Research vs Evaluation

I found this on AEA 365 and really like the way it explains the difference between research and Evaluation

Weekly Funny - Why we will have a census in 2011

From: Hayibo. Breaking news. Into lots of little pieces

Asked to stop singing and explain why the census was really taking place, a spokesperson for Zuma, Bignumbas Twala, confessed that it was actually the result of a bet between Zuma and neighboring President Robert Mugabe.

“It’s typical Presidential stuff really,” said Twala. “It starts with a silly comment, ‘like my countries bigger than yours.’

“It escalates to, ‘Well I’ve got more stashed away for my retirement in a numbered Swiss bank account’ and it just keeps going, all the way to ‘But I rule over the most people – so there!’

“And once you get there, all that’s left is to actually sit and count everybody.

“It’s not ideal, but a bet’s a bet,” he said.

Asked what was staked on the bet Twala said the winner would get to spend Father’s Day 2012 with Julius Malema – and know for sure that he really did rule over more people than his rival.

Weekly Funny - Evaluation Feedback

Evaluation feedback can be a sensitive issue...

Telephone Equipment for Evaluators

From time-to-time my consultancy conducts telephonic surveys and teleconferences as part of our normal evaluation work. I have been extremely impressed with the two South African companies that we bought our equipment from, and I want to share their contact details with you.

To give you an indication of why I was impressed - Within five minutes of contacting Phonatics about headsets, I had a quote, and it was delivered on the same day I paid for the equipment.

After losing our conference phone's manual, we emailed the general info@ email address on the Konftel website - 10 minutes later we received an emailed manual and someone called us to ensure that we got what we were looking for.

Knowledge Management Toolkit

Knowledge Management for Health put this KM toolkit together that might be useful for Health Practitioners and those in the M&E field who are also concerned with ensuring that the "learning" from our evaluations do not get lost.

It will help those who are:

• Looking for a primer on KM
• Developing a KM strategy
• Interested in knowledge sharing strategies
• Interested in how to find knowledge and the best ways to organize it
• Interested in tools to create new insights and knowledge
• Interested in tools for adapting knowledge to inform and improve policy and program decision-making
• Evaluating KM activities or programmes