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In observance of the World Day of Creativity and Innovation, the ninth Future of Evaluation dialogue was convened on 21 April 2026 to explore how innovative approaches are reshaping evaluation in response to complexity, uncertainty, and rapid change. The dialogue called for creativity and innovation to be seen as part of evaluation's long history. For eighty years, evaluators have kept changing and improving their methods to answer new questions, and today is no different. The discussion argued that the main challenge now is not finding new evaluation tools. It is about asking better questions about a more complex world, making room for more people to decide which questions matter, and updating the organizational rules so that evaluation processes and methodologies have flexibility. In case you missed the conversation, watch the recording. Seven quick takeaways from the dialogue Creativity has shaped evaluation for decades, not just since AI. The discussion walked through eighty years of change in evaluation. In the 1960s and 1970s, evaluators learned to combine formative and summative methods and to link evaluation with policy. In the 1990s, the long debate between qualitative and quantitative methods was settled by mixing both. The 2000s brought systematic reviews and evaluation mapping. From 2010 onwards, developmental, systems and transformative approaches took shape, and transformative evaluation is now the defining mode of the present era, with rapid evaluation, big data and AI emerging as tools that operate within it. For young and emerging evaluators, the message is clear: learn this history before reaching for the newest tool. To think outside the box, you first have to know the box. Start with the evaluation questions, not the toolkit. What matters is not how innovative the methods are, but how well they fit the questions. Familiar tools still work well for familiar questions, for example, whether a programme achieved its results or used its resources well. The problem comes when evaluators try to use the same old tools to answer new kinds of questions. Evaluation practitioners today face situations that did not exist ten years ago, such as people moving because of climate change, communities left behind by digital technology, overlapping crises, and programmes that must continue through elections, wars, and natural disasters. The first act of creativity is to choose the method that fits the question, rather than starting from a fixed toolkit and forcing every evaluation through it. Agility should be built into the contractual framework of the evaluation, not only into its methodological design. Evaluation frameworks are already becoming more flexible when it comes to methodology (more adaptive inquiry frameworks). Several United Nations agencies and the European Commission now include feedback loops, adjustable questions, and real-time learning in their evaluations. The bigger problem lies elsewhere. Contracts and administrative rules tend to be designed for traditional summative evaluations, with fixed deliverables, set payment schedules, and locked terms of reference. These rules do not fit evaluations that need to adapt as they go. Until the contracts change, evaluators trained in adaptive methods cannot use what they have learned in practice. Treat foresight as a distinct evaluation skill. Foresight is not the same as adaptive or creative evaluation. Foresight uses data to project trends and to build possible future scenarios. For example, it can show what small-scale farming in Africa might look like if large corporations keep taking over, and how that picture changes if specific policies or conditions shift. With the large amount of data and the analysis tools now available, evaluators can do this kind of forward-looking work for the first time. But foresight has been developed in other disciplines, and evaluators should learn from those disciplines instead of trying to build it from scratch. Use AI as an evaluation thought partner, with humans always in the loop. AI is useful for handling the large volume of open data that evaluators now have access to. But AI is not a neutral authority. It is trained on data that can be incomplete or biased, and it can argue either side of a question depending on how it is asked. What keeps evaluation trustworthy is the human contribution of values, context, and ethical judgment. Organizations need clear policies on AI use, and evaluators need the habit of questioning AI outputs rather than accepting them. Ground evaluation innovation locally. Creativity and innovation are not shared equally. Most innovation happens in well-funded institutions and in the Global North. Left unchecked, this widens the gap with local practitioners, civil society organizations, and indigenous communities. Keeping innovation grounded means using local languages, avoiding technical jargon, and recognizing that oral histories, community traditions, and indigenous systems of accountability are already rigorous and innovative. It also means involving young and emerging evaluators in the design and analysis of evaluations, not only in data collection. Innovation that ignores these realities risks worsening existing inequalities. Put power considerations at the centre of evaluation, and recognize evaluators as agents of change. The dialogue named power as the issue most often left out of conversations about innovation, even though it shapes them. Innovation is not only about tools. It is about who decides what counts as innovative, whose questions are asked, whose knowledge is taken seriously, and who gets to share the findings. Evaluators were encouraged to see themselves as part of the change they measure, not as outside observers. The call to action is practical: let go of old assumptions, stay open and humble in the face of different viewpoints, and treat evaluation as a practice that helps programmes improve, not only one that judges whether they worked. The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse. The ninth dialogue marks the end of the first season of Future of Evaluation dialogues. The second season will start with the tenth dialogue in July 2026. Meanwhile, registration is open for the Youth in Evaluation Forum 2026, to be held from 19 to 21 May 2026. Learn more This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.

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By Erica Mattellone Senior Evaluation Specialist, UNICEF Evaluation Office The recent Future of Evaluation dialogue left me reflecting on a simple but transformative idea: evaluation can accelerate gender equality, but only if we rethink what evaluation is for. For many years, evaluation has primarily served accountability, assessing results at the end of programmes. Yet in a world shaped by rapid technological change, climate shocks, and persistent inequalities, this approach is no longer enough. Evaluation must move beyond retrospective judgement and become a driver of learning, voice, and action. One of evaluation’s most powerful roles, and one of reasons I chose a career in evaluation, is making inequalities visible. Many barriers facing women and girls, such as unpaid care burdens, restrictive social norms, digital exclusion, or technology-facilitated gender-based violence, remain hidden in aggregated data. Gender-responsive and intersectional evaluation helps reveal who is being left behind, why exclusion persists, and how power structures influence outcomes. Evidence, in this sense, becomes a tool for transformation rather than measurement alone. This shift became especially tangible during my recent experience managing the Evaluation of the implementation of the UNICEF Gender Policy and Gender Action Plans where elevating young people’s voices was not an add-on but a central objective. We wanted to understand change not only through indicators, but through lived experience. Across countries, adolescent girls and boys who had participated in UNICEF programmes joined participatory focus group discussions designed as safe and engaging spaces for reflection. One activity, inspired by Roger Hart’s Ladder of Participation, proved particularly powerful. A ladder was drawn at the center of the room, each rung representing a different level of participation, from being informed to influencing decisions. Young people reflected on their roles in programmes, writing words or drawing images that represented their experiences before placing them on the ladder. What followed were stories rather than answers. A participant described being invited to speak but unsure if adults truly listened. Another shared how contributing ideas to programme design made her feel respected and capable of creating change. As discussions unfolded, some even moved their placements, realizing their agency had grown over time. The ladder became more than a tool; it became a space for collective reflection on voice, power, and decision-making. These conversations complemented an appreciative inquiry approach, helping us understand not only whether change occurred, but how UNICEF contributed to expanding young people’s agency and aspirations. Young people also shaped the evaluation itself through a Youth Advisory Group that contributed insights throughout the process, strengthening the relevance and credibility of findings. Their engagement reinforced a key lesson: evaluation becomes more meaningful when participants are co-creators of knowledge rather than sources of data. The dialogue also challenged a common assumption that timeliness and rigour are in tension. Future-fit evaluation requires both. Adaptive approaches such as real-time learning and continuous feedback allow programmes to adjust as contexts evolve, while transparency and methodological clarity safeguard credibility. Ultimately, evaluation has impact when it is designed for use, not simply for proof. Its purpose is to help systems learn earlier, listen better, and act more fairly. The future of evaluation lies in evidence that is credible enough to trust, inclusive enough to reflect lived realities, and timely enough to shape decisions. When these elements come together, evaluation becomes more than assessment – it becomes a catalyst for gender equality and lasting change for every woman and every girl. Erica Mattellone is a senior leader in international development with over 20 years of experience advancing organizational effectiveness and evidence-informed change. As Chief of Institutional Effectiveness at UNICEF’s Evaluation Office, she leads global evaluations that translate evidence into action to protect children’s rights and expand opportunities for women and girls worldwide. This blog was co-published on the UNICEF website. Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.

