This report is made possible by the support of the American people through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). The contents of this presentation are the sole responsibility of the DEPA-MERL consortium and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.

PROGRAM BACKGROUND

The Developmental Evaluation Pilot Activity (DEPA-MERL) under the US Global Development Lab’s Monitoring, Evaluation, Research and Learning innovations (MERLIN) program at the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) is testing the effectiveness of developmental evaluation in the USAID context. Developmental evaluation was created to evaluate innovative programs that operate in complex environments and are thus expected to adapt over time. From November 2016 to March 2018, DEPA-MERL conducted a developmental evaluation with Family Care First (FCF) in Cambodia, in service of FCF’s goal of increasing the number of children living in safe, nurturing family-based care. The DEPA-MERL consortium consists of: Search for Common Ground (Search), which implemented the developmental evaluation with FCF, including hiring, managing and supporting the Developmental Evaluator; Social Impact, which served as the prime awardee on the consortium and provided support to Search on the FCF developmental evaluation; and the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan (WDI), which studied the effectiveness of this approach in FCF.

EVALUATION BACKGROUND AND PURPOSE

This report focuses on better understanding the implementation of the developmental evaluation approach in USAID programming. Readers of this report include USAID stakeholders, organizations funding or implementing developmental evaluation, and Developmental Evaluators themselves. Using the information collected, the DEPA-MERL consortium aims to build on existing literature and offer readers targeted data and guidance to improve the effectiveness of developmental evaluation. Additionally, the findings from this study will be compared to findings from other developmental evaluation pilots conducted by DEPA-MERL. This across-case comparative report is expected to be released in September 2019.