Since January, I've had to temporarily downscale my professional involvement in the M&E and Educational networks and I had to neglect this little blog a bit because of a second long term development project I took on in January 2015. The project has lovely brown eyes, an infectious laugh and goes by the name of Clarissa. I'm happy to report that no major clashes with the first development project, (Named Ruan) has so far occurred, but its been a bit of an adjustment to balance work, and volunteering, and life in general. So what am I up to at the conference?
I'll be tweeting from @benitaw if you are interested in my perspective of the conference. I will also attend an IOCE stand at the conference, aiming to promote the VOPE Institutional Capacity Toolkit which my consultancy developed under the EvalPartners leadership of Jennifer Bisgard, Patricia Rogers, Jim Rugh, and Matt Galen. This is an online toolkit full of helpful resources aimed to equip VOPEs (Voluntary Organisations for Professional Evaluation) to become more accountable and more active.
Then, I'll be teaming up with Cara Waller (from CLEAR) and Donna Podems (from OtherWise) in a session for African VOPEs on Friday 16th October. This is a ‘world-café’ style event, from 10 –11:30am, to be held as a joint ‘Made in Africa’ and ‘Discussing the Professionalisation of Evaluation and Evaluators’ stream session. The aim of the session is to provide a space for those involved with VOPEs in the region (and those with an interest in strengthening African VOPEs) to come together to discuss current topics around building quality supply and generating demand for evaluation in contextually-specific ways. So please come and chat all things VOPE on the day!
Good luck to my colleague Fazeela Hoosen and the rest of the SAMEA board on hosting this year's conference with the DPME and the PSC. I know (and boy.... do I know) it is very hard work. So thanks in advance for all of the hours you are putting in, to make this event happen.
