Aid and development and its implementation are complex, and in working with key stakeholders and populations who face immense challenges, problems seem intractable and solutions elusive. The Politics of Aid Evaluation will explore and evaluate the often damaging, widespread interventions such as food aid, cash transfers, corporate social responsibility and social enterprise, voluntourism, and localization, undertaken with the aim of helping disadvantaged people. The pervasiveness of bad practice demands focused attention and action to counter naivete and incomprehension surrounding these efforts. The course will mix lectures, workshops, and seminars and will look beyond criticism to evaluate these practices and design an alternative intervention. We do not operate under the illusion that helping people is simple, especially when working within engrained systems that are unjust, inequitable and unequal. Nonetheless, we seek alternatives that attempt to support the people at the wrong end of these misadventures and, ideally, long-term systemic change, as opposed to a short-term band-aid.