UNU-IAS capacity development support for evaluation to strengthen RCE reporting

Members of the RCE Evaluation Working Group 2012-2014• UNU-IAS: Zinaida Fadeeva, Abel Atiti• RCE KwaZulu Natal: Jim Tailor, Tich

Pesanayi• RCE Western Sydney: Geoff Scott• RCE Graz: Clemens Mader• RCE European Advisor: Jos Hermans

SADC RCEs approached to participate in an evaluation pilot project to feed into Nagoya• RCE Lusaka, Zambia (T)• RCE Zomba, Malawi (D)• RCE Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (D)• RCE Mutari, Zimbabwe (T)• RCE Harare, Zimbabwe (T)• RCE Swaziland (I)• RCE Lesotho (I)• RCE Khomas-Erongo, Nambia (I)• RCE Makana, South Africa (R)• RCE KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (J)

Pilot project outputs:1. Multistakeholder evaluation tool kit2. O’Donoghue, R. B. and Fadeeva, Z. (2014). “Enhancing Monitoring and Evaluation Practices in

RCEs” In Building a Resilient Future through Multistakeholder Learning and Action: Ten Years of Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development. Dirksen, A. (Ed). UNU-IAS, Tokyo, Japan. Pg. 161-178.

3. O’Donoghue, R.B. (2015). Evaluation and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD): Navigating a shifting landscape in Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs). In Rieckmann (2015) ESD Research in Higher Education Handbook. Routledge Handbooks.

RCE: People learning-to-change and produce freedoms together

“In order to set our institutions firmly on the path of future knowledges, we need to re-invent a classroom

without walls in which we are all co-learners; a university that is capable of convening various publics in new forms of assemblies that become points of convergence of and

platforms for the redistribution of different kinds of knowledges”.

Achille Mbembe 2015 (Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive, public lecture, WISER, University of the Witwatersrand)

• Baseline assessment around core RCE elements (R.1)Constitutive Evaluation

• Stakeholder accounts of RCE processes and projects (R.2-5)Appreciative Evaluation

• Explore ways to strengthen engagement / goals (R.2-5)Developmental

Evaluation

• Assessment of value creation through RCE activities (R.6)Value Creation

Assessment

• Review of RCE tool kit & evaluation capacity developmentMeta

Evaluation

An overview of the RCE Evaluation Toolkit Pilot Studies

RCE Outputs: Evaluation reports, photo case study & capacity development strategy per RCE.

Working with the SDGs and RCE evaluation tools for scaling through (course-supported) collaborative change projects

New knowledges and systems thinking:

• Earth systems sciences• Social Ecological Systems thinking • Socio-economic systems thinking

(Society)

Local Issue-centred actions:• Assess local concerns• Clarify global concerns• Identify change practices to resolve

matters of concern• Explore ‘third-space’ cultural-

historical innovations

Whole institution approaches with situated learning actions through:• Deliberative civic engagement• Co-engaged action and change practices• Citizen science to monitor issues and change

Review 1: RCE Coordination & networking

The RCE Journey:A review of how the RCE was constituted and how it is functioning to enable learning-led change.

• How did the RCE evolve?• How has membership changed?• What ESD initiatives have been undertaken? • How can coordination and networking be

strengthened? • What SDGs are being positively addressed locally?

Framing images of SDGs for People, Planet and Prosperity

The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture3. Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages4. Ensure, inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-ling learning opportunities for all5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment and

decent work for all.9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster innovation .10. Reduce inequality within and amongst countries (equity).11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.12. Ensure sustainable production and consumption patterns.13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development.15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. Sustainably manage forests,

combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice for all and

build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnerships for sustainable

development.169 specified targets

(Loew and Rippin (Eds) (2015) The 2030 Agenda for SD. Bonn: DIE)

Review 2: RCE activities & their positive effects

• How have the activities of the RCEs evolved?• What have been the best RCE activities and why?• Give examples of how successful collaboration/decision

making is producing the effects that are being achieved? • How can useful activities be up-scaled and mainstreamed? • How could better work be achieved? – In the RCE? (inward looking)– In the region? (collaboration and outward looking)

Review 3: Transformation & Sustainability• What flagship initiatives reflect the successes of the RCE?

• What scale of knowledge and practice transformation is evident?– Summarise what has happened in key success areas over a

period 12, 24, 36 months etc. – What has changed and how is the change evident?

