Workshops & Events

A 2-part Practice-Based Experiment in Relational, Regenerative, and Future-Oriented Evaluation (free of charge)

We are inviting a cohort of evaluators, internal MEL practitioners, and peer supporters into a collaborative, practice-based learning experiment on innovative evaluation methods. More specifically, we will explore Relational, Regenerative, and Future-Oriented evaluation. While each method is distinct, all have special relevance for relationships-focused and network practitioners.

This experiment offers a supportive space to learn about, test, and adapt concrete practices within real-world challenges. It combines two live online sessions with light-touch asynchronous accompaniment through a WhatsApp group, optional peer check-ins, and connection to our broader autumn ecosystem.

Who This Is For

We are bringing together a cohort of 20–50 participants across three roles:

• Active Evaluation Consultants: You are currently delivering an evaluation and want to test methods better suited to complexity, systems change, or relational work.
• Internal MEL & Program Staff: You hold evaluation, learning, reflection, or sense-making responsibilities within an organization, project, or portfolio.
• Curious Learners & Peer-Supporters: You may not have a live case to bring right now, but you want to learn these approaches and support others through listening, reflection, and peer coaching.

Session 1 (Live): Orientation, Approach Exploration & Case Pods (October 15, 4-5.30pm CET)
We will introduce three practical evaluation approaches (Relational, Regenerative, and Future-Oriented), host a dynamic Q&A, and break into peer pods to help match live challenges with relevant practices and methods to try out.

Between Sessions: Applied Experimentation & Ecosystem Touchpoints
Over 7 weeks, you will have space to test one or more of these practical methods in your work.

Session 2 (Live): Shared Learning & Harvesting (December 3, 4-5.30pm CET)
We will reconvene to reflect on what was tried, what worked, what was challenging, and how these practices landed in real-world contexts.

This event is part of the "Experiments in Regenerative Evaluation" Event Series

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Power in evaluation is rarely explicit. It lives in the margins of what gets measured, who gets heard, and who holds the risk.

This session explores how power shows up in evaluation work and examines the live, real-world tensions evaluators and programme managers face when balancing institutional and funder demands with authentic community ownership.

Drawing on joint reflections from recent evaluation work with progressive funders and ground-level programme leadership, the session explores three core strands:

1. Relational Safety vs. Power Vacuums: Why removing formal reporting requirements without transparent expectation-setting can create an unintended "power vacuum"—where grantees still report what they think funders want to hear.
2. Evaluators as Power Mediators: How evaluators navigate internal institutional power dynamics—such as board risk-aversion, narrative control, and public perception fears—while striving to protect project integrity and community trust.
3. Shifting Power in Practice (A Programme Manager’s Perspective): Practical reflections from Rory Crawford (Nature Towns & Cities) on what it takes for project leads and NGOs to actively let go of control and hold institutions accountable to community-led decisions.

Mapping your organisation’s health as a living ecosystem

When everything feels urgent, strategy gets reactive. We step back to see your work as part of a wider ecosystem, so you can act from what is essential rather than what is loudest.

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In this session you will:

• Pause and map the system you are part of, including where energy flows and where it's blocked
• Identify what is genuinely essential right now
• Discover ways to nurture the capacity your work depends on

This event is part of the "Experiments in Regenerative Evaluation" Event Series

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When an evaluation is labeled "participatory," who actually owns the design, the data, and the final story?

Too often, community involvement is flattened into extractive data collection or late-stage consultation. In this session, Bhargavi Thakur draws on real-world project experience to explore what it takes to move beyond surface-level participation toward communities as co-owners across design, implementation, and reporting.

More specifically, we will dive into two core strands:

• Moving from consultation to co-ownership: Practical pathways for involving communities from the outset as co-designers, data gatherers, and co-authors of stories and reports.
• Navigating unresolved tensions: Honest inquiry into the structural friction, institutional constraints, and residual power dynamics that persist even within highly progressive, community-centered evaluation.

You'll walk away with concrete entry points for shifting community roles across the project lifecycle, language and tactics for navigating donor constraints and institutional resistance, and peer exchange on handling power imbalances in practice.

This event is part of the "Experiments in Regenerative Evaluation" Event Series

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Imagine trying to navigate an uncertain future using only evidence from the past. Traditional evaluation and MEL practices provide insights into what has happened, but today's social and ecological challenges also require us to pay attention to what is emerging and what futures are becoming possible.

