What?
YEN's “Evaluation Clinics” are intensive 3-4 day trainings that focus on knowledge sharing and learning between youth employment programs with the goal of improving current evaluation practices. The Clinics provide access to specialized knowledge and support via hands-on consultations from evaluation experts.
Clinics are currently sponsored by the World Bank's Development Grant Facility and the Danish Lead Africa Commission. With World Bank funding, YEN has organized one evaluation clinic in the Middle East, supporting rigorous evaluation of youth employment projects in the region. The Danish Africa Commission project will facilitate the implementation of numerous evaluation clinics in East Africa between 2010 and 2014.
The curriculum for the Clinics is delivered by experts using three distinct learning modules:
- the project’s results chain and evaluation question
- evaluation method
- data collection and analysis
The Clinics will also provide links to research firms and potential co-sponsors. By the end of the Clinic, case studies should have a draft work plan for the evaluation in place.
Who?
Participants in the Clinic come from two subgroups. The first subgroup is general participants coming from the youth employment community in the region where the Clinic takes place. These participants are hand-picked by YEN (there is no predefined selection criteria) based on interest (often first come, first serve) or recommendations from the YEN network.
The second subgroup is the live case studies. These are projects that have been selected based on a competitive call for proposals. Selection is carried out by a committee of evaluation and youth employment experts.
How?
Case studies act as the unit of analysis for study and learning. Three projects will be chosen as case studies per Clinic. To be eligible, projects must originate from the region where the Clinics take place. Call for proposals will be launched on an annual basis. Applications will contain (though not limited to) the following key information about the project:
- Program log-frame (objective(s), expected outcomes, and main activities);
- Target population (number of program beneficiaries, age and gender of target population);
- Current Stage of program (pilot, launch, scale up, other);
- Evaluation objective;
- Evaluation hypothesis (what is the main question to be addressed by the evaluation?);
- Evaluation design (what is the proposed methodology? will a control group be used? how will participants be (or were) selected? what data is available for the evaluation?);
- Who will be the main audience of the evaluation?;
- Evaluation timeline;
- Total program budget and evaluation budget; and
- Potential co-funding sources for the impact evaluation.
Each proposal will be scored based on the following predefined criteria:
- Size of sample group;
- Soundness of technical elements (logical results chain, clear evaluation objective and hypothesis, appropriate evaluation design and availability of data);
- Availability of co-funding; and
- Overall likelihood of implementing an impact evaluation after the training takes place
Following the Clinic, all projects that have been selected as case studies will qualify for ongoing technical support to finalize their evaluation plans.
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