Good morning colleagues, it is good to see many of you who I have seen right from 2009.
My comments are going to be quite short. I echo the excellent introductory remarks by Oscar and Alison and Andrea, these are totally relevant and will help to shape this very important conference. Resilient evaluation systems for sustainable development Proceedings from the 2022 National Evaluation Capacities Conference 15
Ladies and gentlemen, it gives me great pleasure to welcome you to Italy, which is the home of the United Nations World Food Programme and this year’s National Evaluation Capacities conference.
The World Food Programme is the world’s largest humanitarian organization fighting hunger; and at the moment it’s actively involved in feeding 130 million of the most poor and vulnerable in in the world in the face of the conflicts and challenges that we’ve been discussing.
Good morning, everyone, it is a genuine pleasure to see you all here.
This is a fantastic opportunity to come together after a period of us being all apart and working remotely and only seeing each other through that small aperture on the screen.
I suspect before COVID-19, we would have taken events like this very much for granted, but I suspect none of us is doing that today and we’re all incredibly privileged to be here.
Capacity-development is at the heart of development. Today we are gathered here to share our experiences about developing evaluation capacity. Not just any capacities, but the capacities to conduct, to commission and to use evaluations.