Local Evaluation and Evidence Support Effort

The purpose of the USAID Local Evaluation and Evidence Support (LEES) Effort is to strengthen technical and organizational capacity of local research and evaluation organizations, help them market their services to potential clients, and support them as they begin to conduct evaluations and learning activities. The LEES approach rests on five guiding principles: 1. Conducting thorough market research. Through local consultations, LINC will identify and vet relevant evidence generating organizations across the selected countries. 2. Promoting localization. LINC will leverage its localization experience to support organizational capacity assessment, strengthening, and advocacy through our customized tools. 3. Understanding the System. LINC will use systems approaches to understand the ecosystem in which our partners work and create local demand to sustain the evaluation capacity we will help develop. 4. Building sustainable networks and communities of practice. LEES will build collaborative structures to help local organizations strengthen their networks and market their services. 5. Supporting local research and evaluation organizations. LEES will deliver customized capacity-strengthening for local research and evaluation partners across technical sectors. LEES is a four-year, $5.1 million USAID Bureau of Planning, Learning, and Resource Management (USAID/PLR) activity under the Evaluation, Monitoring, and Learning Services (EVAL ME II) IDIQ. The first two years of the project will focus on four to six countries in Africa, while the last two years will have a global focus. Zambia and Ghana are the first countries receiving LEES support. LEES is implemented by LINC and partners The Cloudburst Group, DevLab@Penn, and Kenyan research organization Infotrak. This activity is made possible by the support of the American People through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).