Evidence is essential for effective, ethical, and accountable humanitarian action. But how should it be used in planning humanitarian programming? ALNAP was joined by practitioners from four organizations to explore groundbreaking work, challenges they’ve faced, and practical relevance of tools for humanitarian policy and programming staff.
The work featured:
- 3ie to present their work on creating Evidence Gap Maps to inform development and humanitarian policies and programmes.
- Through their joint Humanitarian Evidence Programme, Oxfam and the Feinstein International Center at Tufts University have commissioned a set of eight evidence syntheses.
- The International Rescue Committee (IRC) has recently launched the Outcomes and Evidence Framework, a set of tools that define high-level outcomes, outline theories of change to achieve those outcomes, and collate the best available research evidence. Christof Kurz and Sheree Bennett will speak about this initiative. This will also serve as a unique opportunity for webinar participants to provide feedback on the beta version of the interactive Outcomes and Evidence Framework ahead of its official launch.
For results-based protection, International Rescue Committee’s Outcomes and Evidence Framework is interesting in helping to facilitate an outcome-oriented approach, to outline theories of change to achieve outcomes, and bring together stakeholders and activities from multiple sectors. What will be interesting to learn from the rollout of this tool is how theories of change are adapted for different contexts – rather than deriving only from a global theory of change. Additionally, how practitioners in the field can use the framework to question their assumptions and reflect on their programs throughout implementation will be important in ensuring it is results-based.