International Women’s Day 2026: FIME Awardees Develop 6 Innovative Tools for Gender-Transformative Evaluation

In celebration of International Women’s Day, the Global Evaluation Initiative (GEI) proudly presents the innovative tools developed by the six recipients of the Feminist Innovation in Monitoring and Evaluation (FIME) Small Awards. The awardees created these resources as part of projects funded through FIME, an initiative led by GEI, together with EvalGender+, and funded by Global Affairs Canada. 

The FIME awardees were selected through a competitive application process launched in January 2025. Out of 283 submissions from around the world, an expert committee selected the most innovative project proposals for gender-transformative monitoring and evaluation (M&E). 

The six winning initiatives span diverse geographic and thematic contexts, from Maasai communities in Tanzania and civic spaces in Kyrgyzstan to institutional gender policies in Ecuador, evaluator training in the Asia-Pacific, and feminist evaluation practice across crisis settings and global development programs. 

Each awardee developed a practical, context-specific tool grounded in feminist principles. Together, their work aims to advance gender equality and social justice in evaluation practice while contributing to broader conversations on power, participation, decolonization, and justice.
 

Six Innovative Tools for Advancing Gender Equality and Social Justice in M&E

• Feminist Evaluation Toolkit for Crisis Contexts by Rai Sengupta (India)  

The Feminist Evaluation Toolkit for Crisis Contexts provides practical methods, checklists, and adaptable templates to help evaluators apply feminist approaches in humanitarian settings. It draws on a synthesis of 17 evaluations conducted across diverse crisis contexts including natural disasters, displacement, and public health emergencies. The toolkit is especially useful for evaluators, humanitarian practitioners, and organizations working in emergency response and crisis recovery. 

• Feminist Participatory M&E Toolkit for Relocation Contexts by Neema Nnko (Tanzania) 

Inspired by the lived experiences of Maasai women relocated from Ngorongoro to Handeni in Tanzania, this toolkit brings feminist participatory approaches into the evaluation of relocation programs. It seeks to ensure that relocation policies and programs respond to the realities and needs of women. This resource is intended for evaluators, governments, researchers, policymakers, and civil society organizations, particularly those supporting indigenous women. 

• Phoenix Metric – Gender Social Return on Investment (G-SROI) Framework by Taieba Hosne (Bangladesh) 

The G-SROI Framework introduces a new way to measure social impact that centers women’s lived experiences and identifies both the positive and negative effects of programs. The framework provides tools for capturing complex outcomes such as agency, well-being, and changes in care responsibilities to ensure that programs are evaluated based on the real changes they create in people’s lives. This resource is especially relevant for sectors like development, impact investing, gender equality programs, climate finance, and social policy. 

• Adaptive Toolkit for Living Projects by Aidai Algozhoeva and Jazgul Ibraimova (Kyrgyzstan) 

The Adaptive Toolkit for Living Projects reimagines evaluation as a human-centered and collaborative process rather than a rigid reporting exercise. Drawing on feminist and decolonial perspectives, the toolkit helps teams explore how social projects evolve over time and how communities experience change, encouraging reflection, learning, and collective decision-making. It shifts evaluation away from deficit-based thinking toward recognizing local strengths and community knowledge. This resource would benefit program teams, evaluators, civil society organizations, and community activists working in social development, civic engagement, and grassroots initiatives. 

• Tools to Evaluate and Strengthen Gender Policies from a Feminist Perspective by Lisette Zambrano (Ecuador) 

In contexts where strong commitments to gender equality exist but clear methods for measuring impact are lacking, this toolkit offers training materials, methodological guides, and tools for developing gender-sensitive indicators. It is designed to help institutions strengthen M&E processes and make more evidence-based decisions that advance meaningful change for women and marginalized groups. The toolkit is ideal for technical teams, public institutions, and organizations responsible for designing, implementing, or evaluating gender equality policies and programs. 

• Holistic Transformative Evaluator Framework by Mahesh Krishnan Ramesh (India) 

This project focuses on improving evaluator training in the Asia-Pacific region by addressing gaps in current programs, particularly the lack of gender-transformative and culturally responsive approaches. It proposes a Holistic Transformative Evaluator Framework that integrates technical expertise with relational, intuitive, and contextual competencies to help evaluators navigate complex, culturally diverse systems. The framework is designed for evaluation training institutions, universities, professional networks, and development organizations seeking to strengthen evaluator capacity and gender-responsive practices across the Asia-Pacific.
 

FIME Tools Presented in Webinar

On March 31, GEI hosted a webinar introducing the new FIME tools. The six FIME awardees presented the final results of their respective projects and shared insights into the research behind the innovations they developed. Invited speakers also included Douglas Glandon, Acting Program Manager of GEI; Sonal Zaveri, Co-Chair of EvalGender+; and Mathieu Audet, Director of Evaluation at Global Affairs Canada. The session was moderated by FIME Coordinator Claudia Olavarría.

The FIME resources are now available on BetterEvaluation, GEI's knowledge platform.