RE: Beyond the final report: What does it take to communicate evaluation well?

Thank you to everyone who shared their experiences and insights over the last week. This has been an inspiring exchange with contributions from Eval4Earth members across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe.

As we move into our final week, we invite you to reflect on two new questions:

• How can communication be integrated throughout the evaluation process?
• How can we better measure whether communication efforts lead to actual use of evaluation findings?

Please continue sharing your experiences and examples in English, French, or Spanish.

Here are some takeaways from last week’s discussion

Collaboration with local partners strengthens relevance and reach

Contributors agreed that collaboration with local staff and partners is essential for communication that is both relevant and effective. Local partners bring knowledge of socio-cultural dynamics, language nuances, and political contexts, improving accuracy, credibility, and inclusiveness. Collaboration also builds capacity, ownership, and promotes two-way learning.

• Obul Ronald noted that local partners can help reach stakeholders with limited literacy or digital access.
• Said Hannan highlighted their role in developing context-specific, real-life examples and using local languages.
• Abramane Kone shared success with appointing community focal points to maintain continuous dialogue between evaluators and communities.
• Everline Frances observed that involving local partners transforms communication from one-way result sharing into an ongoing learning process and helps gather honest feedback.
• Julian Nyamupachitu described how involving young people infused creativity, energy, and innovation into her evalaution - making the findings more relatable and widely shared.

Several contributors suggested working with local partners to identify trusted community platforms - such as church gatherings, sports events, and youth groups - where people naturally engage, discuss, and reflect. These spaces foster inclusion and help translate evidence into collective action.

Emmanuel Abatta cautioned that external evaluators who do not collaborate with local experts risk overlooking stakeholder diversity. Its critical that we involve local partners from the planning stage.

Diagne Bassirou went further, emphasizing that communication with partners should be integral to the project itself.  When such processes are in place, evaluation teams should build on them.

Low- or No-Cost Communication Strategies

Participants also shared practical ideas for low-cost ways to share findings:

• Use email and social media to share messages in diverse formats—short videos, voice notes, or infographics—and even run quick polls to gather feedback.
• Leverage existing community events, platforms, and networks to stimulate dialogue without added costs.
  • Obul Ronald gave an example of a youth-led radio discussion that successfully promoted evaluation dialogue.
• Uzodinma Adirieje recommended virtual platforms as an affordable way to disseminate findings widely.