The Development of a Toolkit for Collaborative Evaluation in RCEs

• In Event: Roundtable Session (Monday I)
  In Refereed Round-Table Session: Evaluation and education for sustainable development (ESD)

Proposal

Evaluation work is the entry point to start-up and development of all RCEs. The start-up evaluation tools, developed collectively by UNU-IAS and the RCE Community aim to strengthen evaluation practice and focus RCE work around the SDGs. The work of RCEs is thus rooted in evaluation. It begins with evaluating how things are being done, what is going wrong and what can be improved. Evaluation work is an entry point for the start-up of all RCEs, and to strengthen assessment practices.

Goals
The RCE Start-up Evaluation Toolkit is a framework for RCEs to assess the following goals:
• improved collective learning
• enhanced sustainability and
• strengthened SDG work of an RCE

RCE Tools
The RCE assessment tools are built around three evaluation processes, present in most RCEs:
1. Constitutive Evaluation - assessments of the local situation that have given rise to the RCE and its activities
2. Appreciative Enquiry - a collaborative approach to assessing what participants appreciate about the work they are doing together.
3. Value Creation - participant assessments of the value, scale and impact of collaborative learning and change projects of the RCE.

Assessment Processes
These three evaluation processes can be used in a step-by-step evaluation or in other creative sequences to:
• document RCE change projects that have been undertaken together,
• gather evidence for the assessment of what has been happening and
• use the information gathered to plan a way forward in continuing RCE activities.

Evidence and Outcomes
The start-up evaluation tools focus on questions that help participants to gather information and to deliberate the emerging evidence. Evaluation work is important to track and report RCE activities as civic society collectives. The toolkit will hopefully help RCEs to report the value, scale and impact outcomes of their programmes and to strengthen their collaborative work on the SDGs as local concerns that are relevant to them.

Author

• Zinaida Fadeeva, UNU RCE and TERI Universtiy