The document outlines UNU-IAS's capacity development support for evaluation to strengthen reporting among Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs). It lists members of the RCE Evaluation Working Group from 2012-2014 and SADC RCEs that participated in an evaluation pilot project. The pilot project produced a multistakeholder evaluation toolkit, publications on enhancing M&E practices in RCEs, and evaluation reports, case studies and capacity development strategies for each participating RCE.

1. UNU-IAS capacity development support for
evaluation to strengthen RCE reporting
Members of the RCE Evaluation Working Group
2012-2014
• UNU-IAS: Zinaida Fadeeva, Abel Atiti
• RCE KwaZulu Natal: Jim Tailor, Tich Pesanayi
• RCE Western Sydney: Geoff Scott
• RCE Graz: Clemens Mader
• RCE European Advisor: Jos Hermans
SADC RCEs approached to participate in an
evaluation pilot project to feed into Nagoya
• RCE Lusaka, Zambia (T)
• RCE Zomba, Malawi (D)
• RCE Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (D)
• RCE Mutari, Zimbabwe (T)
• RCE Harare, Zimbabwe (T)
• RCE Swaziland (I)
• RCE Lesotho (I)
• RCE Khomas-Erongo, Nambia (I)
• RCE Makana, South Africa (R)
• RCE KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (J)
Pilot project outputs:
1. Multistakeholder evaluation tool kit
2. O’Donoghue, R. B. and Fadeeva, Z. (2014). “Enhancing Monitoring and Evaluation Practices in
RCEs” In Building a Resilient Future through Multistakeholder Learning and Action: Ten Years of
Regional Centres of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development. Dirksen, A. (Ed). UNU-
IAS, Tokyo, Japan. Pg. 161-178.
3. O’Donoghue, R.B. (2015). Evaluation and Education for Sustainable Development (ESD):
Navigating a shifting landscape in Regional Centres of Expertise (RCEs). In Rieckmann (2015) ESD
Research in Higher Education Handbook. Routledge Handbooks.

2. RCE: People learning-to-change and
produce freedoms together
“In order to set our institutions firmly on the path of
future knowledges, we need to re-invent a classroom
without walls in which we are all co-learners; a university
that is capable of convening various publics in new forms
of assemblies that become points of convergence of and
platforms for the redistribution of different kinds of
knowledges”.
Achille Mbembe 2015 (Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive, public lecture, WISER, University
of the Witwatersrand)

3. • Baseline assessment around core RCE elements (R.1)
Constitutive
Evaluation
• Stakeholder accounts of RCE processes and projects (R.2-5)
Appreciative
Evaluation
• Explore ways to strengthen engagement / goals (R.2-5)
Developmental
Evaluation
• Assessment of value creation through RCE activities (R.6)
Value Creation
Assessment
• Review of RCE tool kit & evaluation capacity development
Meta
Evaluation
An overview of the RCE Evaluation Toolkit Pilot Studies
RCE Outputs: Evaluation reports, photo case study & capacity development strategy per RCE.

4. Working with the SDGs and RCE evaluation tools for scaling
through (course-supported) collaborative change projects
New knowledges and systems
thinking:
• Earth systems sciences
• Social Ecological Systems
thinking
• Socio-economic systems
thinking (Society)
Local Issue-centred actions:
• Assess local concerns
• Clarify global concerns
• Identify change practices to
resolve matters of concern
• Explore ‘third-space’ cultural-
historical innovations
Whole institution approaches
with situated learning actions through:
• Deliberative civic engagement
• Co-engaged action and change practices
• Citizen science to monitor issues and change

5. Review 1: RCE Coordination & networking
The RCE Journey:
A review of how the RCE was constituted and how it is functioning to
enable learning-led change.
• How did the RCE evolve?
• How has membership changed?
• What ESD initiatives have been undertaken?
• How can coordination and networking be
strengthened?
• What SDGs are being positively addressed locally?

6. Framing images of SDGs
for People, Planet and
Prosperity

7. The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
1. End poverty in all its forms everywhere
2. End hunger, achieve food security and improved nutrition, and promote sustainable agriculture
3. Ensure healthy lives and promote wellbeing for all at all ages
4. Ensure, inclusive and equitable quality education and promote life-ling learning opportunities for
all
5. Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
6. Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all
7. Ensure access to affordable, reliable, sustainable and modern energy for all
8. Promote sustained, inclusive and sustainable economic growth, full and productive employment
and decent work for all.
9. Build resilient infrastructure, promote inclusive and sustainable industrialisation and foster
innovation .
10. Reduce inequality within and amongst countries (equity).
11. Make cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
12. Ensure sustainable production and consumption patterns.
13. Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts.
14. Conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable
development.
15. Protect, restore and promote sustainable use of terrestrial ecosystems. Sustainably manage
forests, combat desertification and halt and reverse land degradation and halt biodiversity loss.
16. Promote peaceful and inclusive societies for sustainable development, provide access to justice
for all and build effective, accountable and inclusive institutions at all levels.
17. Strengthen the means of implementation and revitalise the global partnerships for sustainable
development.
169 specified targets
(Loew and Rippin (Eds) (2015) The 2030 Agenda for SD. Bonn: DIE)

8. Review 2: RCE activities & their positive effects
• How have the activities of the RCEs evolved?
• What have been the best RCE activities and why?
• Give examples of how successful collaboration/decision
making is producing the effects that are being achieved?
• How can useful activities be up-scaled and mainstreamed?
• How could better work be achieved?
– In the RCE? (inward looking)
– In the region? (collaboration and outward looking)

9. Review 3: Transformation & Sustainability
• What flagship initiatives reflect the successes of the RCE?
• What scale of knowledge and practice transformation is
evident?
– Summarise what has happened in key success areas over a
period 12, 24, 36 months etc.
– What has changed and how is the change evident?
• What resources and governance have enabled success?
• What, besides funding, can be done to overcome barriers and
sustain the positive activities of the RCE?

