From Numbers to Narratives: The art of data storytelling in M&E

As we move further into the Decade of Action, past the midpoint on our way to the 2030 Agenda, we face a myriad of challenges that threaten our collective hard-earned progress towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Effective communication using the data generated from M&E systems is critical to influence policy decisions and drive transformational progress, now more than ever.

We as evaluators, practitioners, analysts, statisticians, and implementers often tend to use our own complex language when communicating - hoping that our diverse audience shares our enthusiasm for confidence intervals, percentage points, and effect sizes. This, coupled with the unprecedented volume of data and analytics technologies now available, poses the risk of critical insights being lost amidst an ever-increasing number of dashboards and well-intentioned bar-charts.

Data, usually, does not not speak for itself. It requires contexts, narratives, and visualizations to make the audience not only understand the numbers but also evoke empathy for the lives behind those numbers. This session will explore the anatomy of a data story, the science behind crafting meaningful visualizations, and how to put everything together to create compelling data-driven narratives for communicating M&E insights to a diverse audience.

This workshop, led by Sourav Das (Capacity Building Manager, CLEAR SA), will use some of the tips and tricks that we have learned doing evaluation capability development (ECD) work in South Asia for over a decade. Register now!