Learning To Be Different: Why Evaluation Matters

Our world is experiencing global volatility, unprecedented levels of humanitarian
crises and vulnerability, coupled with the impacts of climate change, migration,
inequalities, and constantly emerging threats to peace and security. Against this
backdrop, the fallout from a global pandemic has left no country unaffected, with the
potential for a severely negative impact for many in the future - particularly those who
are most vulnerable.

Our under-preparedness for Covid-19 suggests we have learned insufficiently from
the past. At the same time, a crisis such as this pandemic brings opportunity- for a
genuine, systemic transformation of ideas, policies, programmes and practices. To
take advantage of this opportunity, we need, urgently, to foster collaborative and
comparative learning across the experience of different countries and localities, if we
are to avoid returning to conditions that do not serve us well. To do so we need to be
bold. But we also need to revisit the ways in which we learn from our collective
experiences, by re-examining evaluation’s relevance and contemporary contribution,
its methodological range, and its cultural and contextual resonance. If we are to learn
to be different - responding to immediate needs for climate, racial and gender justice,
but also to look forward to a different world where structural inequities and inequalities
are fundamentally changed - then we also need to learn differently. This presentation
aims to make the case, supported by practical examples, that evaluation matters
precisely because it helps us in learning to be different.