Happy Easter and best wishes to all celebrating various holy-days. Members can look forward to several M&E related activities over the next few months. We have had to ‘postpone’ the seminars focusing on the Public Services Commission’s Report on their audit of M&E in the country. Instead a SAMEA member will be contracted to analyse and interrogate several government publications and comment on “The Institutionalisation of M&E in South Africa.” Presentations of findings are scheduled for May 2008 in Gauteng, Cape Town, Eastern Cape and, if we can identify willing SAMEA members to facilitate the seminar, then possibly in KZN too. A call for expression of interest will be posted on SAMEATalk and on the website. Specific dates and venues will follow shortly.
The Accreditation Committee is reviving its efforts following on from its meeting with SAQA last year. Although not all members can attend the physical meeting set during April, due to the location of the meeting, members are welcome to make their contributions on-line. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to Christel Jacob at christel@cjconsulting.co.za.
Others may participate through conference calling. Those interested will need to send their details and contact numbers to Nomvuzo Mamabolo at info@samea.org.za no later than the 1st of April 2008.
The Annual General Meeting (AGM) is upon us and will happen on 12 June 2008. We have had to fix this date because of the availability of Howard White, the first Director of the Initiative for Impact Evaluation [3ie] of the Center for Global Development. A similar workshop on Impact Evaluation is happening in Kuala Lumpur (Malaysian Conference) in April this year. The Seminar is set to happen in Johannesburg/ Pretoria (Midrand area) and members from other centres, Cape Town, Eastern Cape, KZN are urged to attend this exciting event. The seminar will be followed by a ‘business meeting and cocktails.
Members should also note that Prof. Sarah Howie has resigned as a SAMEA Board member, due to work commitments. Three new Board members must be nominated and elected at the AGM. More information about the nomination process will be communicated to all members in due course.
Preparation for the second SAMEA Conference [June 2009] is underway. The conference will be held outside of Gauteng to ensure that SAMEA Members across the country are given the opportunity to participate in greater numbers. We hope to have several international experts in attendance and will again offer opportunity for training before the conference.
SAMEA, in partnership with AfrEA is making headway with the establishment of an M&E Journal. Several options are being explored and a full report will be available at the AGM where we hope to expand the team that will take it into the next phase.
Members will once again be canvassed to express their needs in terms of training that SAMEA can set up. This is necessary because we have a number of new members and several requests are appearing on SAMETalk. We hope to meet the needs via regional events and/or a central training intervention later this year.
Those SAMEA members who are not registered on our listserv SAMEATalk, we would like to invite you to view the instructions on how to join on the SAMEAtalk liserve page or to contact Nomvuzo at info@samea.org.za to assist you in subscribing to this valuable platform for M&E users and practitioners.