Evaluation experience
This part of John's career began with the completion of the work for the Tsunami Evaluation Coalition, and continued with challenging evaluations in difficult environments, or with particular requirements. In 2007 John became a trainer on ALNAP's "Introduction to Humanitarian Evaluation" course, and has developed a range of training materials for the course.
2010: Review of the Common Humanitarian Funds (CHF). Team member responsible for statistical analysis and for the country study for Northern Sudan.
2010: Review of the ODI-managed Dilemmas and Principles project. This project a piece of action research looking at how agencies could conduct humanitarian action in a principled way in Pakistan.
2010: Inter-Agency Real Time Evaluation (IA-RTE) of the response to the 2009 IDP crisis in Pakistan. Team leader on this joint evaluation, the seventh IA-RTE conducted for the IASC.
2010: Evaluation of WFP's General Food Distribution programme in Darfur. Team leader. This evaluation was one of those piloting the revised WFP Evaluation Quality Assurance System (EQAS) model.
2009: Joint donor evaluation of Civil Protection and Peace Building in Southern Sudan. Team member with special responsibility for the Phase One Portfolio Analysis.
2009: Review of Irish Aid Rapid Response Initiative (RRI) to date to provide Irish Aid with an assessment to guide future decisions on the RRI.
2009: Review of the work of the Global Wash Cluster, in particular to identify lessons and to improve the future work of the cluster.
2009: Evaluation of the Cordaid's Disaster Risk Reduction programme via Channel Research with fieldwork in Ethiopia, Malawi, Indonesia, and Bangladesh.
2009: Collecting data in Myanmar for the 2009 Humanitarian Response Index for DARA.
2009: Collecting data in China for the 2009 Humanitarian Response Index for DARA.
2009: Developing a real-time evaluation approach for WFP.
2009: Responsible for the Sudan Country study for the NGO Consortium project trying to improve NGO engagement with the Humanitarian Reform process. Field-work in Sudan.
2008: Team leader for Phase One of Sida's follow-up study into the linkages between relief, rehabiitation and development following the 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami. Responsible for the extensive documentary study. Core team member for Phase Two, with responsiblity for the Disaster Risk Reduction component. Document Study: A ripple in development? Document review: Annotated bibliography prepared for the joint follow-up evaluation of the links between relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD) in responses to the Indian Ocean tsunami Sida: Stockholm. ISBN: 9789158640801. (John Cosgrave with data input from other members of the evaluation team). Main Report: A ripple in development? Long term perspectives on the response to the Indian Ocean tsunami 2004: A joint follow-up evaluation of the links between relief, rehabilitation and development (LRRD). Sida: Stockholm. ISBN: 9789158640863. Emery Brusset with the evaluation team including John Cosgrave.
2008: Rewriting the ALNAP real-time evaluation guide. Report: Real-time evaluations of humanitarian action: An ALNAP Guide: Pilot version.ALNAP, London, (completely rewritten from an earlier draft by Tony Beck and Ben Ramalingam).
2008: Presenting at the Davos IDRC side conference on "Measuring Mitigation: Monitoring and Evaluation", organised by the ProventionConsortium, the World Bank, and the Council of Europe Development Bank (CEB).
2008: Team Leader for evaluation of the EC funded component of the UNDP-Government of India Disaster Risk Reduction programme via Channel Research.