VOPE Leadership Programme and VOPE Boot Camp

VOPE Leadership Programme grows out of multiannual consultations with the Regional VOPEs both in the Board of Trustees and at many face-to-face evaluation conferences where we had a chance to organise peer-to-peer exchanges. Seeing the regional organisations as relevant knots in our network, we wanted to structure a platform on which their best practises could be streamed to other VOPEs. For that purpose, the long standing grants of the IOCE P2P and Innovation Challenge, seemed not enough anymore.

At the same time, we observed in recent years the birth of new ideas like the Global Evaluation Initiative, swifting dynamism of some organisations like UNFPA or innovative activism of some VOPEs like APEA, AfrEA, EES or ReLAC. We realised that all of them unifies the same idea – that VOPEs are not outdated, small communities networks, but indeed have the potential of being at the forefront of the transformations in evaluation.

They have the possibility to be the most agile, continuously growing and undaunted actors in the national and regional evaluation systems. For many, the sporadic financial support from the IOCE is not enough, and the focus needs to be put on the capabilities their leaders hold.

IOCE too perceives VOPEs as visionary leaders of the evaluation community – eager to find and promote ethical, professional and necessary responses to the challenges of our era. That is why we kick off the first, foundational idea within the Programme – the Boot Camp – thanks to the support of our partners – GEI, UNFPA and the Finnish Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We hope the strengthened leaders of the 30 VOPEs who will participate in the first edition of the Boot Camp will not only bring the benefits to their own VOPEs (which will be the primary outcome of the initiative), but will also inspire the next building blocks of the VOPE Leadership Programme’s platform to create even more connections, exchanges, communication bridges and common solutions for the evaluation community.