Section 5: Capacity Development Consideration for VOPEs to evaluate initiatives of Democracy, Human Rights and Governance

5.1 Individual Capacity Development tips to evaluate DRG initiatives

The development of evaluation capacities for Democracy, Human Rights and Governance (DRG) initiatives for diverse actors is an important contribution that VOPEs can make in their particular context.

There are a wide range of options to promote the development of individual capacities depending on the:

• Target audience: evaluators, evaluation commissioners, decision makers and any other users familiarized with evaluation.
• Format: whether they are implemented in a face to face, virtual or mixed format.
• Area of focus: canvary from an integral perspective or any other approach that aims to contribute to monitoring and evaluation of DRG initiatives as human rights approach, gender approach, culturally responsive evaluation, participatory evaluation, among others.
• Functional focus: whether theoretical/conceptual, methodological/practical, communication or others.

VOPEs could play an important role in conducting different training initiatives that allow for building capacities of a wide pool of evaluators that will in turn be able to implement rigorous evaluations of Democracy, Rights and Governance initiatives in their context.

All options of training are valuable in themselves but VOPEs should make that decision based on:

• maintaining a coherent approach between the VOPE mission and its strategy to address the evaluation of DRG initiatives,
• its available resources, and
• potential partnerships and stakeholders that will sustain the initiative.

 5.2 Institutional Capacity Development tips to evaluate DRG initiatives

To allow for a real contribution of the VOPE work to DRG, institutional capacities should be developed. Institutional capacity development mainly relates to the following strategies:

• Increasing the capacity of evaluators to evaluate DRG initiatives by facilitating a learning environment.
• Fostering experience in the implementation of advocacy strategies targeted to key audiences to contribute to DRG.
• Increasing capacities to stimulate partnerships and the development of joint initiatives to advance DRG.

5.3 Enabling the environment for the evaluation of DRG initiatives: Dissemination strategies and tips.

To increase awareness of the importance of DRG evaluation among diverse stakeholders, it is key to disseminate experiences and lessons learned.

Disseminating lessons learned can also help to:

• strengthen conceptual, methodological and practical capacities for DRG
• motivate the demand for more evaluation of DRG Initiatives
• identify stakeholders to partner with. Partnering with organizations from diverse sectors that are working to advance Democracy, human rights and/or governance can allow you to identify and plan synergies and joint dissemination actions.