By Yuanyuan Zang & Cheng Wang EvalYouth China SDG 11 gives cities sixteen indicators to track urban sustainability — yet a decade into implementation, informal settlements persist, and displacement continues. In this blog, we ask an uncomfortable question: has SDG 11's measurement framework become a ceiling on ambition rather than a floor for action? Drawing on Guangzhou's decade-long effort to extend public housing access, we show one example of how a city can move from perfunctory compliance to genuine inclusion and push further and ask: in your city, what does standard measurement fail to capture? Who remains present but uncounted? What institutional responses have been deferred — and what would it take to finally begin? There is a paradox at the heart of global urban sustainability: the more comprehensively we try to measure it, the less political momentum we seem to muster to govern it. SDG 11, which commits to inclusive, safe, resilient, and sustainable cities, is one of the most ambitious goals in the 2030 Agenda — tracked through 16 indicators spanning housing, transport, cultural heritage, disaster risk, air quality, and rural-urban linkages [1]. Yet the crises it was designed to prevent continue to persist: informal settlements grow, displacement accelerates, and climate shocks outpace urban resilience. A decade into implementation, the more pressing question is no longer how comprehensively we are measuring — but what we are fundamentally doing to address these issues. The problem, we argue, runs deeper than a lack of monitoring tools or political will. When cities are evaluated through a fixed set of visible indicators, they begin to optimize for what is measurable rather than what is meaningful — and the framework meant to guide urban sustainability quietly becomes a ceiling on ambition. Real cities function as dynamic ecosystems where housing, labor mobility, and climate resilience are inseparable; a framework that treats them as isolated entries does not just fail to capture urban complexity, it actively narrows the vision of what better cities could look like. This problem is self-reinforcing. Top-down policy directives and bottom-up implementation challenges feed into each other, creating a feedback loop that breeds inertia. As Simon et al. (2016) caution, when SDG indicators fail to align with the policy agendas of local authorities, reporting compliance risks can drift toward becoming an end in itself rather than a stimulus for meaningful urban sustainability transitions — a dynamic that is especially pronounced where institutional capacity is already strained [2]. What the decade of implementation since 2015 has revealed is not that this problem has been resolved — but rather that we now understand far more clearly the implementation challenges accumulating across country-specific contexts, and what the actual problem entails. At the top-down policy level, the indicator architecture still treats the inherently cross-cutting agenda of sustainable urbanization as a series of isolated entries. Without coordinated land use planning (SDG 11.3), improved transport accessibility (SDG 11.2) can fuel urban sprawl; without tracking displaced residents, reporting slum reduction (SDG 11.1) can mask deepening exclusion. The pursuit of global comparability systematically underweighs these interdependencies further. When these universal indicators confront the administrative hierarchies and statistical systems of different countries, they may prove ill-suited for purpose. At the bottom-up implementation level, where monitoring meets governance, three structural bottlenecks compound these top-down failures:  Traditional methods relying on censuses, sample surveys, and administrative registrations function like expensive snapshots of a fluid city, forever lagging behind evolving realities; Indicators remain fragmented across data sources, methodologies, and statistical units, making it impossible to track distributional dynamics or learn across cities; Knowledge and action remain persistently decoupled: indicators accumulate in annual reports rather than informing the planning decisions and investment sequences that actually shape urban trajectories. From "compliance competition" to "confronting paradoxes": Lessons from Guangzhou The experience of megacities in the Global South further illustrates these limitations on an unprecedented scale. Taking Guangzhou—one of the world's most dynamic migrant-receiving cities—as an example, its urban renewal tells a story of significant physical progress. By 2025, the city had mobilized massive investments in renovating old residential communities and improving urban infrastructure (Guangzhou Municipal Government, 2026) [3]. If measured strictly against the "physical indicators" of SDG 11—such as the volume of housing supply and infrastructure resilience—Guangzhou represents a narrative of remarkable compliance.  However, this "numerical success" also brought the city to a critical "wall of conflict between indicators and reality" earlier than most. As a megacity, by 2020, Guangzhou's usual resident population had reached 18.68 million — of whom roughly half were classified as part of the floating population, broadly referring to residents living in Guangzhou away from their place of household registration. (Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Statistics, 2021) [4][5]. This demographic reality is also a governance challenge. Without local registration, this population faces systematic barriers to accessing publicly provided welfare, and housing is where that exclusion is felt most acutely. Recent research drawing on Guangzhou survey data constructs a Housing Precarity Index (HPI) across six dimensions — tenure security, housing affordability, housing quality, commuting burden, access to public education and healthcare, and access to surrounding living facilities — and finds that the inability to access public rental housing leaves young low- and middle-income renters significantly more exposed across all of these dimensions simultaneously (Chen et al., 2026) [6]. Housing, in this framework, is not merely shelter: it is the entry point into the city's broader social infrastructure. The significance of Guangzhou’s case lies in its proactive shift toward "governing areas invisible to indicators”. Recognizing that social sustainability cannot be achieved through physical construction alone, Guangzhou initiated a series of iterative reforms. Since 2016-17, Guangzhou has progressively opened its public rental housing system to non-registered residents, allocating a substantial share of its housing security resources specifically to migrants — a meaningful departure from the local-registration-tied allocation logic that has historically governed urban welfare. Strikingly, evidence suggests this approach achieves genuine inclusion: once inside public rental housing, migrants experience reductions in housing precarity comparable to, and in some service-access dimensions more pronounced than, those of local residents — because access to public housing grants migrants equal entry into services from which they would otherwise be institutionally excluded (Chen et al., 2026) [6]. Taken together, these reforms suggest a city willing to name the institutional contradictions embedded in its own system — and to build policy responses around them. In its most recent steps, Guangzhou further extended housing security to newly employed non-registered workers (Guangzhou Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau, 2025) [7] and promoted equalization of education and healthcare access regardless of registration status (Guangzhou Daily, 2026) [8]. Beyond measurement, toward inclusive urban governance These are not finished stories — and that incompleteness is precisely what makes them valuable. What Guangzhou's experience ultimately demonstrates is a particular governance mindset: identify the constraint blocking inclusion, name it honestly, and build an institutional response — rather than waiting for a perfect monitoring framework to tell them what to optimize. The broader challenge for the global evaluation community mirrors Guangzhou's experience. As assessment frameworks grow more sophisticated, the more pressing question may not be how to measure more precisely, but how to adequately integrate evaluation into implementation — moving beyond principles to identify the specific binding constraints that limit people's welfare in particular places. The bottleneck is rarely universal; it is embedded in local institutions, histories, and political economies that aggregate indicators, by design, were never built to surface. We close not with a transferable model but with a provocation. SDG 11 will not be achieved by cities that build more; it will be achieved by cities that govern better, for everyone within them. So we leave you with the questions that should precede any indicator under SDG 11: in your city, what does standard measurement not capture? Who is present but uncounted? What institutional response has been deferred? And what would it take to begin? Yuanyuan Zang is a member of EvalYouth China and the 7th Cohort of the Horizon Global Youth Development Program. She focuses on global brand communication, advancing sustainable impact. She previously served as an Urban Designer at Surbana Jurong from 2021 to 2023, specializing in community development and sustainable master planning. Cheng Wang is the Founder of EvalYouth China and a master’s in public administration / international development candidate at Harvard Kennedy School. He is also a member of the 6th cohort of the Horizon Global Youth Development Program. He previously served as a Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist at UNDP from 2022 to 2025. Connect with Cheng Wang on LinkedIn . AI Disclaimer: This blog was researched and written with the assistance of AI tools. All ideas, analysis, and editorial decisions reflect the authors' own thinking; AI was used solely to support the research process. References [1] United Nations Statistics Division. “SDG Indicators Metadata Repository: Goal 11. Make Cities and Human Settlements Inclusive, Safe, Resilient and Sustainable.” SDG Indicators, https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/metadata/?Goal=11   [2] Simon, David, et al. “Developing and Testing the Urban Sustainable Development Goal's Targets and Indicators: A Five-City Study.” Environment and Urbanization, vol. 28, no. 1, 2016, pp. 49–63. SAGE Publications, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956247815619865 [3] Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development. “Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Housing and Urban-Rural Development 2025 Work Summary and 2026 Work Plan.” Guangzhou Municipal Government , 12 Feb. 2026, [4] Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Statistics, and Office of the Leading Group of the Seventh National Population Census of Guangzhou. “Guangzhou Seventh National Population Census Bulletin (No. 1): Situation of City’s Permanent Population.” 18 May 2021. [5] Guangzhou Municipal Bureau of Statistics, and Office of the Leading Group of the Seventh National Population Census of Guangzhou. “Guangzhou Seventh National Population Census Bulletin (No. 6): Urban-Rural Population and Floating Population.” 18 May 2021. [6] Chen, L., et al. “Does Access to Public Rental Housing Alleviate Housing Precarity among Young Low- and Middle-Income Renters? Evidence from Guangzhou, China.” Cities, vol. 171, 2026, article 106780. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cities.2026.106780 [7] Guangzhou Municipal Housing and Urban-Rural Development Bureau. "Notice on Extending the Validity of the Guangzhou Public Rental Housing Security Measures for Newly Employed Housing-less Workers". Guangzhou Municipal People's Government Portal , 20 Dec. 2024, www.gz.gov.cn/gfxwj/sbmgfxwj/gzszfhcxjsj/content/post_10038128.html . Effective 1 Mar. 2025. [8] Guangzhou Daily. Guangzhou Uses 'Small Breakthroughs' to Drive 'Big Changes': A New Vision for People's Livelihoods. Guangzhou Municipal People's Government Portal, 22 Jan. 2026, www.gz.gov.cn/zt/gzlfzgzld/gzgzlfz/content/post_10657232.html . Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.

