American Evaluation Association (AEA) 2013

The GEF Evaluation Office actively participated in the annual conference of the American Evaluation Association (AEA) in Washington, DC. The Office organized a session on online evaluation communities and took part in sessions that discussed a variety of issues ranging from impact evaluations on climate change, use of on-line evaluation communities to affect learning, mixed-method evaluation approaches, evaluations of energy policy and natural resource management, and comprehensive evaluations of large global programs. The video recording from the sessions in which the Office participated will become available soon.

In addition, the GEF Evaluation Office together with Earth-Eval, the community of practice on evaluation of climate change and development, and CEPKE, the comprehensive evaluations platform for knowledge exchange, took part in the conference exhibition.

• Evaluating Climate Change Interventions: The Epitome of a 21^st Century Challenge
  Panel Session 4 held in Jay on Wednesday, October 16, 2013, 4:30 pm to 6:00 pm
  Aaron Zazueta, Chief Evaluation Officer, presented methodological challenges, findings, and lessons of the impact evaluation of the GEF support to energy-related mitigation efforts in China, India, Mexico, and Russia. The evaluation looked at direct impact through emission reduction of Green House Gasses (GHG) and at longer term, indirect impact (through adoption of GEF supported solutions at different scales and through market change and transformation). A counterfactual analysis was undertaken to understand what would have happened without GEF support.
• Online Evaluation Communities of Practice: Influencing Practice and Affecting Learning
  Panel Session 248 held in Cabinet on Thursday, October 17, 2013, 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
  Rob D. van den Berg, Director, chaired a session on how organizations make use of communities of practice as platforms to improve the quality of evaluations, and achieve accountability and learning. The following communities took part in the discussion: the Climate-Eval community on evaluation of climate change and development hosted by the GEF Evaluation Office (presented by Kseniya Temnenko, Knowledge Management Officer, and David Akana, Moderator), the EvalPartners initiative (presented by Marco Segone, UNICEF), SEA Change community of practice (presented by Dennis Bours, PACT), and the Better Evaluation platform (presented by Patricia Rogers, Royal Melbourne Institute for Technology).
• Making Lemons into Lemonade: Using Creative and Mixed-Methods Evaluation Approaches for Overcoming Data-Poor Environments
  Multipaper Session 582 held in Jay on Friday, October 18, 2013, 2:40 pm to 4:10 pm
  Carlo Carugi, Senior Evaluation Officer, together with an independent consultants Daniel Kaufman, presented an innovative mixed-methods approach developed by the GEF Evaluation Office to increase confidence in evaluation results. The session included papers on cross-checking and combining quantitative data from disparate sources to analyze a voluntary program in the absence of a non-participant data, and creation of an "exposure index" to evaluate the influence of a federal green purchasing program.
• Using Evaluation to Inform and Improve Policy Implementation: Case Studies in Energy Policy and Forest Management
  Multipaper Session 778 to be held in Lincoln West on Saturday, October 19, 2013, 9:50 am to 10:35 am
  Baljit Wadhwa, Senior Evaluation Officer, chaired a session on the use of evaluation to inform policy. Two case studies were examined: the energy policy (Christine Woerlen, Arepo Consult) and natural resource management (Mary Schorse, University of Delaware).
• The World Bank's Partnership with Large Global Programs: Lessons from the Global Fund, the Global Environment Facility, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization
  Multipaper Session 908 to be held in Fairchild East on Saturday, October 19, 2013, 1:00 pm to 2:30 pm
  Rob D. van den Berg, Director, was a discussant in the session on the recently completed review of the World Bank partnership with the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis, and Malaria, the Global Environment Facility, and the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunization.