This year was the sixth edition of the annual gLOCAL Evaluation Week, a global monitoring and evaluation knowledge-sharing platform. With over 370 events held across the world, gLOCAL 2024 attracted thousands of participants through in-person, virtual and hybrid events. CLEAR South Asia convened events across the South Asia region. 

This year’s gLOCAL focused on the theme ‘Evaluation and Transformational Change: Balancing Ambition and Realism,’ with 33 thought-provoking events in South Asia from 24 organisations across India, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Cambodia. Organisers presented and discussed M&E best practices and innovations that explored what ‘transformational change’ could look like within their respective sectors, with expert panellists from NGOs, governments, donors, VOPEs, and the private sector.

An important area of discussion this year was transformational change, or systems-level change, through country-led evaluations. For instance, the World Food Programme explored equitable and inclusive transformational change, drawing from experiences of middle- and lower-income countries. The BRICS New Development Bank showcased successes and challenges in using evaluations to drive meaningful transformation, while the Asian Development Bank and the Sri Lanka Resident Mission jointly discussed lessons learned in policy-based lending to achieve medium- to long-term development goals, using Sri Lanka as an example. 

Another key way of driving transformational change is through M&E capacity building, by developing and sharing innovations in M&E methods and practices. This year, Sambodhi Capacity and Learning Institute and the Community of Evaluators, South Asia put together a three-part masterclass in evaluation design, while organisations such as Grassroots Research and Advocacy Movement with the Indian School Of Development Management (ISDM), Gender and Equity Network South Asia (GENSA), and IDinsight, among others, shared various insights on community participation, integrating marginalised communities, and alternative methodologies in evaluation. 

CLEAR/J-PAL South Asia conducted an event titled ‘From Numbers to Narratives: The Art of Data Storytelling in M&E.’ In this age of an unprecedented volume of data and analytics technologies now available, data, usually, does not speak for itself, requiring contexts, narratives, and visualisations to make the audience understand the numbers and evoke empathy for the lives behind those numbers. The session sought to build capacity on effective communication using data generated from M&E systems, the anatomy of a data story, and the process behind crafting meaningful and compelling data-driven narratives for communicating M&E insights to a diverse audience to influence policy decisions and drive transformational progress.

The workshop was led by Sourav Das, Capacity Building Manager, CLEAR SA, and built on the insights learnt from over a decade of CLEAR South Asia’s work in evaluation capability development (ECD) in South Asia.