In observance of International Women’s Day, the eighth Future of Evaluation dialogue was convened on 10 March 2026 to explore how evaluation can serve as a mechanism for accelerating rights, justice, and transformative action for all women and girls. The dialogue called for transforming evaluation from a “measurement of progress” into a profession that actively confronts power and highlights systemic inequalities. A fundamental shift was advocated: moving beyond "improving averages," which often masks the fact that marginalized groups are being left behind even when overall statistics look positive, toward a model that prioritizes disaggregated data and centers the voices of women and girls as equal partners in development. This transformation is presented as essential for ensuring evaluation remains a relevant tool for justice in a world facing a polycrisis of climate change, economic instability, and the rapid rise of technologically facilitated gender-based violence. In case you missed the conversation, watch the recording. Five quick takeaways from the dialogue Focus intentionally on structural causes and hidden inequalities through intersectional lenses.  It is recognized that aggregated data often masks the specific barriers faced by women and girls, such as social norms, unpaid care burdens, and digital exclusion. To avoid reinforcing the status quo, evaluations must be intentionally designed to investigate the "why" behind persistent inequalities by utilizing gender-responsive, intersectional frameworks. By analyzing how factors like disability, age, ethnicity, and class intersect with restrictive laws and household power relations, evaluators can transition from merely documenting inequalities to providing the evidence base necessary for dismantling them. This level of visibility is essential for designing policies that fundamentally transform the unequal systems of power that sustain disparity. Shift from transactional to transformative evaluation practices.  The dialogue emphasized that evaluation serves its highest purpose when it is embraced as a continuous process of learning rather than a transactional end-of-cycle reporting requirement. A transformative approach requires evaluation to challenge prevailing assumptions and build shared ownership of evidence among stakeholders. When evaluation is used as a driver of voice and action, it moves from being a bureaucratic necessity to a strategic asset that supports collective rights and justice for every woman and girl. Integrate lived experience into the definition of success.  The future evaluation practices must center on women and girls defining success for themselves. Rather than "parachuting" into communities with predefined indicators, evaluators are encouraged to use participatory and adolescent-responsive approaches. When findings are grounded in lived experience of women and girls rather than purely institutional perspectives, the resulting evidence gains greater legitimacy and relevance. This ensures that programmes are responsive to the actual needs of women and girls rather than the convenience of the evaluator. Implement real-time and adaptive feedback loops.  In rapidly shifting humanitarian and climate contexts, evaluation lag often means findings are outdated by the time they are published. The necessity of moving toward real-time, adaptive evaluation was highlighted as a means of allowing for immediate course correction. Rapid feedback loops and short learning cycles enable organizations to spot gendered impacts early, such as a drop in school attendance among girls following a natural disaster, allowing for interventions to be scaled or adjusted before the damage becomes irreversible. Drive policy co-ownership by engaging decision makers and marginalized groups as strategic partners.  The transition from evidence to action can often fail because findings are not translated into the language of decision-makers or the realities of the community. It is recommended that evaluation commissioners involve planning and finance ministries from the outset to align recommendations with budgetary processes, while simultaneously approaching marginalized groups as strategic partners in the evaluation process. By empowering local actors and young evaluators to hold leadership roles in evaluation steering committees and co-designing evaluation methodologies, evaluators can ensure that the evaluation insights are both politically influential and rooted in local knowledge. This dual approach ensures that evaluation remains a respectful, inclusive dialogue that drives both high-level policy change and grassroots accountability. For more reflection on this dialogue, read the blog by Erica Mattellone . The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.  The next dialogue, “Will evaluation's future be shaped by its creativity and innovation in facing emergent challenges?” will take place on 21 April 2026. Register This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.

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In observance of the World Day of Social Justice, the seventh Future of Evaluation dialogue was convened on 19 February 2026 to explore how evaluation can serve as a mechanism for addressing systemic inequalities. The dialogue called for transforming evaluation from a "technocratic box-ticking" exercise into a profession that advances public accountability by actively centering marginalized voices. A fundamental shift was called for: moving from "power over" toward a "power with" model that considers local communities as equal partners in decision-making. This transformation is presented as essential for ensuring evaluation remains relevant in a world facing a polycrisis of climate change, extreme inequality, and the rapid integration of emerging technologies. In case you missed the conversation, watch the recording. Five quick takeaways from the dialogue Prioritize moral judgment and social relevance through downward accountability. Evaluation education must evolve beyond technical mechanics into a comprehensive education framework that considers evaluation as a vital public service. Success of an evaluation is best measured by social impact and the reflection of local realities rather than donor compliance or technical execution alone. Traditional "upward accountability" should shift toward a model of "downward accountability", where evaluation findings are shared back with communities in accessible ways. The ultimate goal of improving lives is at risk if evaluation findings ignore what the community actually needs, or if evaluators focus more on mastering technical tools than on making fair, ethical judgments.By centering the perspectives of the communities, evaluation is moved beyond a "tick-box" exercise to become a bridge between evidence and real-world change. Transition from "human machines" to values-driven evaluators. As generative AI becomes more prevalent in data processing, the unique value proposition of a human evaluator is found in the ability to apply values, context, and ethical foresight. If evaluators act merely as "human machines" following rigid algorithms, they become replaceable. Instead, the profession must be shifted toward "responsible AI" use and human-centric judgment. Evaluators are not neutral observers; they can be viewed as agents of change who must check their own biases and motives to ensure that data is not stripped of its social context. Institutionalize intergenerational "co-creation" spaces. The future of the evaluation is dependent on bridging the gap between senior professionals and youth. Synergy is built into spaces, where methodological wisdom and "business smarts" are provided by seniors to navigate the market, while young evaluators bring a fresh perspective that challenges established assumptions. Youth should not be relegated to data-collection roles; they must be engaged in designing evaluations and reporting to ensure the profession remains adaptive to current social realities and global trends. Decolonize curricula through diverse knowledge systems. Evaluation education must be decolonized to include indigenous, community-based, and local knowledge systems. It was noted that current evaluation frameworks are often biased toward North American and Western perspectives, leading to the misrepresentation of local cultures. Education is made more inclusive by acknowledging "epistemic diversity"—recognizing that oral histories, storytelling, and spiritual practices are rigorous forms of evidence. By incorporating indigenous methodologies and relational accountability, evaluation training is made more globally relevant and respectful of the people it serves. Move from retrospective reporting to evaluative foresight. As global crises like climate migration and digital exclusion accelerate, evaluation must be moved from looking backward to looking forward. Evaluative foresight is utilized, involving the use of future-focused questions and systems thinking to prevent inequities before they become entrenched. By shifting from "what happened" to "what might happen next”, organizations can be helped to adjust in real-time. A "learning loop" is created, allowing for course correction during implementation and ensuring that a better future is shaped rather than just the past being explained. The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.  The next dialogue, “How can evaluation accelerate rights, justice, action, for all women and girls?” will take place on 10 March 2026. Register This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.

