{"id":2059,"date":"2018-10-31T18:33:27","date_gmt":"2018-10-31T18:33:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/linclocal.org\/?p=2059"},"modified":"2019-02-08T15:46:30","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T15:46:30","slug":"linc-aea-2018","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/2018\/10\/31\/linc-aea-2018\/","title":{"rendered":"LINC Shares Insights at 2018 AEA Conference"},"content":{"rendered":"

This month, LINC team members traveled to Cleveland, OH to the annual American Evaluation Association conference to connect with evaluators\u00a0and share insights from across the field. Read on to learn about LINC’s presentations and the projects and challenges from which we’ve learned.<\/p>\n[vc_row][vc_column]

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Our work in Cambodia found that there were groups coalescing around specific water and sanitation issues already. These are assets that can be built upon by local actors themselves.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

Rich Fromer, Managing Director<\/div>\t
on using network analysis in WASH evaluation and programming<\/div><\/div>\n
\"aea13\"\t<\/div>

We realize intuitively that our work takes place in a complex, dynamic environment, but we struggle to incorporate that context into design and evaluation.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

Patrick Sommerville, Managing Director<\/div>\t
on utilizing systems thinking to contextualize development programs<\/div><\/div>\n
\"aea11\"\t<\/div>

We also asked interviewers to use their intuition. It was important not just to reflect on what was said but also on how people felt after coming out of each listening exercise.<\/p> <\/blockquote>

Jenna White, Program Director<\/div>\t
on connecting to recipient communities through innovative 'broad listening' excercises<\/div><\/div><\/div>[\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title=”Breaking News: We Can\u2019t Control Everything! – Using Systems Thinking to Understand Context in Development Projects”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]Most evaluations and literature\u00a0assessing\u00a0success factors in development focus on project management-related factors \u2013 things we can control, like how interventions are designed and implemented.\u00a0In this session,\u00a0LINC Managing Director Patrick Sommerville, joined by partners from Local Systems Practice consortium\u00a0member ANSER, discussed what a context-based approach to evaluation might look like using systems thinking tools.\u00a0Drawing from experience applying a systems-thinking lens to projects across multiple regions and sectors, Patrick\u00a0discussed ongoing research into which\u00a0factors should be taken into consideration to characterize local context\u00a0and maximize the outcomes of development work. Attendees also learned about\u00a0systems tools that can be used to understand complex environments, and case studies from programs in Afghanistan and Bangladesh that benefited from systems-informed views into context and impact.\u00a0To learn more, read\u00a0about LINC’s systems-thinking approach<\/a>, its work in Bangladesh<\/a>, and the Local Systems Practice program<\/a>.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_gallery interval=”5″ images=”2087,2104,2103″ img_size=”504×375″][\/vc_column][vc_column][vc_separator color=”white”][vc_separator color=”white”][vc_separator color=”white”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title=”WASH and Learn: Using Systems Thinking to Improve the Sustainability of WASH Service Provision”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_gallery interval=”5″ images=”2098,2099,2100″ img_size=”504×375″][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]This session\u00a0brought together three papers from five consortium partners\u00a0of the USAID-funded Sustainable Wash Systems (SWS)\u00a0project for a\u00a0discussion of the utility of systems thinking and the application of Organizational Network Analysis (ONA) for promoting and measuring sustainability in the\u00a0WASH sector.\u00a0Consortium partners, including LINC Managing Director Rich Fromer and Program Associate Megan McDermott,\u00a0presented preliminary results from two ONAs,\u00a0focusing\u00a0on how members of each WASH network currently interact with each other, the implications of this information on improving local network sustainability, and a comparison of results between two cases to understand the broader application of and implications for using Network Analysis to evaluate and improve network coordination in a variety of WASH contexts. To learn more, read about the preliminary reports from the SWS project<\/a> and LINC’s network analysis\u00a0tools<\/a>.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column][vc_separator color=”white”][vc_separator color=”white”][vc_separator color=”white”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_text_separator title=”Learning to Listen: Improving Understanding Between Donor and Aid Recipients”][\/vc_column][\/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_column_text]At this roundtable discussion, LINC Program Director Jenna White lead a deep dive into\u00a0the best way to capture and analyze qualitative information from a broad inquiry conducted by non-researchers. As a component of the USAID Local Works-funded Local Systems Practice (LSP) activity,\u00a0Jenna spent 3 months working with USAID\/Philippines on a \u201cBroad Listening Tour\u201d of the country to better understand the development needs of local communities. In contrast to more formal survey methods like interviews or polling, \u201cBroad Listening\u201d seeks to engage populations of interest in more natural conversations to elicit insights around the most prominent issues, priorities, and local resources available for better targeted and more responsive programming. To facilitate a casual, natural environment during the Broad Listening, audio-recordings and verbatim notes were infeasible – instead, the team designed a simple reflection template to capture themes and issues based on participant conversations, experiences, and intuition, and to serve as a basis of analysis. Joined by\u00a0partners from the LSP consortium, Jenna discussed the results and application of these tactics and her experience leading this innovative project. To learn more, read about the\u00a0Local Works program<\/a>\u00a0and LINC’s mission of empowering\u00a0locally-led development<\/a>.[\/vc_column_text][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”1\/2″][vc_gallery interval=”5″ images=”2105,2106,2107″ img_size=”504×375″][\/vc_column][\/vc_row]\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This month, LINC team members traveled to Cleveland, OH to the annual American Evaluation Association…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10,"featured_media":2121,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52,40,42,51,50,39,17,43,18,41],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2059\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2121"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/linclocal.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}