Anis [user:field_middlename] Ben Younes

Anis Ben Younes

Anis Ben Younes

Independent evaluator
Réseau Tunisien de l'Evaluation
Tunisia

My contributions

    • Good evening dear members of EvalForwARD,

      I think capacity building or "LEARNING" is the essence of evaluation. We have always insisted as members of the evaluation professional community on its particularity and distinction from other functions such as inspection or audit with emphasis on, at least, two things. Values ​​(focus on the human) and learning. Moreover, in recent years, several INGOs have transformed their M & E function into MEL or MEL, where L = Learning.

      Now, one can ask the question: the capacity building (I prefer the word capacity development) from whom? How? Why?

      ... All actors involved in the evaluation process learn from it. ALL, including comissioners, donors, government, users of deliverables, beneficiaries especially when it is a participatory approach.

      Through its approach of questioning, evaluation encourages the questioning of all that is evident in a project by verifying the relevance of its theory of change, the effectiveness of its intervention, the efficiency of its use of resources, sustainability of results and sustainability of the action (and many other criteria ...).

      We learn ourselves as evaluators during the evaluations we conduct and we combine that knowledge to share it again during the following mission with new clients. It is an iterative process that is spreading thanks to the sharing of knowledge at all scales (project, program, institution, community ...) as it is the case for this group where we share the results of our different experiences.

      Take the example of a student: the exam is not just a test to measure one's degree of learning. The exam, as an evaluation mission for a project team, is an opportunity to prepare, to review courses, to do research, to discuss with colleagues unclear questions, to discover tips and tricks that he would have never discovered by doing a simple passive learning "without challenge".

      Today, the evaluation community is increasingly sensitive to issues of knowledge sharing and the use of evaluation results (presenting results in increasingly user-friendly and intelligible forms) so that capacity development is accompanied by greater change at the institutional level or at the level of the daily lives of the final beneficiaries.

      Finally, I think that the purpose of evaluation is to measure, explain and promote change. In the world of development, this change passes by the Human and this Human does not stop to learn and to develop. Evaluation is therefore at the heart of this capacity development.