The primary  theme  for  the  collaborative  event  ‘Building  bridges:  Use  of  Evaluation  for  decision making and policy influence’ is to bring state and non‐state actors together on the same platform to facilitate transformative changes in policy and practice for developing countries around the world as we move into post‐MDG world. Globally, countries are faced with enormous problems of poverty, inequity, gender violence and conflict, and the need for sustainable development has become more critical than ever. While historically, civil society and donors have largely driven building evaluation skills, state and non‐state actors are increasingly recognizing the need to evaluate government‐ supported national, state and local social sector programmes so that decisions for policy and practice are made on credible evidence.

In South Asia, we see this clearly. In India, evaluation policies are being instituted to undertake impartial and objective assessment of the various public programmes and improve the effectiveness

of public interventions. Sri Lanka incorporates evaluation of its public sector programmes particularly through the Ministry of Plan Implementation. Nepal and Bangladesh have also indicated their interest by mobilizing parliamentarians in evaluation. Pakistan and Bhutan have shown interest in communities of evaluators; Pakistan has instituted a Community of Evaluators and Bhutan is on its way to do so. This is an opportune time to bring civil society and state together to ensure that evaluations contribute to changes in policy and practice and ensure the voices of those affected by the evaluations are heard and respected.

Secondly, and as importantly, the use of innovative methods in evaluations have become increasingly important and are required to inform strategies and policies in traditional and non‐ traditional sectors to ensure that they are able to inform use in a credible and relevant manner. The importance of innovative methods is especially recognized in sectors such as education, health, gender violence, water and sanitation, climate change, advocacy and governance. Conclave 2015 will also focus on developing and show‐casing these methodologies.

Evaluation Conclave 2015 involving state and non‐state actors will place centre stage issues that have underpinned earlier Conclaves and that resonate with the needs of the region and the global community overall. Violence, volatility, conflict and globalization have influenced the context in which evaluations are taking place. These will be additional sub‐themes of the Conclave.

The key themes of the Conclave 2015 will be use, participation, equity, and gender.

a)     How can government, civil society, donors and evaluation  fora  foster  accountability, credibility and transparency? How can donors and implementing partners positively support local, national, or regional and international evaluation policy and practice?

b)    What is the current progress on building skills on evaluation in the government, civil institutions (including grassroots and indigenous civil institutions) and academia? What needs to be strengthened and how?

c)     What should the State’s role be in setting standards of evaluation? How can communities of practice help foster these? How can evaluations of state programmes be made more credible and transparent? How can state and non‐state actors support building skills on evaluation?

d)    What innovative evaluation methods make them credible, usable and relevant?

e)     What are illustrative evaluations in various sectors such as health systems strengthening, climate change, education, advocacy, water and sanitation, and governance that are relevant, innovative, credible, and promote use?

f)     How can grassroots organizations and citizen movements work with Governments for inclusive, equitable and credible evaluations?

g)    What lessons can the global community provide in multi‐stakeholder, complex evaluations?

What innovations in evaluation practice are available for learning and sharing?

h)    What are the factors that influence the use of evaluations by decision makers? What can be done to enhance use of evaluations?

i)      How can data be made available and shared for learning? What are the blocks  and opportunities available for data sharing? How do we ensure that data systems address gender and other types of inequity around caste, class and other socio‐economic divides?

j)      How equitable and gender‐sensitive are evaluations in the region? What is the role of feminist evaluation and how can it be integrated in policy review and development? How do

we increase accountability from governments and civil society for the most vulnerable groups and ensure evaluation is guided by values of equity and gender responsiveness?