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Session Title: Body of Evidence or Firsthand Experience? Evaluation of Two Concurrent and Overlapping Advocacy Initiatives
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Panel Session 452 to be held in Panzacola Section F1 on Friday, Nov 13, 9:15 AM to 10:45 AM
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Sponsored by the Advocacy and Policy Change TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Carlisle Levine, CARE, clevine@care.org
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| Abstract:
If alleviating global poverty depends on successful pro-poor policies, then, CARE, like other international humanitarian organizations, can promote these policies by presenting evidence based on decades of working in more than 60 countries. With Gates Foundation support, CARE is testing this hypothesis via two initiatives. CARE's LIFT UP grant aims to build organizational capacity to more systematically use country-level evidence to influence U.S. policymakers. CARE's Learning Tours grant provides Members of Congress with firsthand experiences aimed at increasing their support for improving maternal health and child nutrition globally. Working with external evaluators Innovation Network and Continuous Progress Strategic Services/ Asibey Consulting, CARE is assessing the effectiveness of these approaches. This panel will address the challenges in defining and assessing meaningful interim outcomes, and determining the degree to which these two specific investments have indeed increased CARE's ability to influence policy change from the perspectives of the two evaluators and CARE.
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Evaluating Influence Within the Context of Systems Change: An Evaluator's Perspective
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| Ehren Reed, Innovation Network Inc, ereed@innonet.org
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Veena Pankaj, Ehren Reed (Innovation Network) and Julia Coffman are part of the evaluation team assessing CARE's LIFT UP Initiative. The ultimate goal of LIFT UP is to influence U.S. policy makers through a number of interventions designed to enhance CARE's ability to 'lift up' information from the field to those individuals within CARE who are in direct contact with policy makers. Panelists will discuss specific tools and strategies used (i.e. systems maps and theories of change) to understand the nuances of the initiative and how these tools and strategies help to define and measure change in the short, intermediate and long-term. Continuous Progress Strategic Services/Asibey Consulting is also addressing similar questions for CARE's closely related Learning Tours initiative. This discussion will highlight points for collaboration in addressing how to define and measure change.
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Defining and Evaluating Change Agents/Champions: An Evaluator's Perspective
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| David Devlin-Foltz, Continuous Progress Strategic Services, david.devlin-foltz@aspeninst.org
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| Edith Asibey, Asibey Consulting, edith@asibey.com
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David Devlin-Foltz (Continuous Progress Strategic Services) and Edith Asibey (Asibey Consulting) are jointly responsible for assessing the policy impact of CARE's Learning Tours initiative. Panelists will discuss how tracking current or potential champions for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health before, during, and after the Tours helps us answer tough questions: Can we define what it means to be a champion for a given policy change? Can we help CARE translate these learnings into improved Learning Tours that do more to deepen the commitment of existing champions or create new ones? Can we define and measure "champion-ness'? Innovation Network is addressing similar questions for CARE's closely related LIFT UP initiative. This discussion will draw on our collaborative search for answers. Our panel will contribute to advocacy evaluation practice around the notion of policy champions: what defines them; how do advocacy groups influence/create them; and what policy actions and messages constitute success?
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The Evaluation of Two Concurrent and Overlapping Initiatives: CARE's Perspective
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| Carlisle Levine, CARE, clevine@care.org
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Carlisle Levine (CARE) is leading a process of determining how CARE can most effectively leverage its program experience to increase the effectiveness of its advocacy efforts by testing two new and related approaches. To assess the effectiveness of these overlapping approaches, CARE and its external evaluators are defining measures of change and means to assess them. We also recognize the need to demonstrate a link between those changes and the advocacy approaches CARE is testing in order to determine the value of such investments and to help CARE adjust them as needed to increase their effectiveness. We will discuss the challenges of establishing the contribution of these approaches to CARE's advocacy outcomes, as well as the methods CARE and its external evaluators are using to respond to this challenge.
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