This briefing paper explores how local ownership can be extended to evaluation processes, not just programme design or delivery.
Carlisle Levine
Carlisle J. Levine, Ph.D., President and CEO of BLE Solutions, is an advocacy, rights, peacebuilding, and capacity building evaluator. She works globally, as well as nationally and locally in the United States.
Carlisle co-leads the Strengthening Evaluation Contracting Partnerships Initiative with Hippolyt Pul. Together, they have authored an open letter to funders (full letter, executive brief) and an article in The Foundation Review. Additionally, Carlisle has co-authored a peer-reviewed chapter and a brief on using contribution analysis to assess advocacy's impact, as well as a chapter on democratizing evaluation practice in the book Democratic Evaluation and Democracy: Exploring the Reality.
She is a skilled facilitator and trainer with expertise in strengthening evaluation capacity, leading complex evaluations, and fostering collaborative learning processes within dispersed and diverse teams. Her work has contributed to more effective practices for private and public foundations, international non-governmental organizations, and governmental and quasi-governmental organizations.
Prior to launching BLE Solutions, Carlisle worked for CARE USA, Catholic Relief Service, the US Agency for International Development, and the Inter-American Foundation and partnered with InterAction. She has worked in the United States, Latin America, Central and West Africa, and Europe and is fluent in English and Spanish. Carlisle earned her master’s degree and doctoral degree from The Fletcher School at Tufts University and her bachelor’s degree from Yale College.
Carlisle's expertise includes:
- Outcome harvesting
- Contribution analysis
- Locally-owned evaluation
- Democratic evaluation
Content this member has contributed or contributed to
Resource
- This series of webinars was first presented at the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, which focused on "connecting, learning, and building a shared understanding of the evaluation and participatory practices that make causal pathways more visible"
- This session of the Causal Pathways Symposium 2023, by Carlisle Levine and Hippolyt Pul, introduces outcome harvesting, a method to collect evidence of what has changed and whether and how an intervention has contributed to these changes.
- The paper provides a background about contribution analysis and a summary of the steps involved in carrying out the method.
- This brief provides a background on contribution analysis and its applications, as well as walking through five case studies in which the authors have used contribution analysis to assess whether and how advocacy efforts
Approach
- Contribution analysis is an evaluation approach that provides a systematic way of understanding an intervention's contribution to observed outcomes or impacts.