SEA Change CoP Bangkok Annual Members Meeting Report 2011

SEA Change CoP members, partners and advisors gathered in Bangkok, Thailand from 9-10 November 2011 for an Annual Members Meeting conference. This marked the one-year milestone for the CoP following the Kick-Off meeting last year in New Delhi during the Evaluation Conclave. Participants consisted of monitoring and evaluation practitioners and climate change program managers and staff, research institutions, advisors and donors, as well as independent practitioners and consultants representing their experiences in more than seven countries across Southeast Asia and globally. CoP members leveraged this opportunity to meet face-to-face with fellow colleagues, to take stock of the progress made over the year through a group reflection exercise, reviewing results from surveys that explored level of member engagement and connectivity. Over the past year, the CoP has witnessed a significant growth in the percentage of its members who are M&E practitioners, growing from 17% to 64%. SEA Change has launched its web-based platform, conducted 3 webinars, has added 35 resources on its online library, and has formed an Evaluation Committee consisting of 4 members. Based the assessment of where the CoP arrived in the past year and framed with thinking around current debates and newly released M&E frameworks, participants began prioritizing ways forward in the second year to answer questions around the role and value associated with the CoP’s scope and legacy. The action planning exercise found alignment with activities already planned and identified potential to strengthen the network by creating subgroups that focus on developing geographical clusters, webinar/training coordinators, and dissemination/outreach. In addition to ramping up dissemination of work produced by CoP members by way of conference presentations and publications, decisions around targeted membership and linkages to prospective regional evaluation networks remain high priorities for the CoP for the next year.