This was a 10 day workshop, from 2-10 May, 2016 with participants from all over the world. Participants were from Ethiopia, India, Kenya, South Africa and Ghana. The facilitators came from Mexico and the U.S.

The Dean, School of Public Health, welcomed everyone on behalf of the Vice Chancellor of the University of Ghana. He talked on the collaboration the University has with Measure Evaluation. He emphasized on the point that there needs to be synergy in research in order to avoid duplication, wastage and leakage and that the fact that resources need to be pulled together. Due to the duplication of efforts the impact of research is not being felt. There is now implementation research and implementation science which is different from what existed before. The big step is however in impact evaluation. He said it is extremely important to train different people from different countries else we keep on doing what we are doing the same way over and over again without results. Systems are carefully designed to get better results. Hence the need to evaluate our systems if they are not working well.

The Chairman of GEMNet Health, Africa, Prof. Any Beke, went down memory lane where he told participants the origin of GEMNet when it was formed in Pretoria 4 years ago. Its mission is to empower member institutions to get quality monitoring and evaluation knowledge in research and intervention. It launches them into new dimensions. Its vision is to provide health world population through evidence based decision making, credible evidence. GEMNet has had webinars and other trainings already but this workshop helps fulfill our vision he said. This workshop he said “puts us on a high standard in evaluation to make a big difference wherever are”. He expressed his appreciation to University of Ghana for hosting the workshop. He also acknowledged the people who were not currently present at the workshop as well as the GEMNet Secretariat who work behind the scene to make GEMNet active. He ended by saying “If you want to go far you need to work together and it will manifest in the people we are trying to affect.

Dr. Gustavo spoke on behalf of Measure Evaluation and said they were happy to be Ghana and that this visit to Ghana is an important one because of this workshop. It’s a special one because it is faculty who are being trained who would then have the opportunity to use the experience to create their own courses of impact evaluation once they go back to their various institutions. Through this workshop Measure Evaluation is adding its own contribution to make this possible.

The “International Workshop on Impact Evaluation of Population, Health and Nutrition Programs,” will take place July 18 – 19, 2016 in Accra, Ghana.