L’Agence Française de Développement (AFD) published a new study: “Analysis, Monitoring, and Evaluation of Contributions to Social Change – Meaningfully measuring international solidarity and decentralized cooperation”
There are many actors in the field of international solidarity and decentralized development cooperation who seek to orient or contribute to “social change”. While they agree that social change cannot be dictated, planned, or controlled, they do not all share the same outlook on the type of social change desired. Social change is a recurrent theme in discussions.
How can it be defined in practical terms by the actors who help guide it? How can evaluation capture the changes that exogenous development interventions support? Methodology is an important issue, if evaluation is to meet the varied expectations of the different aid actors.Both French and international actors came together for three round-table debates.
Together they discussed about the significance and issues of social change, the status of methods that help assess contributions to change, and evaluation, as a vehicle of organizational and social change.