Nutrition Embedding Evaluation Programme: An Evaluation Technical Assistance Model for Supporting Civil Society Organizations to Conduct Quality Nutrition Impact Evaluations

Monica Kothari, Dionne Mackison, Carolyn Hemminger, Sandrine Fimbi, Denise Lionetti, Abigail Perry, Katja Siling and Blene Hailu

Evaluation Review, 2019, vol. 43, issue 6, 396-425

Abstract: The Nutrition Embedding Evaluation Programme (NEEP) was a global 4-year program (2013–2017) funded by the United Kingdom Department for International Development created to respond to gaps in the nutrition evidence base. The NEEP implementing agency—PATH—provided grants and evaluation technical assistance (ETA) to civil society organizations (CSOs) from 12 countries to conduct robust nutrition-related impact evaluations. The programmatic approach of having an intermediary agent to manage the funding and ETA mechanisms for nutrition impact evaluations is rare and therefore provides a unique opportunity to understand its effectiveness. Over the program duration, NEEP collected lessons learned that were analyzed and disaggregated into key themes considered critical for the completion of high-quality impact evaluations. From these lessons learned, NEEP provides an ETA program model that can be replicated or adapted to other international development sectors. This model highlights the key role of the three tiers (donor, ETA manager, and CSOs) in ensuring the best value for money and effective technical support for conducting impact evaluations and fostering the importance of knowledge uptake and evaluative culture for maximum knowledge diffusion. In this way, global research can be targeted to approaches that provide options to collaborate with the program implementers and contribute to a holistic evidence base to inform policy and programmatic decisions.

Keywords: evaluation; nutrition evaluation; technical assistance; grants management; monitoring and evaluation; research support; VfM; evaluation technical assistance; capacity strengthening (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0193841X19898939 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:evarev:v:43:y:2019:i:6:p:396-425

DOI: 10.1177/0193841X19898939

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Evaluation Review
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().