By Uugantsetseg Ginchigdorj Former Co-leader, EvalYouth Asia Mongolia, often cited as a "poster child" for democracy among post-Communist societies, stands as a unique case of democratic transition. However, the 21-day "Easy to Resign" protests in 2025, led by youth, signaled that civil society is reclaiming constitutional mechanisms for a more participatory and responsive democratic system . This episode illustrates that democratic consolidation requires more than elections; it requires responsive institutions capable of learning and accountability.   In this context, strengthening the institutional foundations that enable evidence-based learning and accountability becomes essential. This reflects growing attention to the institutionalization of evaluation, the process of embedding evaluation within the legal, social, and professional systems. Institutionalization means that evaluation becomes routine, resourced, credible, and publicly meaningful rather than episodic or donor-driven. To understand Mongolia’s current evaluation landscape, this blog draws on the Evaluation Globe  framework by the Department of Sociology and the academic Center for Evaluation (CEval) at Saarland University , which analyzes the political, social, and professional systems, combined with the insights of the 2025 National Evaluation Capacities Index (INCE) pilot .  The political system: Strong legal mandates, unclear oversight  Following the transition to democracy and market-economy in the 1990s, Mongolia has undertaken multiple efforts to establish and govern monitoring and evaluation (M&E) within the government system. This journey began with the 1996 Parliament Resolution No. 38, which set the policy on government activities and structural reform, followed by the 1999 Government Resolution No. 4, regulating the monitoring and evaluation of administrative bodies and continued subsequent amendments and legislations. Today, Mongolia possesses a robust legal framework for M&E. The Law on Development Policy, Planning and its Management (2020) and the recent Government Resolution No. 43 (2025) mandate M&E across the public sector, which formally regulates evaluation as a distinct function from monitoring. The results of the 2025 INCE pilot in Mongolia reflect this strength. The " Institutional Structure" dimension scored 4.4  out of 10, indicating that institutionalization of the evaluation ecosystem is at a moderate situation. The country has established a regulatory system where the government machinery is active; ministries report against plans and maintain dedicated M&E departments, and executives and decision-makers consume performance data as required by law. However, the system remains heavily centralized. With the Authority for Government Supervision (AGS), the successor to the General Agency for State Inspection, leading these efforts in the absence of a specific National Evaluation Policy or a high-level decision-making body on evaluation, there is a risk that evaluation is perceived merely as a tool for internal administrative control rather than for broad democratic learning. Without safeguards for independence, evaluation can be conflated with supervision rather than learning. The professional system: The missing middle  In the professional system as a sub-system in the Evaluation Globe concept, Mongolia faces a “missing middle”. The INCE pilot revealed a critical gap in the "Evaluation Offer" dimension, specifically a low score of 2.4 for "Training Programmes " , indicating the absence of a formal professional education system to supply evaluators. This weakens the ability and availability to produce independent evaluations and hinders the development of local evaluation practices. Yet, this creates reliance on external expertise and limits the emergence of a locally grounded evaluation profession. The social system: The democratic deficit  In the context of evaluation as a mechanism for government accountability, Mongolia faces a significant challenge. The INCE score for "Multi-agent spaces" was the lowest of all dimensions at 3.25 . Although Mongolia has two Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs), the informal Mongolian Evaluation Network (MEN) and the formal Mongolian Evaluation Association (MEA) and other stakeholders as civil society organizations and international organizations, their integration in state evaluation processes remains limited. This disconnect is illustrated by the protests mentioned above, highlighting unmet demand for participatory evaluation spaces.      The way forward: Gaps to address While Mongolia has made progress, the path from "control" to "doing" and now shifting to "learning", the current landscape shows significant structural and practical gaps. It is insufficient to simply call for professional education or civil society engagement; the multi-level gaps below need to be addressed. 1. The policy gap: A critical gap remains in the absence of a National Evaluation Policy (NEP). While the country possesses laws and resolutions, it lacks a cohesive policy defining the principles of evaluation. Current laws mandate that evaluation occurs, but an NEP is needed to ensure independence and that public interests are prioritized over bureaucratic box-checking. Such a policy should define principles of independence, transparency, ethical standards, stakeholder participation, systematic use of findings, and public disclosure, guiding on how evaluation contributes to decision-making and how evidence is integrated into policy cycles. Though parliamentarians must play a leading role, this high-level strategic vision is currently missing in Mongolia.  2. The governance gap:  While the AGS is currently the government body responsible for implementing M&E across state organizations, relying solely on a single agency to govern the entire system presents a risk to accountability. To ensure true democratic accountability, there is a need for a high-level, multi-stakeholder governance mechanism in the country, perhaps through a high-level body, committee or working group. 3. The utilization gap: Perhaps the most pressing challenge is the disconnect between evaluation findings and policy design at this critical transition moment. Even with the positive step of implementing Resolution No. 43, Regulation on Evaluation, whether the mechanism to ensure that these findings actually alter the next cycle of policy design exists, remains unclear. If the country begins conducting government programme evaluations but fails to use those findings to inform the design of future strategies, the system lacks best evaluation practice. Institutionalization is incomplete if evaluation does not feed back into policy cycles. For Mongolia institutionalizing evaluation is ultimately about deepening democratic governance: ensuring that public institutions not only deliver, but listen, learn, and adapt. Moving from control to learning requires more than mandates; it requires professional capacity, civic engagement, and credible systems that connect evidence to reform. In this sense, evaluation becomes not just a tool of government, but part of democracy’s infrastructure. Uugantsetseg Gonchigdorj is an independent evaluator and consultant with a background in sociology. She specializes in programme evaluation at the intersection of policy, systems, and institutional learning across diverse development sectors. She has contributed to evaluation networks including EvalYouth Asia, EvalYouth Mongolia, and the Mongolian Evaluation Association (2023–2025). Connect with Uugantsetseg on LinkedIn . AI Disclaimer: AI tools were used solely to bring the blog to the required length and to correct grammatical issues. The blog's content, ideas, and narrative were authored by the human writer, not generated by AI. Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.

