For participation in Evaluation, participants are considered as co-partners in the process, and their lived experience and capacity are respected and valued. Participation has a strong connection between relationship and power- relationship between the evaluator and the local people, and power dynamics within local people. The presenter will share her experience of facilitating communities and NGOs in participatory evaluation and participatory action research in Asia, Europe and Africa. Local people involved in development and evaluation are often considered as subjects while external evaluators are often perceived as experts who will judge them. The presenter will share how she has facilitated transforming power dynamics by facilitating those with experience to take ownership, share their experience and analyse their own situation. It is equally crucial for the evaluator to understand the local context and the local identities and who participates so that power dynamics are not reinforced in the evaluation process. The presenter will also build a link with knowledge shared by other practitioners like Catsambas (2016) and Patton (2017pg xii,). The latter underlines that, soft skills like developing stakeholder relationships, understanding context” are critical for credible evaluations. The presenter will also invite insights from the audience to co-create knowledge.
References Patton, M. Q. (2017). Facilitating evaluation: Principles in practice (Vol. 2). Sage Publications. Catsambas, T. T. (2016). Facilitating evaluation to lead meaningful change. New Directions for Evaluation, 2016(149), 19-29.
