As the role of PARTICIPA as Executive Secretariat of the Non-Governmental Process comes to an end and a partner organization in Mali takes on the stewardship of the process, it seems an appropriate time to evaluate the work that we have done over the last two years.

In this context, we would like to identify both what we have accomplished as well as the remaining challenges involved in coordinating this process, so that we can collectively learn from our experience and suggest actions for future improvements.

We intend to involve as many CoD participants as possible, as we think our collective knowledge of the process, achievements and experience can be used to make the Non-Governmental Process sustainable. With this goal in mind, we believe that a participatory evaluation approach has the potential to contribute to our understanding of what we have and have not achieved, so we can develop a learning-based strategy for the future, in an inclusive and democratic way.

The objectives of this evaluation can be summarized as follows:

• To identify the strengths and weaknesses of the Non-Governmental strategy between Seoul 2002 and Santiago 2005;
• To assess the level of governmental awareness of the Non Governmental Process and to get feedback from governments regarding the usefulness of the proposals presented for the Santiago Declaration;
• To collect impressions from the participants on what has been already achieved, on what has not been achieved, and on what the priorities for the future should be.
• To collect suggestions, solutions and action strategies for improvement.
• To summarize proposals from non-governmental actors and government representatives on how to make the Non-Governmental Process sustainable between Santiago 2005 and Mali 2007.

The Executive Secretariat is the general facilitator of the evaluation, while six partners act as regional facilitators. They are:

Asia: Penelope Faulkner - Que Me: Action for Democracy in Vietnam
Raj Liberhan - India Habitat Centre and CITI Foundation
MENA: Yousry Moustafa - Human Rights Consultant (Egypt)
Sub-Saharan Africa: Djingarey Ibrahim Maiga - Femmes et Droits Humains (Mali)
Europe, Russia and NIS: Ilona Mihaies - Euroregional Center for Democracy (Romania)
North America: Felicity Amos - Freedom House (USA)

The evaluation consist of two main telephone consultations. Each facilitator will first interview ten non-governmental actors and three governmental representatives from each region. Then, each facilitator will elaborate a preliminary analysis containing a list of the main common issues and problems identified. This analysis will be the basis for an on-line consultation focused on identifying the solutions and actions that would improve the Non-Governmental Process.

The information gathered will be the input for a final evaluation report. An electronic version of it will be circulated and available on the Non-Governmental process web site by mid December 2005.

Laura Guardia, an external consultant at Participa, coordinates the consultation process at global level and will conduct the interviews in Latin America and the Caribbean.