6 Young Evaluators Selected for Feminist Innovation in Monitoring and Evaluation Award

With support from the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI), EvalGender+, and Global Affairs Canada, six young professionals were selected as recipients of the Feminist Innovation in Monitoring and Evaluation (FIME) Award in early 2025. Their projects aim to advance gender equality and drive social transformation through innovative evaluation approaches. 

Out of 283 submissions from around the world, an expert committee selected the most promising proposals—projects that not only push methodological boundaries but also challenge how evaluation engages with systemic inequities. The six winning initiatives represent a diverse range of geographic and thematic areas, from the Maasai communities of Tanzania and civic spaces in Kyrgyzstan to institutional gender policies in Ecuador, the evaluation training landscape in the Asia-Pacific region, and feminist evaluation practice across multiple regions. 

Each young evaluator is developing a practical, context-specific solution grounded in feminist principles. Their work contributes to broader conversations in the evaluation field—on power, participation, decolonization, and justice. These projects are not isolated innovations, but form part of a growing and much needed global movement to rethink evaluation and its role in driving transformational change. 

The six winning projects were featured in a special session during Glocal Evaluation Week 2025—the world’s largest knowledge-sharing event on evaluation—hosted annually by GEI. Meet the awardees and their projects: 

• Rai Sengupta (India) presented “From Insights to Action: Advancing Feminist Evaluation Innovations in Crisis Contexts.” 
• Neema Nnko (Tanzania) shared “Empowering Maasai Women through Participatory M&E: Feminist Insights from Ngorongoro to Handeni Relocation.” 
• Taieba Hosne (Bangladesh) introduced her project focused on developing the G-SROI (Gender-sensitive Social Return on Investment) framework. 
• Aidai Algozhoeva (Kyrgyzstan) presented a project aimed at creating an adaptive toolkit for feminist and decolonial evaluation practices for Kyrgyzstan. 
• Lisette Zambrano (Ecuador) shared her initiative to develop practical tools for evaluating and strengthening gender policies through feminist and intersectional lenses. 
• Mahesh Krishnan Ramesh (India) is leading a project to enhance evaluator capacities by addressing technical and gender-responsive training needs across the Asia-Pacific region. 

Following the presentations, evaluation experts Dr. Florence Etta and Dr. Donna Podems commended the awardees for their contributions and encouraged them to share their learnings with a broader audience. 

As Dugan Fraser, GEI Program Manager, stated at the opening of the event, “These promising young evaluators have much to share, and their contributions are bound to inspire all of us.” 

The young evaluators will continue to develop and refine their projects throughout 2025, and final outputs and findings will be shared later in the year. 

To learn more about these initiatives and the evaluators behind them, you can watch the recording of the event and follow GEI for updates on their progress.