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In observance of the International Day of Education, the sixth Future of Evaluation dialogue was convened on 22 January 2026, to examine the evaluation workforce's preparedness for the future. The discussion called for a fundamental shift in the education of evaluators - moving away from the teaching of technical skills alone to fostering evaluators with wise, ethical, and courageous judgment, measuring evaluation utilization through social impact and local relevance, adopting responsible AI, fostering intergenerational co-creation, decolonizing curricula and protecting evaluation as a vital pillar of democracy - to ensure evaluation remains relevant for both public accountability and navigating a complex world.  Seven quick takeaways from the dialogue Prioritize "evaluative literacy" and moral judgment over technical mastery. Evaluation education should move beyond a focus on the technical mechanics of methods and statistics. A modern evaluation curriculum prioritizes a "big picture" approach: teaching evaluators to view their work as a transformative tool rather than just a technical job. Instead of simply learning how to use specific tools or software, evaluators should be trained to ask deeper questions: Why is this being measured? When is the right time to do an evaluation? And who will be most affected by the results? This mindset allows them to look past surface-level facts and combine hard evidence with human values to make fairer, more meaningful judgments.  Measuring evaluation utilization through social relevance.  Evaluation education should focus on understanding stakeholder perspectives and reflecting local realities. This is a prerequisite for relevant evaluations. Evaluation risks losing its intended impact if the findings do not connect with the community's needs or if the reports do not lead to meaningful action. To maintain professional and social relevance, training must prioritize empathy and the "sociology of evaluation”. This ensures that findings are accessible to local actors and serve the common good, moving beyond a "tick-box" exercise to become a bridge between evidence and real-world change. Transition from "AI tool-selling" to "responsible AI". With the explosion of generative AI, the focus of evaluator education must shift from learning specific software to understanding "responsible AI." This involves a "human in the loop" approach, where evaluators are trained to recognize the difference between appropriate and inappropriate AI use. Emerging competencies for the next generation include identifying algorithmic bias, ensuring data privacy for marginalized groups, and maintaining critical thinking to oversee the ethical implications of digital tools. Institutionalize intergenerational "co-creation" spaces. Traditional top-down mentoring is evolving into intergenerational co-creation. These learning spaces bridge the gap between senior professionals, who provide methodological guardrails and wisdom, help young evaluators navigate the job market; and youth, who bring digital native energy, a fresh perspective and help evaluation stay adaptive and reflective of current social realities. This synergy ensures the profession stays resilient.  Decolonize curricula through diverse knowledge systems. Rethinking how evaluators are educated requires integrating indigenous, community-based, and experiential knowledge.  Current evaluation frameworks are often based on  Global North perspectives. Decolonizing evaluation education means acknowledging "epistemic diversity", recognizing that different cultures have different ways of understanding reality and hope. By incorporating relationality and local knowledge, evaluation education becomes more inclusive and globally relevant. Protect the connection between democracy and evaluation. Evaluation does not exist in a vacuum; it is an essential pillar of democracy. Evaluation education should prepare the workforce to operate within "evaluation marketplaces" while simultaneously defending evaluation’s role in public accountability. Especially as international laws and democratic norms weaken globally, evaluators must be trained to navigate political sensitivities and promote evidence-based policymaking as a tool for strengthening democratic values. In case you missed the conversation, catch up with the recording The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.  The next dialogue, “Is evaluation fulfilling its potential to advance global social justice?” will take place on 19 February 2026. Register This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.

By Arshee Rizvi Co-leader, EvalYouth India As evaluators, our responsibility is not just to measure progress but to listen with sensitivity. In a world facing urgent challenges — from inequality to climate change — evaluators stand at the frontline of truth-seeking and accountability. Yet in today’s data-flooded world, they need more than methods; they need momentum. Evaluation is more than a dry, routine, technical task — it is an ethical commitment to notice, to listen, and to make visible what often remains hidden. But evaluators are often put under the pressure of vast expectations: analyzing complex data, capturing diverse voices, and responding quickly to decision-makers. Traditional approaches, while valuable, are no longer enough. Momentum is needed to move beyond describing progress, to illuminate meaning. We are swimming in oceans of data yet thirsting for insight. Gigabytes flow daily from surveys, platforms, and monitoring systems. In India, hundreds of government Management Information Systems (MIS) capture thousands of data points regularly for the whole country, but very few process this data and make it presentable through dashboards. Even then, data alone does not guarantee understanding. A spreadsheet can count, but it cannot care. A graph can summarize, but it cannot empathize. Evaluators must balance precision with dignity, numbers with narratives. This is a time to explore new ways of thinking and working. This is where artificial intelligence (AI) steps in — not as a substitute, but as a strength. AI brings speed, scale, and sharpness. It can process complex information, detect patterns, and connect dots that would otherwise be invisible. Yet its real power lies in how evaluators can use it to ensure empathy and nuance. With AI as an ally, evaluators can spend less time drowning in data and more time engaging with people and in contexts. The prospect of AI in evaluation sparks both excitement and caution. Some fear it threatens human judgment; others hail it as a shortcut. The truth lies in balance: machines excel at tasks that overwhelm human bandwidth, while evaluators bring empathy and context. An evaluator may take weeks to find correlations that AI can flag in minutes. AI can shift focus of evaluators from documentors and transcriptors, to facilitators. Thus, the evaluator’s role is elevated, not reduced. Freed from repetitive burdens, they can focus on what AI cannot do: interpreting meaning and asking questions rooted in humanity. In contrast, although AI can process larger volumes of data, without proper representation, consents, contextualisation, this scale can also amplify the inherent bias present in the AI systems. Numbers can measure, but stories give voice, Patterns may signal, yet humans make the choice. Machines may reveal, but only hearts can feel,Together we shape truths that make justice real. This is the promise of hybrid intelligence — human judgment amplified by machine capability. It’s about making evaluation more insightful, inclusive, and human-first. Hybrid intelligence is not futuristic — it is a mindset. Machines offer speed and scale; humans bring empathy, ethics, and the ability to read between the lines. Together, they create evaluations that are rigorous yet relational. Rather than reducing evaluation to numbers or transactions, hybrid intelligence ensures that data is interpreted with meaning and care. It bridges precision with perspective — enabling evaluators to work faster without losing depth, and to reach further without leaving people behind. In my work with governance and grassroots projects in India, I have seen how evaluation often misses what matters most — the resilience, struggles, and stories of people on the ground. Reports capture numbers but miss lived realities. Human-first AI can change this: not replacing judgment but strengthening it, making evaluation more empathetic and inclusive. Sitting with communities, I have learnt that progress is rarely linear. A graph may show improved access to a service, but women describe cultural barriers that still limit choices. A statistic may show rising incomes, but farmers speak of climate anxieties that numbers cannot capture. These realities are often sidelined because evaluators must meet deadlines and manage heavy reporting frameworks. Human-first AI offers a way forward: translating local languages in real time, clustering narratives across interviews, or detecting emerging themes. It creates space for evaluators to focus on depth. AI does not erase sensitivity; it amplifies it. I have seen this in practice while working with communities across rural India, where human-first AI helps bridge the distance between data and lived experience. Speech-to-text models trained in regional languages can process hours of community consultations, not to flatten them into statistics, but to identify patterns of exclusion or resilience in people’s own words. When evaluators feed these insights back into dialogues with the same communities, evaluation becomes a cycle of reflection rather than extraction. I have seen this approach shift conversations: women began naming invisible labor, farmers mapped rainfall memory onto digital dashboards, and local officials started responding to nuance, not just numbers. This, for me, is what human-first AI in evaluation truly means: technology that listens at scale yet honors individuality, that transforms data into empathy, and that gives evaluators the ability to see communities not as datasets, but as partners in meaning-making. Imagine evaluation that moves faster without losing compassion, that reaches further without leaving voices behind, that becomes sharper without being insensitive. This is not distant potential; it is a call to action for evaluation today. The future of evaluation is not an abstract possibility; it is a responsibility unfolding now. What if every evaluation process truly centered the most vulnerable? What if dashboards did not only track progress but also reflected dignity? With hybrid intelligence, we can begin to answer. Compassion and technology need not be opposites — together, they can shape evaluations that inspire trust, inform decisions, and ignite change. The challenge is to keep empathy at the center while embracing innovation. AI cannot feel, but it can free evaluators to feel more — to listen, to understand, and to reflect deeply on human realities. This is the choice before the global evaluation community. The technology is already here — what remains is to decide how to guide it. Will evaluation become another technocratic tool, or will it become a space where technology amplifies humanity? The answer depends on the harmony we create between human judgment and machine capability. If we succeed, evaluation will not only measure progress but embody it. It will remind us that inclusion, dignity, and justice are not afterthoughts to evidence — they are its essence. Hybrid intelligence treats AI as an amplifier of human judgment, not a replacement. When evaluators pair machine-scale patterning with participatory sense-making and ethical guardrails, evaluation becomes faster, fairer, and more trustworthy. It is not just about tools; it is about values. And in that harmony lies the promise of evaluations that truly listen, truly learn, and truly lead toward a more just and sustainable future. Arshee Rizvi is an evaluation and AI practitioner working at the intersection of public policy, governance, and grassroots development. Her work explores human-first, inclusive evaluation systems that combine participatory methods with responsible AI to strengthen evidence use, equity, and ethical decision-making. Connect with Arshee on LinkedIn and on X . AI Disclaimer: AI tools were used solely to bring the blog to the required length and to correct grammatical issues. The blog's content, ideas, and narrative were authored by the human writer, not generated by AI. Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.

