each other, across cultures, disciplines, languages and perspectives? Will those who come with the money listen to those who come with the expertise? Will the participants reach any agreement or useful conclusions within a short (2-day) spell of time? In the end, things appeared to work out beautifully. I see three major factors for such success:

Evaluating efficiency in campaigning

The OECD Development Co-operation Directorate (DAC) defines efficiency as follows: "Efficiency measures the outputs -- qualitative and quantitative -- in relation to the inputs. It is an economic term which signifies that the aid uses the least costly resources possible in order to achieve the desired results. This generally requires comparing alternative approaches to achieving the same outputs, to see whether the most efficient process has been adopted. When evaluating the efficiency of a programme or a project, it is useful to consider the following questions: Were activities cost-efficient? Were objectives achieved on time? Was the programme or project implemented in the most efficient way compared to alternatives?"  (DAC criteria for evaluating development assistance)

Aid Effectiveness?

An incisive article about the part donors play in development effectiveness - just click on the link at the end of this paragraph. Owen Barder shows that government donors have fulfilled only one of the promise they made to increase aid effectiveness. Good reading! In my view, monitoring systems and evaluations should always factor in the donor's role. Their action - or non-action - may have just as much (or even more) weight than anything that happens "on the ground".
What Happens When Donors Fail to Meet Their Commitments? | Owen Barder | Global Development: Views from the Center

Good reading on "results-based" approaches vs. complexity

Highly commendable: an incisive article on results-based approaches in development. The author, Harry Jones, explains how ill-conceived application of "results-based management" tools may yield an overly simplistic picture of reality. Unwanted "side effects" are likely to occur. Click on the link to read the full article:
Overseas Development Institute (ODI) Blog : Managing better for results, not just measuring them better: lessons on complexity for the results agenda

Monitoring on Women's Rights

A few days ago I shared a link to AWID's recent publications on monitoring and evaluation for women's rights. To tell from the enthusiastic response it received, it fills a gap. You can find the publication by clicking on its title: Strengthening Monitoring and Evaluation for Women's Rights: Thirteen Insights for Women's Organisations.  It is part of an eminently legible and commendable series written by Srilatha Batliwala and Alexandra Pittman. They have also published Strengthening Monitoring and Evaluation for Women's Rights: Twelve Insights for Donors and a broader critique of monitoring and evaluation in development co-operation on women's rights, Capturing Change in Women's Realities.

Attitude Change on VAW

I had a useful conversation with a social psychologist last month. What follows below is what I have distilled from my notes.

Violence against women is closely linked to individual attitudes and social norms on women’s and men’s roles in society.