September Gender Knowledge Exchange Event: Exploring Evaluation and Learning Methods in Community-Led Gender Transformative Programming
View the event recording and event slides here.
Why
- Explore approaches to and strategies for integrating participatory and inclusive evaluation and learning methods—developed in collaboration with community leaders—in gender transformative global health programming.
- Hear lessons learned from gender transformative programs that have successfully collaborated with community leaders—both informal and formal—and utilized participatory and inclusive evaluation and learning methods.
- Identify promising practices for measuring community leadership in gender transformative health programs.
The 2022 Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG) Plenary explored the elements and impacts of community-led, gender transformative programming, a topic that resonated with our members and attendees. The event, which convened more than 200 attendees representing 46 countries, highlighted promising practices and lessons learned for how to ensure meaningful community leadership in gender transformative global health programming.
The discussions that arose during the plenary highlighted the importance of gender champions cultivating effective and equitable learning and evaluation partnerships with community leaders and groups—both formal and informal—to help address common challenges such as limited resources, competing agendas, and ingrained power differences. Building on the momentum of the 2022 Plenary, the IGWG hosted a gender knowledge exchange event on September 7 from 9:00-11:00 a.m. EDT, exploring in more depth one of the plenary’s many thematic areas of interest: participatory and inclusive evaluation and learning methods in community-led, gender transformative programming, particularly family planning, reproductive health, and gender-based violence prevention.
Despite the wide acceptance of the importance of community leadership in theory and practice, many implementation challenges remain, particularly in strengthening programming’s participatory learning and evaluation components. Recent published literature reveals questions about the relationship between degree of participation and impact, how impact should be defined, and the role of wider social forces on the evaluation process for health programs. Additionally, practical process and content questions remain about how to get started implementing participatory learning and evaluation in programs, what steps are necessary to form these processes, how decisions are made, and what outcomes should be monitored.
This gender knowledge exchange provided members with the opportunity for deeper and more informal exchange as participants hear lessons learned from gender champions and experts on these topics in a small-group setting. It will begin with a panel discussion led by a group of experts, community leaders, and researchers focusing on strategies for and approaches to participatory and inclusive evaluation and learning methods and exploring promising practices for measuring community leadership in gender transformative programming. Following the panel discussion, attendees will have the opportunity to participate in a Q&A session with speakers. Panelists include:
- Nancy Glass, Professor and Independence Foundation Chair, Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing
- Tamil Kendall, Director, Partnership for Women’s Health Research Canada
- Renu Khanna, Co-Founder and Mentor, Society for Health Alternatives (SAHAJ)
- Rachel Litoroh, Monitoring, Evaluation, Accountability, and Learning Manager, Comitato Internazionale per lo Sviluppo dei Popoli/International Committee for the Development of Peoples (CISP)
IGWG members are encouraged to share this event with community leaders for their participation.
Please note that space for this event is limited. The IGWG team will follow-up with selected attendees to share call-in information. We kindly request that you only complete the expression of interest form if you are confident you can attend the event. The event recording will be shared with IGWG members and event registrants afterward.
We look forward to seeing you there!
