UTILIZING CLUSTER EVALUATION APPROACH TO MEASURE THE COLLECTIVE IMPACT OF MULTIPLE IDENTICAL PROJECTS WITH MINIMUM RESOURCES

Evaluation is an emerging approach of study with concomitant growth of the development sector to respond to crises and fill development gaps. The scope of the evaluation is to measure accountability and provide evidence-based suggestions to improve the results of operations. Evaluation studies are technical, time-consuming, and require financial resources. Hence the goal of the development sector is to cover vulnerabilities. Therefore, the review exercises have a secondary position due to limited funds versus needs. The situation of having limited resources could not cause compromising evaluation practice. Therefore, the cluster evaluation approach may support in this regard. The cluster evaluation approach provides an opportunity to study a group of projects together to see collective impact. The cluster evaluation approach is better when used to study identical operations or results in a location. However, defining identical operations, developing the collective theory of change, and utilizing the cluster evaluation approach are contextual. This paper is written based on practical experience of utilizing a cluster evaluation approach to conduct an emergency response evaluation in Sri Lanka.