Rome, 12 October 2022 – For the first time in its over forty-year history, the Independent Office of Evaluation of IFAD (IOE) has launched a fully interactive on-line training course, available also to users outside the Fund. Through an audio-visual immersive experience, users will learn about the principal contents of Part 1 of the 2022 IFAD Evaluation Manual, prepared by IOE in collaboration with IFAD Management and launched earlier this year.

Complete with a successful course completion certificate, the training sensitizes users on the principal contents of the Evaluation Manual, while making their reading more engaging. Through role play exercises, case studies, quizzes and tests, users will gain a solid understanding of the institutional set-up of evaluation at IFAD; the key principles of conducting an evaluation; the implications of the key evaluation principles in connection with Agenda 2030; IFAD’s criteria and rating system; and an overview of methods available.

After completing the course, participants will be able to describe the key features of the institutional evaluation set-up at IFAD; recognize the roles and responsibility of Management and IOE; apply the key evaluation steps indicated in the Manual to a concrete evaluation exercise; identify key contributions from international debates and locate key sources; and use the evaluation criteria and apply them to a given context in order to elaborate specific sub-questions and indicators.

The on-line training accompanies the Evaluation Manual, by presenting its contents in a more dynamic fashion. The primary purpose of the Evaluation Manual is to ensure the quality, consistency, rigour and transparency of the evaluation function at IFAD, in order to increase the effectiveness of IFAD’s efforts. Along these lines, it provides guidance on adapting international standards, practices and evaluation criteria to the context of rural development, particularly when the end-clients of development interventions are smallholder farmers and small rural producers. The Manual also offers methodological guidance and standards for evaluations across the Fund.

Please access the on-line training course [here] and the 2022 IFAD Evaluation Manual [here]

For further information, please contact Alexander Voccia [here]