“Minga”. This is a word Dennis Mairena Arauz uses to describe coming together and sharing knowledge. The word has its origins in the Amazon Basin he explains.
Dennis, who works with the Centre for Autonomy and Development of Indigenous Peoples (CADPI) in Nicaragua, says it’s the spirit of “minga” that welcomed him to Washington DC. This is where more than 80 practitioners, policymakers, and climate advocates, from diverse sectors, met in October for the Transformational Change Learning Partnership’s (TCLP) annual workshop. The collaborative nature of the TCLP, he says, means he can draw on the insights, knowledge, and experiences that supports his work with indigenous communities.
When the Climate Investment Funds (CIF) launched the TCLP in 2017 it anchored the partnership in cooperation and collaboration. Since then, the group has grown and is working jointly to define and refine some of the concepts, methods and metrics associated with transformational change in climate action. This year’s workshop, with virtual participants included, explored the partnership’s collective work on transforming evaluations in the climate sector and transformational climate finance.
Candice Morkel is Director for the Centre for Learning on Evaluation and Results, Anglophone Africa (CLEAR-AA). Why transformative evaluation? Her answer is that if evaluations and evaluative approaches are to be effective, they should align to, and support, wider global objectives such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), for example.
The workshop was an opportunity to gather valuable information from its partners and to collectively explore key principles for making guidance accessible, useful, and impactful. For example, transformational climate finance was a hot topic at this year’s meeting because many participants, in their own country contexts, see why climate investments must bring change that is less incremental and more fundamental. Ntare Bright is Head of Business Development at the Rwanda Green Fund, FONERWA. He says the TCLP’s frameworks have been invaluable in his work, especially in how he uses the TCLP’s transformational change dimensions.
The TCLP is also exploring how various sectors can come together to expand sources of finance. From the public and private sectors to philanthropies, many sectors can bring their diverse expertise to climate investments. Audrey-Cynthia Yamadjako is Coordinator of the African Green Finance Facility Initiative, a groundbreaking program at the African Development Bank (AfDB). Her work is new and innovative, and she says, having a community to reach out to within the TCLP greatly enhanced her work on green banks.
The TCLP is currently working on a series of guidelines that applies the transformational change lens to evaluative work in climate finance and is examining different stages of a program or project lifecycle. The TCLP will continue to bring together diverse stakeholders to develop the principles and practices required to achieve transformational change.
Should you want to join the TCLP and build this community of practice Contact: ciftclp@worldbank.org