ACE 20th Anniversary Conference:
Sessions

Workshops on Design Choices and Priorities

Christian organizations administer a wide range of poverty reduction projects and programs. Four important areas of intervention are:

• Microenterprise development
• Agriculture and rural development
• Education
• Health

As these organizations seek to improve existing programs, and as they set up new programs, they face many detailed questions about how to design and implement their interventions. What interest rate should be charged on micro-credit, and how often should program personnel hold meetings with borrowers? How should funds be allocated between rural road building and farmer training programs, and how can the local community be encouraged to participate in road building and maintenance and in the spread of information? Should scholarships be provided to the families of some primary school children, and how should eligibility for scholarships be determined? Should mother/child health programs be integrated with micro-credit?

Morning workshops are designed to stimulate thought and conversation about such design questions. Both academics and practitioners will prepare overview papers in each of the four areas listed above. Each speaker has been asked to prepare a paper that answers the following questions:

• What are the questions that development organizations must face as they attempt to set priorities and make specific design choices in the topic area?
• What do we know or suspect, and what is not yet known, about the best answers to these questions about priorities and design?
• Are there design questions of particular interest to Christian development organizations, and what do we know or suspect about the answers to these questions?

By bringing together practitioners' and academics' answers to these questions, the session aims to encourage both groups to share the fruit of their experience and training, to "think outside the box," and to identify ways in which academics and practitioners could collaborate to improve our understanding of these issues.

Impact Assessment

While experience and research have begun to answer some of the many design questions raised in the morning workshops, many questions - about what works best under what circumstances - remain unanswered. If these questions are to be answered reliably and soon, valid and practical methods of impact assessment must be developed and disseminated in the development community.

As with the design of the projects themselves, the need to design an approach to impact assessment raises many questions. When assessing the impact of a microfinance, rural development, education or health projects, what should the evaluators seek to measure? When and how should they measure the outcomes? How can they distinguish the differences in wellbeing between program beneficiaries and others that are truly the result of the program, and differences that would have existed even in the absence of the program?

In the first plenary session of the afternoon, panelists from development organizations and academia will kick off a discussion of impact assessment methods. Speakers will be asked to address the questions:

• What are the objectives of the impact assessment exercise, and how should they shape the methods used?

• What are the key choices that must be made when designing and implementing an approach to impact assessment for a project or program?

• What conceptual and practical concerns must we take into account when making these choices?

• What do we already know, and what do we yet need to learn, about the "right" choices regarding design and implementation of impact assessment methods?

• In what ways could collaboration between academics and practitioners aid in the improvement of impact assessment methods?

The session will allow participants to learn from others' experience and expertise, while also encouraging them to participate in the development of an impact assessment methods "wish list," which may serve as a guide to future collaboration, research and experimentation.

National Poverty Reduction Strategy Discussions:
New Opportunities for Christian Development Organizations?

In recent years many of the world's development actors have embraced the Comprehensive Development Framework put forward by the World Bank's President, James Wolfensohn, in 1999. This framework gives high priority to poverty reduction, and calls for countries to develop poverty reduction strategies based on comprehensive analysis of the structural problems contributing to poverty and on broad consultation, not only with bilateral and multilateral development institutions and the private sector, but also with "civil society" (including religious organizations). The hope is that the process of developing these strategies and articulating them in Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) will lead to more coordinated and effective poverty reduction efforts.

Enthusiasm for this comprehensive and consultative approach to development creates new opportunities for Christian development organizations, and raises many questions. What level of involvement should they seek in the development of Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers? What positions should they take, if at all, on broad policy questions outside the scope of their usual involvement? What role might they play in helping local groups find a voice in the consultations?

In the final plenary session, speakers with diverse expertise will be asked to suggest how to start thinking through several very big questions that are rendered especially pertinent by the advent of PRSP consultations.

• Under what conditions might greater "fiscal discipline" be called for, what forms might it take, and what problems and opportunities might it create for Christian development organizations?

• In what circumstances should a country welcome "globalization," what policies might be employed to enhance the benefits and prevent the costs of globalization from falling on the poor, and how might Christian development organizations engage in discussion of these issues?

• How might international Christian development organizations involve local organizations in their planning or implementation, and what role might the international organizations play in linking local organizations up to PRSP consultations?

The session will give participants the opportunity to step back from the details of project design and impact assessment, and view the bigger picture of poverty reduction strategy and the role of the Christian development organization.

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20th Anniversary Conference Papers