10. Review 4: Strategic areas & networked learning
• What strategic focus areas, partnerships, activities have been
key to the successes of the RCE?
• What could be done to improve learning and effectiveness
(e.g. partnerships, resourcing and scale)?
• How can existing linkages, processes and programs be
strengthened?
• What new strategic links and capacity development could be
explored?

11. Review 5: RCE Global Service Centre
• What have been the benefits of being acknowledged as an
RCE?
• How are you interacting with the RCE Service Centre?
• How are you working with other RCEs and what are some of
the activities, successes and challenges?
• How has your RCE participated in regional and global RCE
conferences and undertaken follow up activities?
• How could regional and global RCE activities be improved to
strengthen your RCE work?

12. Review 6: Document records and overall value creation
• Assess documents available for review: RCE application,
articles in the RCE bulletin, local RCE publications, current
project documents, the evaluation record and audio visual
materials etc.
• What value creation does the appreciative evidence reflect?
– What were the most meaningful RCE activities discussed?
– What of potential value are the RCE activity producing?
– What difference has this made that would not happen otherwise
– What difference has it made to the ability of the RCE to produce what
matters through its ESD projects?
– What has produced new understandings of what produces value in
RCE work?

13. The SDGs should be read within the self-determination
principle of cultural / individual dignity and a right to
thrive as diverse human cultures
Here ESD will need to be framed to include:
• Healing of the physical, spiritual, psychological and social wellbeing of
situated, intergenerational collectives.
• Decolonising actions with tools and strategies for countering sustained
processes of current modernist and earlier colonial dominance and
exclusion.
• Mobilisation of knowledge practices on local matters of concern and
sustainability practices for the common good.
• Transformation through civic action at the collective level of socio-
economic and ecological wellbeing.
(Adapted Smith, 1999 p117)
Note: These qualifying additions reframe many of the SDGs as reflexive
processes of co-engaged socio-cultural re-orientation following an
expansive period of colonial and modernist exclusion in Afrca.

14. Inclusive, quality education for all (G:4)
Global Partnerships for SD (G:17) - GAP priorities
We have a shared
responsibility in RCEs to
engage matters of concern:
No poverty (G:1)
No hunger (G:2)
Good Health &
wellbeing (G:3)
living together in diverse socio-cultural contexts
trying to
be more
ethical
and fair
using
life-giving
resources
with greater
care
whilst striving towards a sustainable future in more peaceful, just and safe conditions.
Decent work and
Economic growth (G: 8-9)
Sustainable cities (G: 11)
Responsible production &
consumption (G:12)
NEXUS of
SUSTAINABILITY in
an RCE CONTEXT
Clean Water &
Energy (G:6&7)
Climate action,
Resilient life
below water
and on land.
(G:13-15)
Gender equality
(G:5)
Reduce inequity
(G10)
Peace & justice
(G:16)

15. Poverty
(G1)
Hunger
(G2)
Health and
Wellbeing
(G3)
Gender
(G:5)
Inequality
(G:10)
Peace &
Justice
(G:16)
Water
(G6)
Energy
(G7)
Climate
(G13)
Life in
Water
(G14)
Life on
Land
(G15)
Sustainable
Cities
(G11)
Responsible
Production &
Consumption
(G12)
Decent
Work
(G:8)
Economic
Growth
(G:9)
Inclusive, quality EDUCATION for all (G:4) within Global PARTNERSHIPS for SD (G:17)
Description of context:
Concerns driving ethical purpose:
Summary of current knowledge:
Learning-led change needed:
Handout for mapping the SDG nexus of concerns in an
education context of social-ecological change

16. Imagining….... Future Sustainability?
A SADC / SWEDESD adaptive integration of ‘the enclosed earth garden,’ ‘planetary boundaries’ and ‘Natural Step (John Holmberg).’
What pathways to
future sustainability
are possible?
Principles for future sustainability:
• How are people’s dignity and
capacities to meet basic needs
being undermined?
• How have nature and natural
systems been degrading?
• How are concentrations of
substances extracted from the
earth’s crust accumulating?
• What man-made substances
are accumulating.
What future states of dignity,
equity, care and sustainable ways
of doing things can we imagine as
being possible?

17. Small Scale
Food Garden
Makana RCE Short Course
on Changing Practice
Waste
• Refuse, reduce and re-use waste
better
Water
• Capture, store and clean water
better
Gardening
• Grow vegetables at low cost.
Biodiversity
• Plant trees that provide food and
seasonal benefits.
Health and Energy
• Make health giving broth, bread,
jam and greens at low cost.