Eval4Action is calling on organizations to self-report their progress in meaningfully engaging young people in evaluation following the Youth in Evaluation standards . The self-reporting of Youth in Evaluation standards is managed by the EvalYouth Global Network, a co-leader of the Eval4ction campaign.  Through the 2026 self-reporting process, your organization has the opportunity to build on this momentum, share your own successes, and potentially be recognized among the next cohort of Youth in Evaluation champions. Previously in 2024  and 2025 , Youth in Evaluation champions set a high bar for global best practices, strengthening the entire movement to advance meaningful engagement of young people in evaluation. Follow the guidelines below to complete your self-assessment for the 2026 reporting cycle and contribute to the global effort to advance youth in evaluation. The self-assessment should cover activities and initiatives undertaken during 2025. The submission deadline for the 2026 self-assessments is 15 February 2026 . Guidelines for organizations completing their first self-assessment in 2026 If your organization is completing its self-assessment for the first time, follow these seven steps to ensure a thorough and meaningful review of your practices: Find the most relevant standards for your organization. Standards are available for academia, governments, the private sector, international organizations, Voluntary Organizations for Professional Evaluation (VOPEs)/EvalYouth chapters, and youth organizations. Each standard is accompanied by a self-assessment tool. Share and discuss the standards with the leadership/management of your organization. Achieve buy-in and endorsement from your organization’s leadership to ensure the self-assessment is supported and acted upon. Initiate a dialogue within the organization.  Organize a pre-arranged meeting with representatives from each unit or section to discuss current practices in engaging youth in evaluation. Familiarize relevant staff with the Youth in Evaluation standards. Assign a team to undertake the self-assessment. Designate a dedicated team to conduct the review and formulate recommendations to improve organizational practices for advancing the meaningful engagement of youth in evaluation. Conduct your self-assessment using the provided tool. Choose the relevant customized assessment sheet for your organization, which is available for download in two different formats under each standard on this page . Share the self-assessment report. Submit the self-assessment report, including good practices, to contact@eval4action.org  by 15 February 2026 . The report can include the finalized assessment sheet (Excel/Google sheet) together with a slide deck that highlights good practices and progress. Sharing this information facilitates cross-fertilization of knowledge among other organizations. EvalYouth will get back to you if any further information is required for the reported performance.  Guidelines for organizations completing their second or subsequent self-assessment in 2026 These guidelines are for organizations that completed the Youth in Evaluation standards self-assessment in a previous cycle (e.g., in 2025) and are now submitting their subsequent report in 2026. Review your previous self-assessment report.  Begin by reviewing your last report and identify any updates or changes in your reporting. Focus on reporting on 2025 activities and initiatives. While reporting in 2026, focus primarily on activities and initiatives related to youth engagement in evaluation conducted throughout 2025. Remember to consider the long-term validity of certain policies, projects, and resources. For example, if a policy related to youth engagement was reported previously and remains valid for 2025, simply confirm its continued validity and score accordingly. Highlight new initiatives and significant progress. Use the comment section in the sheet to provide details and context about successes, challenges, and any new initiatives or significant progress made since your last assessment. Share the self-assessment report. Submit the self-assessment report, including good practices, to contact@eval4action.org  by 15 February 2026 .

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On December 10, 2025, Eval4Action marked Human Rights Day with a pivotal Future of Evaluation Dialogue, asking: " Is evaluation key to realizing universal human rights? " The dialogue firmly established that evaluation is not just helpful but essential, even existential, to realizing human rights, especially in times of global setbacks where conflicts, and shrinking civic space are reversing decades of progress. The discussion provided concrete pathways and principles for elevating the human rights-based approach (HRBA) in evaluation by systematically addressing institutional biases and empowering rights-holders. The dialogue also emphasized the critical role of technology and youth in co-creating evaluative evidence, stressing that both must be leveraged responsibly to democratize data and challenge the status quo. Seven quick takeaways from the dialogue Evaluation must be guided by HRBA principles, not just compliance.  Evaluation's primary purpose must be to assess whether people's rights are being respected, protected, and fulfilled, and whether duty-bearers (governments and institutions) are meeting their measurable obligations. This human rights-based approach shifts the focus from simply asking, "Did we deliver services?" to the more transformative question, "Did we advance people's rights?". The principle of transparency, such as making all evaluation findings publicly available, is essential for accountability. Equity requires moving beyond 'Leaving No One Behind' as a slogan.  The imperative to leave no one behind must be deeply embedded in evaluation practice, moving past superficial rhetoric to genuine transformative change. This requires evaluators to address the systemic barriers and structural factors that cause and sustain inequity. It also necessitates shifting the unit of analysis beyond a single project to adopt a longitudinal, ecological view of how interventions collectively improve the lives of the most disadvantaged populations over time. Address power imbalances by making right-holders the primary audience.  The design and implementation of evaluations must actively disrupt the dynamic where evaluation agendas are set by donors or political interests. To transform evidence into a tool of community power, evaluation must be legible, useful, and primarily accountable to the citizens and communities. This involves integrating their lived experiences from the planning phase through the formulation of recommendations and the dissemination of evaluation results. Embrace epistemic humility and diversity in methodology.  A truly transformative evaluation requires a fundamental shift in worldview, demanding epistemic humility from evaluators and funders. This means recognizing that different people think differently about problems and valuing diverse knowledge systems. Evaluators must move beyond methodological debates toward building an ecology of evidence that integrates various tools and respects community context as a measure of evaluation rigor. To truly hear marginalized voices, evaluators need to be more creative and willing to experiment with participatory and inclusive methods to capture different perspectives. Technology must democratize evidence and be used responsibly.  Technology serves as a powerful enabler for HRBA, significantly improving access to information, facilitating inclusive data gathering (e.g., geospatial mapping, mobile surveys), and allowing for earlier detection of human rights issues. However, its use comes with immense responsibility. Evaluators must actively safeguard against the digital divide perpetuating inequality and strictly adhere to data privacy and protection standards, ensuring technology is a tool for democratizing evidence, not just for collecting data faster. Youth must be co-creators, not just data sources.  Youth are essential co-creators in HRBA, bringing passion, creativity, and a deep commitment to social change. Their participation is a matter of both justice  and quality, as their perspectives deepen the understanding of complex change. Youth should be meaningfully engaged throughout the entire evaluation cycle—design, data analysis, and recommendation co-creation—not merely used as sources of data or as a "tick box" exercise. Institutionalize the human rights-based approach for systemic impact.  For evaluation to have a transformative effect, HRBA must be formally institutionalized at the national and organizational levels. The South African example shows that embedding equity and human rights into the national evaluation policy framework ensures evaluation is not an optional technical exercise but a constitutional tool for fairness and accountability. This systemic adoption helps governments correct course and redirect resources towards the historically marginalized. In case you missed the conversation, catch up with the recording The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.  The next dialogue, “Are we educating evaluators of every generation, for the future?” will take place on 22 January 2026. Register This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.

