Awarding Speech – Second Place

2nd Place Awarding Speech

by Khalil Bitar | Jury member | Chair of EvalYouth

I am very glad to join you today and represent EvalYouth Global Network at this very special event –The Award Ceremony of the first ever IPDET Evaluation Hackathon, AKA #EvalHack on social media!

While we saw a great deal of excitement about the Hackathon among the evaluation community overall, I feel young and emerging evaluators were perhaps the most enthusiastic about this very special initiative. We observed this excitement in the sea of tweets and other social media posts, but also in the active participation of young and emerging evaluators as participants, facilitators, and organizers. I think we are hungry for such innovative ideas in the evaluation community –Innovative ideas that are open to all evaluators from all countries, backgrounds, ages, and genders and are not restricted to one country or region where only those can afford to travel or are lucky to have a sponsor or scholarship can attend –Innovative ideas that strongly foster and encourage EvalInnovation in a collaborative way, which is highly needed in the evaluation community in general.

EvalYouth, as the network of young and emerging evaluators, was as passionate about the Hackathon from the very beginning. We were and are extremely pleased to have partnered with IPDET to shape, plan, and execute the project.

However, I must give much of the credit to the IPDET management team who had the vision to involve young and emerging evaluators and EvalYouth every step of the way in a true partnership which had the voices and views of youth at the forefront. Our thanks and congratulations for the successful implementation of the initiative go to Stephanie, Jeremiah, Laszlo, Felix, Theresa, Oleg, Marlene, and others in the organization team.

But, allow me to single out one person from EvalYouth who led the EvalYouth-IPDET cooperation during the past months representing the EvalYouth Management Team and who put so much effort and time, and did a great job as always, my colleague Antonina Rishko-Porcescu who you just heard from. Congratulations, Antonina!

I very much look forward to this event and watching the videos and hearing from the winning teams. The review process was not easy. All project were innovative, collaborative, and were accomplished in a very limited time. They all deserve prizes (although not all can win given the nature of the Hackathon), but many of them – I hope – will find funding, support, and follow-up in order to be translated into actual projects in the near future. I also hope that this first EvalHack won’t be the last. EvalYouth is committed to continuing the partnership with IPDET and I know many young and emerging evaluators around the world will continue to be motivated about such creative and inclusive ideas and initiatives.

It is my pleasure to announce the second place winner. The second place goes to a team composed of 6 evaluators from 5 different countries who worked together and came up with an excellent solution that aims to create an inclusive, easy to use tool for evaluators and local organisations to connect and build fair partnerships —responding to the COVID-19 challenge with focus on Ecuador. The project is called EvalConnector and the team is Team Fix It! Each team member receives an IPDET scholarship towards tuition for two workshops during IPDET 2021 in Bern, Switzerland between 26-30 July 2021. Congratulations!