Karol Balfe, Head of Programme Development, Christian Aid Ireland

Christian Aid Ireland contracted Antonella Mancini to evaluate a five year, multi-country human rights, governance and peace building programme covering the period 2012 to 2016. Antonella was an excellent evaluator, she provided clear and strategic thinking to the process and report. The evaluation was complex, involving analysis of impact, relevance, effectiveness and capturing learning and identifying recommendations for change. Our partners work on difficult and challenging advocacy and policy issues. Antonella was one of the lead evaluators and was responsible for coordinating seven individual country evaluations and collating them into one overall programme evaluation. The process and report were extremely useful to us as an organisation and our country programmes and both were of extremely high quality. It was important for us to work with an evaluator like Antonella who understood advocacy and the centrality of addressing power dynamics in our programming. Following this, Christian Aid Ireland contracted Antonella to support us to develop a strategic plan for our international programme work. Antonella’s excellent facilitation skills were of huge benefit to the process and her clear strategic thinking helps us crystallise areas of support but also challenged us to identify blind spots.