By Rai Sengupta Evaluation Consultant, UNICEF Evaluation Office This blog draws on findings from a synthesis of feminist evaluation innovations in crisis contexts, conducted as part of the ‘From Insights to Action: Advancing Feminist Evaluation (FE) Innovations in Crisis Contexts’ project, funded by the Feminist Innovations in Monitoring and Evaluation (FIME) Award of the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI). The author, Rai Sengupta, is one of six global Young Evaluation Entrepreneurs (YEEs) to receive the FIME award. Rai is also an evaluation consultant with the UNICEF Evaluation Office, supporting UNICEF Headquarters in conducting global evaluations of UNICEF’s work in nutrition and health, child protection, climate change, and WASH. The value of feminist evaluations in crisis contexts In humanitarian emergencies, evaluations often focus on quantifiable outputs - meals distributed, shelters erected, or families receiving cash transfers. While useful for rapid reporting, such figures overlook critical issues of fairness and access. They rarely ask whose voices shaped interventions, whose knowledge was privileged, and whose urgent needs slipped through the cracks. These gaps reflect deeper design issues. Conventional evaluation models were built for stable contexts, assuming safety, access, and broad participation. In crises marked by conflict, displacement, epidemics, or disasters, those assumptions collapse. What remains is a partial evidence base shaped by the most visible informants - often men or community leaders with authority - while those most affected, especially women, girls, and disadvantaged groups, are systematically excluded from accounts of what “worked” or “failed.” Feminist evaluation contributes to filling this gap. It challenges the idea of neutrality by recognising that evaluation is inherently political, capable of either reinforcing or disrupting entrenched hierarchies. By centring equity, it values diverse ways of knowing, situates evidence in context, and amplifies silenced voices. In doing so, it redefines what counts as evidence, who generates it, and how it drives justice. In crisis settings - where access, power, and safety determine who speaks - feminist innovations are essential. They turn evaluation from a narrow measurement exercise into a tool for accountability, equity, and change. This blog highlights feminist evaluation methods - including equity-driven sampling, arts-based tools, participatory approaches, and community validation - which surface hidden realities and challenge structural inequities. Feminist sampling approaches: Reaching hidden voices In conflict or displacement contexts, conventional sampling often overlooks parts of the population, leaving some groups less visible. Feminist evaluation reframes sampling as an ethical act, deliberately including those most silenced - such as women heads of household, adolescent girls, or people with disabilities. By embedding equity into recruitment, feminist evaluators expand representation, challenge structural barriers, and make findings more credible and accountable. For example, in evaluating humanitarian programming for refugees in Nigeria, CARE International (2020) employed beneficiary-led snowball sampling to reach otherwise excluded groups. Similarly, during the Central Sahel displacement crisis, UNHCR (2023) used Respondent-Driven Sampling to access networks of women and adolescents who would have otherwise been unreachable. Arts-based and visual methods: Centering self-representation Surveys and structured interviews may falter in emergencies, especially with participants facing trauma or language barriers. Visual and arts-based methods - such as participatory video, photo walks, or drawing exercises - offer safer, less extractive ways for participants to express experiences. Rooted in feminist principles, these techniques redistribute narrative authority, validating emotion and memory as knowledge. In volatile settings, they create culturally sensitive, women- and child-friendly spaces where hidden experiences can surface without fear. When using these methods, key considerations include safeguarding confidentiality, ensuring cultural relevance, and managing ethical concerns around emotional exposure. Notably, during the Zika epidemic in Honduras and Colombia, the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (2019) used participatory video to enable communities to film and validate their own stories. In UNICEF’s 2024 evaluations of humanitarian programming during Cholera and Cyclone Freddy in Mozambique and Malawi, child-centred simulated recall allowed children to act as primary narrators. Through drawings and guided recollections, children’s perspectives were foregrounded and legitimized as essential evaluation evidence. Participatory tools for defining change: Capturing complex realities Crisis contexts generate complex, non-linear changes that escape narrow quantitative metrics. Feminist evaluation employs participatory tools like Most Significant Change (MSC), Outcome Harvesting (OH), and Outcome Mapping (OM), which ask communities - particularly women and girls - to define what meaningful change looks like. Such methods resist top-down definitions of success and produce layered explanations grounded in lived experience. They recognize that change must be understood on multiple levels: personal, household, communal, and systemic. For instance, during Uganda’s refugee crisis, CARE International (2021) applied MSC to capture women’s stories of adaptation and leadership. During COVID-19 disruptions in the Middle East and Africa, Plan International (2023) drew on MSC to highlight adolescent girls’ own accounts of educational resilience. By enabling women and girls to define and narrate change themselves, these methods captured complex, gendered realities of resilience and adaptation that would have remained inaccessible through conventional evaluation methods. When applying participatory tools in crisis contexts, it is important to consider logistical constraints, security risks, and limited access to affected populations. Effective facilitation requires specially trained personnel capable of gathering data on and interpreting complex outcomes. Additionally, power dynamics, participant trust, and trauma necessitate sensitive, adaptive approaches and strong ethical safeguards to ensure meaningful and respectful engagement. Community validation and feedback loops: Returning knowledge Too often, crisis evaluations extract knowledge without returning it to those who shared it. Feminist evaluation is an evaluation approach that actively embeds reciprocity, ensuring findings are validated collectively and used within communities, not just for external audiences. Feedback loops reinforce accountability, balance power dynamics, and build trust where it is fragile, making communities co-interpreters of evidence rather than passive informants. This requires deliberate efforts to share knowledge transparently and foster reciprocal relationships that promote accountability and equitable power sharing. A relevant example comes from an evaluation during Lebanon’s economic contraction and the COVID-19 pandemic, where Search for Common Ground (2022) ran separate validation workshops with beneficiaries and staff to reduce hierarchies in sense-making. Toward transformational change Each of these methods - innovative sampling, arts-based and visual tools, participatory approaches to defining change, and community validation - demonstrates how feminist principles can fundamentally reshape crisis evaluation. These are not incremental tweaks but deep transformations in how evidence is produced, validated, and used. Embedding feminist principles allows evaluators to confront entrenched inequities, elevate silenced voices, and redistribute power, making evaluation a part of the crisis response.      In volatile environments where structural injustice is laid bare, feminist evaluation contributes to reframing evidence as more than a record of outputs - it becomes a vehicle for accountability, justice, and collective voice. It uncovers truths that conventional methods cannot, challenges whose knowledge counts, and insists that those most affected are central to defining impact. In this way, feminist evaluation transforms the evaluation process into an act of activism, positioning evidence as a driver of systemic change rather than a neutral by-product of humanitarian action. Rai Sengupta is an Evaluation Consultant with UNICEF’s Evaluation Office, supporting global evaluations in health, child protection, and climate-WASH. With 6+ years’ experience evaluating large-scale development programmes, she is a recipient of the Global Evaluation Initiative’s Feminist Innovations in M&E Award and leads work on feminist evaluation in crisis contexts. References Emenogu, A., et al. (2020). Integrated GBV prevention and response to the emergency needs of newly displaced women, men, girls, and boys in Borno State, North-East Nigeria: Mid-term evaluation report. CARE International. Lwanga, M. M., et al. (2021). A lifesaving GBV, women’s leadership, and SRMH support for refugees in Uganda, Arua District, West Nile: Endline evaluation – Final report. CARE International. International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. (2019). Community action on Zika project in Honduras and Colombia: Participatory video evaluation report. Plan International. (2023). MEESA report: An evaluation of adolescent girls and young women’s continued access to education during COVID-19 in the Middle East, East, and Southern Africa (March 2020–March 2021). Podems, D. R. (2010). Feminist evaluation and gender approaches: There’s a difference? Journal of MultiDisciplinary Evaluation, 6(14), 1–17. Voluntas. (2022). Midterm evaluation: Partners for justice – Final report. Search for Common Ground. Seigart, D. (2005). Feminist theory and evaluation. Sielbeck-Bowen, S., Brisolara, S., Seigart, D., Tischler, C., & Whitmore, E. (2002). Exploring feminist evaluation. Harvard Humanitarian Initiative & Brigham and Women’s Physicians Organization. (2023). Evaluation of UNHCR’s response to multiple emergencies in the Central Sahel region: Burkina Faso, Niger, Mali. UNHCR. UNICEF. (2024a). Evaluation of UNICEF’s response to the Level 2 cholera and Cyclone Freddy emergencies in Mozambique. UNICEF. UNICEF. (2024b). Evaluation of UNICEF’s response to the Level 2 cholera and Cyclone Freddy emergencies in Malawi. UNICEF. Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund (WPHF). (2024). Final evaluation report: Women’s Peace and Humanitarian Fund 2019–2023. Disclaimer: The content of the blog is the responsibility of the author(s) and does not necessarily reflect the views of Eval4Action co-leaders and partners.