This session explores why bringing evaluation, regeneration and foresight together can be valuable, and what this could look like in practice. Drawing on insights from our four-part Collective Learning Lab: Sensing What Is Emerging, we share reflections on the changing role of evaluators, the skills needed to enable both regeneration and foresight, and the wider paradigm shift required to support regenerative and future-first evaluation.

Together, we will explore how evaluation might evolve from a practice focused primarily on assessing the past to one that also helps communities, organisations, and institutions shape more regenerative and desirable futures.

The session is structured across two connected arcs:

• First 60 Minutes | Bringing Regenerative Evaluation and Foresight together: Reflections around the value of bringing regenerative evaluation and foresight together, and some of the practices, methodologies and tools at the intersection of both.
• Extended 30 Minutes | the role, skills and mental models of a future-first regenerative evaluator: A deep-dive dialogue exploring the evolving identity and strategic positioning of our field as measurement shifts from backward-looking accountability into real-time navigation for systems, communities, and funders.

This event is part of the "Experiments in Regenerative Evaluation" Event Series

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How do we evaluate shifts in leadership when success relies on how people build trust, listen deeply, and navigate complexity together?

Relational leadership moves away from the burden of single-hero narratives toward shared, trust-based stewardship. Grounded in joint reflections and evaluation data from the 10-month Bopa DiPeo Fellowship with network leaders across Africa, this session explores how a mixed-methods evaluation can capture this evolution. We explore how the fellowship enabled participants to cultivate inner capacities (such as Autonomic Regulation or Feelings & Needs Expression) and applied capabilities (like Facilitation) to shift leadership practice.

We will dive into two core strands:

• From Heroic Execution to Embodied Stewardship: Examining empirical evidence of how inner development leads to strategic agency, enabling leaders to shift from operational firefighting to relational stewardship.
• Capturing Intangible Shifts via Mixed-Methods: Exploring a mixed-methods evaluation design that combines quantitative baseline/endline assessments with light-touch, participatory tools—such as Most Significant Change stories and Ripple Effect Mapping—to track trust and emergence without creating reporting burdens.

A 2-part Practice-Based Experiment in Relational, Regenerative, and Future-Oriented Evaluation (free of charge)

We are inviting a cohort of evaluators, internal MEL practitioners, and peer supporters into a collaborative, practice-based learning experiment on innovative evaluation methods. More specifically, we will explore Relational, Regenerative, and Future-Oriented evaluation. While each method is distinct, all have special relevance for relationships-focused and network practitioners.

This experiment offers a supportive space to learn about, test, and adapt concrete practices within real-world challenges. It combines two live online sessions with light-touch asynchronous accompaniment through a WhatsApp group, optional peer check-ins, and connection to our broader autumn ecosystem.

Who This Is For

We are bringing together a cohort of 20–50 participants across three roles:

• Active Evaluation Consultants: You are currently delivering an evaluation and want to test methods better suited to complexity, systems change, or relational work.
• Internal MEL & Program Staff: You hold evaluation, learning, reflection, or sense-making responsibilities within an organization, project, or portfolio.
• Curious Learners & Peer-Supporters: You may not have a live case to bring right now, but you want to learn these approaches and support others through listening, reflection, and peer coaching.

Session 1 (Live): Orientation, Approach Exploration & Case Pods (October 15, 4-5.30pm CET)
We will introduce three practical evaluation approaches (Relational, Regenerative, and Future-Oriented), host a dynamic Q&A, and break into peer pods to help match live challenges with relevant practices and methods to try out.

Between Sessions: Applied Experimentation & Ecosystem Touchpoints
Over 7 weeks, you will have space to test one or more of these practical methods in your work.

Session 2 (Live): Shared Learning & Harvesting (December 3, 4-5.30pm CET)
We will reconvene to reflect on what was tried, what worked, what was challenging, and how these practices landed in real-world contexts.

Shift from holding power to enabling power across your organisation

Power and responsibility show up in every team, with or without a title. We look honestly at the patterns that hold us back and practise sharing agency in healthier, more human ways.

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In this session you will:

• Identify how unseen power dynamics and processes prevent team members from stepping up
• Understand your personal agency and influence
• Discover how to step into your power in a way that empowers others