Founder & Evaluator Rooted-Growth LLC Lafayette, Colorado, United States
Abstract Information: Hazel Symonette (2009) calls on evaluators to consider one's most effective self-presentation as a key component of ethical practice and inclusive excellence. Keeping culture and context in mind, I aim to share a few humorous and, hopefully, self-deprecating stories of my changing roles and approaches as an evaluator within different contexts over the last 14 years. Each experience teaches something new and holds different emotions. The total open-eyed wonder of an American liberal arts history graduate volunteering to pilot a most significant change evaluation in Phuthaditjhaba, South Africa. Or the joys and challenges posed by COVID and distance, as a more experienced white multinational evaluator in Colorado awarded her first federal evaluation project on self-efficacy programming with a youth empowerment program in Detroit. Take these experiences with a grain of salt; creative license may be involved.
Relevance Statement: Hazel Symonette (2009) calls on evaluators to consider one's most effective self-presentation as a key component of ethical practice and inclusive excellence. Symonette invites evaluators to listen to different voices, considering culture and context. Symonette's encouragement towards more equitable evaluation practices aligns with a core social work framework, the Just Practice (2009) framework, which considers power, history, and context in all interventions. This presentation will include a few evaluation experiences that increased my awareness of self and systems. To meet the requirements of 20 slides in 5 minutes, I plan to tell four one-minute stories from my fourteen years of evaluation experience. Each experience teaches something new and holds different emotions. The total open-eyed wonder of an American liberal arts history graduate volunteering to pilot a most significant change evaluation in Phuthaditjhaba, South Africa. Or the joys and challenges posed by COVID and distance, as a more experienced white multinational evaluator in Colorado awarded her first federal evaluation project to work virtually on self-efficacy programming with mainly Black youths in the Midwest. Take these experiences with a grain of salt; creative license may be involved.
