Linking Evaluators and Inter-Religious Peacebuilders

With funding from the GHR Foundation, the Alliance for Peacebuilding (AfP) and its partners CDA Collaborative Learning Projects (CDA) and Search for Common Ground (SFCG), in collaboration with a Global Advisory Council, led the Effective Inter-Religious Action in Peacebuilding Program (EIAP) project between 2015 and 2017.2 The project’s substantive learnings to date are captured in its primary publication: Faith Matters: A Guide for the Designing, Monitoring & Evaluation of Inter-Religious Action for Peace3 (hereafter referred to as the Faith Matters Guide). This chapter complements the Faith Matters Guide by exploring the underlying human learning processes that made the substantive learning possible. In bringing together representatives of two very different stakeholder audiences, evaluators and inter-religious actors, this project set in motion a mutually transformative exchange. Both groups are essential for progress, and yet previous communication and collaboration had been minimal. Therefore this chapter analyses what inter-religious peacebuilders and evaluators learned from each other during EIAP, unpacking the victories, tensions and challenges they encountered, to help illuminate the next phase of effort. The chapter also identifies real-world ways forward in developing evaluation approaches that both evaluators and inter-religious peacebuilders can embrace.4