Nuru Presents at American Evaluation Association Conference

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE – October 5, 2023

Contact: Ian Schwenke | info@nuruinternational.org

INDIANAPOLIS, IL–The American Evaluation Associations (AEA) is hosting Evaluation 2023 on October 9-14, 2023, bringing together evaluators, evaluation managers, and other stakeholders “for several days of skill-building, idea-sharing, networking, and more” (Evaluation). The conference will feature evaluation presenters from around the globe and demonstrate unique evaluation approaches from various organizations and researchers across the sectors.

The 2023 theme is “The Power of Story,” and invites participants to consider the relationship between evaluations and storytelling, reflecting “on how storytelling contributes to and shapes the narrative of evaluations, [with a] dive deeper into storytelling’s usage, benefits, and impacts on our practices” (Evaluation). Nuru International Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning Sr. Associate Ian Schwenke will attend this upcoming conference and contribute to this year’s theme by sharing the 2022 Nuru Nigeria Resilience Report. Ian’s presentation will also highlight how the Nuru Collective’s approach to localizing development contributes to a unique and positive Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning (MEL) culture. 

The Nuru Nigeria Resilience Report marks the end of a five-year randomized controlled trial (RCT) evaluation of communities in northeast Nigeria. The evaluation, conducted in partnership with the Ray Marshall Center (RMC) at the University of Texas at Austin, seeks to understand how Nuru interventions impact community resilience. Nuru Nigeria, a member of the Nuru Collective, is a local nonprofit organization that focuses on establishing self-sustainable farmer organizations, increasing access to financial services and literacy, and strengthening community-led development initiatives. Beginning in 2019, the resilience study followed a group of individuals over five consecutive years, gathering data and stories about Nuru programming and the region in which Nuru operates. The full report will be available in November 2023.

Ian will present alongside Dena Bunnel, PhD Candidate in Security Studies at Kansas State University, and Thomas Boswell, Social Science Research Associate at the University of Texas at Austin. They will present “From Data to Dialogue: Storytelling’s Role in Localized Development Evaluation” at 9:15 am on October 14, Room 206 of the JW Marriot. In addition to covering the findings of the report, the team will present Nuru’s unique approach to evaluation, detailing how its approach differs due to the nature of locally-led evaluations facilitated by local organizations and inclusive of local evaluators.

For a complete list of speakers and presentations, please visit Evaluation 2023’s website by clicking here. 

About Nuru International: 

Established in 2008, Nuru International is part of the Nuru Collective, a group of organizations working together to address extreme poverty and promote resilience through locally-led solutions across four countries in sub-Saharan Africa: Kenya, Ethiopia, Nigeria, and Burkina Faso. The Nuru Collective members are united under a shared vision to cultivate lasting meaningful choices in the most vulnerable and marginalized communities in the world.

About AEA: 

The American Evaluation Association (AEA) is a professional association of evaluators devoted to the application and exploration of evaluation as a profession. AEA prioritizes the advancement of evaluation best practices in multiple types of evaluation, including program evaluation, personnel evaluation, evaluation in education, evaluation in government, independent consulting, and more. AEA has over 5,000 members representing all 50 states in the United States as well as more than 80 foreign countries.

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