ABSTRACT
Evaluating the impacts of programs and efforts in developing countries poses numerous challenges. Such challenges include insufficient allocation of resources to conduct systematic evaluations, lack of internal evaluation expertise to draw from and logistical impediments to implementing evaluation methods in remote regions with high levels of economic marginalization and low literacy rates. Sustainable Harvest International (SHI)—a non-governmental development organization focused on improving the well-being of Central American farming families through sustainable agriculture—overcomes some of these challenges by capitalizing on the knowledge and resources of board members, drawing from expertise of universities and institutions in the United States and Central America and adapting new evaluation techniques that are context appropriate, given the time and resources needed to implement them. This chapter illustrates how SHI strengthened its evaluation capacity and ultimately improved its programs, deepened its impacts and made a stronger case to funders. This chapter also explores how a lack of resources can be overcome by innovation, networking and institutional collaboration, and it underlines why systematic evaluations must not be eliminated from the activities of development organizations under the pretext of lack of resources.
