Learning Review 2011

 The present publication is the culmination of a
lengthy process that began long before any of the
current members of the Evaluation, Learning &
Accountability (ELA) Unit at ACF-UK had joined
the organisation. In 2005, ACF-UK launched
their first Meta-Evaluation. This Meta-Evaluation,
and those that followed it annually until 2010,
aimed to provide ACF International with a sense
of its collective performance and the strengths
and weaknesses of its programmes. All of them,
however, struggled to fully make sense of the
complex qualitative and quantitative information
generated by external evaluations, hindered by the
lack of clear, comparable information with which
to measure progress from year to year. What was
missing was a framework to collect and analyse
data, something to guide the process and ensure
that evaluations were useful and transformative.
In 2011, the ELA Unit decided to address this by
introducing a new ACF International Evaluation
Policy & Guideline (EPG). The EPG brought
together three key ideas that are at the core of
the ELA Unit’s vision for evaluation and learning.
First, evaluations are only valuable if they
are used. ACF field teams can and should look
forward to external evaluations, as a means of
answering the kind of questions that no one in
the field has time (or the necessary detachment)
to investigate or research. Second, evaluations
must give us some way to track progress.
Progress made from year to year at field level,
and between missions and country offices at
a global level. Third, evaluations must be
made an integral part of organisational
learning. Few processes are capable of
sharing with one field mission what happens
in another, and evaluations must support this
kind of cross-fertilisation. The architecture put
in place under the EPG set out to prove that all
of these processes could not only co-exist under
a common framework but could also yield the
necessary information to produce a new kind
of annual learning review.
The content of the Learning Review reflects this
multi-layered, but interconnected, approach to
learning and evaluation. It opens with a brief
overview of the external evaluations carried out
by ACF International in 2011. It then offers an
analysis of collective organisational performance
using the internationally-recognised DAC
Criteria. The aim is to identify common strengths
and weaknesses and highlight areas for future
improvement. It continues with a summary of
some of the most interesting and relevant aspects
of the programmes evaluated in 2011, from Good
Practices in Fresh Food Voucher Programmes
to Remote Programming and the increasingly
important issue of nutrition programme coverage.
But the real essence of this publication comes in
the form of over a dozen Best Practices identified
as part of the evaluations carried out in 2011.
These Best Practices were identified and analysed
jointly between the ELA Unit, the consultant(s)
and ACF field level staff. They offer an insight
into some of the most unique, cutting-edge and
un-orthodox approaches being used successfully
by our missions around the world. Together they
remind us of our capacity to innovate and think
outside of the proverbial box.