Read updates on the campaign activities and news from partners around the world. If you would like to receive the newsletter directly in your inbox, sign up to receive Eval4Action updates here . As an individual advocate or a partner network, if you have news or information to share with the Eval4Action community, please write to contact@eval4action.org .

The Fourth Future of Evaluation Dialogue , held on the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women, explored the critical question: "Is evaluation our compass to a future free from gender-based violence?". The dialogue emphasized that evaluation is a crucial tool for both challenging gender stereotypes and holding systems accountable for ending gender-based violence (GBV). The discussion established that while evaluation has often functioned as a 'rear-view mirror,' focusing on retrospective reports, its future role must be real-time and forward-looking. Panelists agreed that evaluation must inform and support strategic action, enabling real-time course correction and policy reform to end GBV. The discussion stressed the power of gender-responsive, intersectional, and ethical evaluation methodologies to not only expose harms and blind spots in evaluation but also to preempt and shift power toward survivors of GBV. The conversation highlighted the imperative to adapt evaluation to emerging challenges, such as technology-facilitated GBV, and to ensure that evaluation findings translate directly into budgets, legislation, and no-harm and rights-affirming policies within institutional set-ups as much as in the national and other contexts. Six quick takeaways from the dialogue Evaluation must shift from a retrospective 'rear-view mirror' to a proactive, forward-looking strategic compass.  It must move beyond focusing solely on past achievements to serve as a continuous learning and steering process that actively searches for systemic solutions and charts new paths. By prioritizing formative and participatory approaches, evaluation can improve the design and implementation of interventions in real-time, allowing for necessary course correction. This proactive stance ensures that evaluation effectively addresses accelerating risks, such as climate stress, migration, new technologies, and economic shocks, that can exacerbate GBV. Gender-responsive evidence is vital to drive policy reform: Decision-makers, including parliamentarians, rely on its evidence to influence national and institutional policy reforms and create effective legislation and frameworks addressing or mitigating GBV. The evaluation results help ensure accountability, holding governments and service providers responsible, to justify the sustained allocation of budgets for survivor services. Accountability requires an 'evaluation use architecture': The responsibility of the evaluator does not conclude with the report's submission. The commitment must be to make evaluation use inevitable by ensuring findings and recommendations travel to decision making tables, translating into actionable strategies, budgets and rights-affirming policies in all contexts. This process requires building a dedicated 'evaluation use architecture'. Adopt ethical, intersectional approaches, and mixed methodologies: Thorough stakeholder mapping and evaluability assessments are key to identify and include the voices of those most marginalized or discriminated against. Methodological approaches must use mixed-methods, with a focus on ethical, and sensitive approaches to remove access barriers, i.e. feminist evaluation. Practical measures must be implemented to address confidentiality and ethical implications, especially when interviewing survivors. New metrics are needed on evaluating technology-facilitated GBV: The rise of online harms (cyber-stalking, doxxing, deepfakes) demands evaluation tools that can speedily measure prevalence using a 12-month recall period. Effectiveness must be measured by outcomes that matter to survivors, such as tracking platform take-down time and repeat victimization. Leverage existing guidance and engagement opportunities: In the wake of limited resources, utilizing established guidance and tools should be prioritized over reinventing the wheel. Entities such as the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG), with UN Women, UNFPA, and UN Human Rights provide resources for integrating gender and human rights into evaluation. Engaging with networks like EvalGender+ and sharing and learning in the thematic Communities of Practice ( EvalforEarth ) helps ensure evaluation is context-specific. In case you missed the conversation, catch up with the recording The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.  The next dialogue, “Is evaluation key to realizing universal human rights?” will take place on 10 December 2025. Learn more This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.

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The third Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogue  honoured the United Nations 80th anniversary by addressing the question: How can evaluation shape a future-fit United Nations? Experts from United Nations agencies and beyond convened to discuss the evaluation's pivotal role in enhancing the effectiveness, efficiency, and agility of the United Nations amidst a complex global landscape marked by polycrises, eroding public trust, and funding challenges. The session emphasised moving beyond evaluation as a mere "report card" to serving as an "uncomfortable mirror" for innovation and transformative organisational change. Panellists stressed the need for future-oriented evaluation methodologies, greater interagency collaboration, and a renewed focus on learning to ensure the United Nations remains relevant, effective and capable of delivering on its mandate.  Seven quick takeaways from the dialogue Embrace evaluation as an "uncomfortable mirror" for innovation:  The evaluation function must serve as an independent mirror to "speak truth to power," by delivering an unbiased perspective, which, while occasionally challenging, supports leadership in making informed and strategic adaptations. While structural independence and established norms of the evaluation function protect this role, evaluation findings must be effectively communicated and packaged to inspire confidence and motivate the United Nations to pursue the innovation needed to address global challenges. Strike a balance between accountability, learning, and foresight:  Evaluation's role requires a fundamental realignment, balancing its emphasis on demonstrating accountability to prioritizing its function as a catalyst for systemic learning and adaptation. Future-fit evaluation must look backward with hindsight, inward with insight, and forward with foresight to guide strategic thinking and adaptive programming in an unpredictable context. Future-proofing requires embracing new methodologies:  To assess the agility and adaptability of the United Nations, evaluation must adopt innovative methods that look forward, not just back. This includes incorporating futures methods into mixed-methods evaluations and leveraging AI, data science, and real-time monitoring data (e.g., geospatial analysis) to achieve efficiency gains and strategic foresight, while always ensuring human judgment and ethical oversight. Reposition evaluation to create space for transformative learning and adaptation in programmes: Evaluation should explicitly encourage and value innovation in programme work. Creating a safe space for candid dialogue on the evaluation findings to inform future programming builds a culture of learning. This helps staff see evaluation not as a mandatory compliance exercise, but as a tool for reflection and positive change, boosting innovation. Strengthen coherence through joint and system-wide evaluation:  Recognizing the interconnected nature of global challenges (e.g., health, gender, climate), interagency and joint evaluations are a vital investment for system-wide coherence and collective intelligence. These exercises strengthen the global evaluation ecosystem, enhance legitimacy, and provide a holistic view of the United Nations' contributions to complex cross-sectoral issues. Measure and make visible the "intangible" impacts:  The United Nations' capacity-strengthening work, which often focuses on intangible impacts like fostering trust or building government capacity, must be made visible to demonstrate value. Methodologies like Outcome Harvesting can be used intentionally, with dedicated time and well-facilitated processes, to capture and report on these non-traditional benefits, enriching the full story of the United Nations' independent contribution. Institutionalize evaluation while mastering soft skills for utility:  Securing a future-fit United Nations requires evaluation to operate on two essential, reinforcing pillars: institutional mandate and professional soft skills. While formal mandates (like a policy-mandated budget and governance mechanisms) provide the structural independence to speak truth to power, the utility  and acceptance  of findings hinge on skillful engagement. This involves mastering soft skills in stakeholder engagement and using continuous participatory approaches to ensure stakeholders own the evaluation recommendations, and willingly internalize the feedback provided by the "uncomfortable mirror". In case you missed the conversation, catch up with the recording The Eval4Action Future of Evaluation dialogues are a series of forward-looking discussions that explore innovative and adaptive approaches to evaluation. Designed to make evaluation more influential in a rapidly changing and complex world, these dialogues bring together a diverse range of voices—from experts to young evaluators—to share knowledge and highlight ways to future-proof the field of evaluation. Each monthly dialogue is aligned with an international action day, ensuring the conversations are timely and relevant to a global discourse.  The next dialogue, “ Is evaluation our compass to a future free from gender-based violence? ” will take place on 25 November 2025.   Learn more This article was written with AI support with human authors in the lead.