• What resources and governance have enabled success? • What, besides funding, can be done to overcome barriers and

sustain the positive activities of the RCE?

Review 4: Strategic areas & networked learning

• What strategic focus areas, partnerships, activities have been key to the successes of the RCE?

• What could be done to improve learning and effectiveness (e.g. partnerships, resourcing and scale)?

• How can existing linkages, processes and programs be

strengthened?

• What new strategic links and capacity development could be explored?

Review 5: RCE Global Service Centre

• What have been the benefits of being acknowledged as an RCE?

• How are you interacting with the RCE Service Centre? • How are you working with other RCEs and what are some of

the activities, successes and challenges?• How has your RCE participated in regional and global RCE

conferences and undertaken follow up activities? • How could regional and global RCE activities be improved to

strengthen your RCE work?

Review 6: Document records and overall value creation • Assess documents available for review: RCE application,

articles in the RCE bulletin, local RCE publications, current project documents, the evaluation record and audio visual materials etc.

• What value creation does the appreciative evidence reflect? – What were the most meaningful RCE activities discussed?– What of potential value are the RCE activity producing?– What difference has this made that would not happen otherwise– What difference has it made to the ability of the RCE to produce what

matters through its ESD projects?– What has produced new understandings of what produces value in

RCE work?

The SDGs should be read within the self-determination principle of cultural / individual dignity and a right to

thrive as diverse human culturesHere ESD will need to be framed to include: • Healing of the physical, spiritual, psychological and social wellbeing of

situated, intergenerational collectives.• Decolonising actions with tools and strategies for countering sustained

processes of current modernist and earlier colonial dominance and exclusion.• Mobilisation of knowledge practices on local matters of concern and

sustainability practices for the common good.• Transformation through civic action at the collective level of socio-economic

and ecological wellbeing.(Adapted Smith, 1999 p117)

Note: These qualifying additions reframe many of the SDGs as reflexive processes of co-engaged socio-cultural re-orientation following an expansive period of colonial and modernist exclusion in Afrca.

Inclusive, quality education for all (G:4)

Global Partnerships for SD (G:17) - GAP priorities

We have a shared responsibility in RCEs to engage matters of concern:

No poverty (G:1)No hunger (G:2)Good Health & wellbeing (G:3)

living together in diverse socio-cultural contexts

trying to be more ethical and fair

using life-giving

resources with greater

care

whilst striving towards a sustainable future in more peaceful, just and safe conditions.

Decent work and Economic growth (G: 8-9) Sustainable cities (G: 11)Responsible production & consumption (G:12)

NEXUS ofSUSTAINABILITY in an RCE CONTEXT

Clean Water & Energy (G:6&7)Climate action,

Resilient life below water and on land.

(G:13-15)

Gender equality (G:5)

Reduce inequity (G10)

Peace & justice (G:16)

Poverty (G1)

Hunger (G2)

Health and Wellbeing

(G3)

Gender (G:5)

Inequality (G:10)

Peace & Justice (G:16)

Water (G6)

Energy (G7)

Climate (G13)

Life in Water(G14)

Life on Land(G15)

SustainableCities(G11)

Responsible Production &Consumption

(G12)

DecentWork (G:8)

EconomicGrowth

(G:9)

Inclusive, quality EDUCATION for all (G:4) within Global PARTNERSHIPS for SD (G:17)

Description of context:

Concerns driving ethical purpose:

Summary of current knowledge:

Learning-led change needed:

Handout for mapping the SDG nexus of concerns in an education context of social-ecological change

Imagining….... Future Sustainability?

What do w

e need to do now to

move

towards desir

able states o

f …..

A SADC / SWEDESD adaptive integration of ‘the enclosed earth garden,’ ‘planetary boundaries’ and ‘Natural Step (John Holmberg).’

What pathways to future sustainability

are possible?

Principles for future sustainability:

• How are people’s dignity and capacities to meet basic needs being undermined?

• How have nature and natural systems been degrading?

• How are concentrations of substances extracted from the earth’s crust accumulating?

• What man-made substances are accumulating.

What future states of dignity, equity, care and sustainable ways of doing

things can we imagine as being possible?

Small Scale Food Garden

Makana RCE Short Course on Changing Practice

Waste• Refuse, reduce and re-use waste

better

Water• Capture, store and clean water

better

Gardening• Grow vegetables at low cost.

Biodiversity• Plant trees that provide food and

seasonal benefits.

Health and Energy• Make health giving broth, bread,

jam and greens at low cost.