Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation
Charles Guedenet, n/a
Senior Technical Advisor for MEL
IREX, United States
Tanisha Washington, MA
Manager
IREX, United States
Location: White River Ballroom E
Abstract Information: We all work and live in environments where power dynamics -- the visible and the invisible kind-- are in play. In evaluation, power dynamics show-up in our relationships with funders, with our partners, and others participating in the evaluation. Power is fundamentally relational and something that is exercised. Historically, evaluators have exercised considerable power over the design, production, and use of data. Norms around what constitutes knowledge and what qualifies as rigorous and credible have further reinforced an evaluator's positional power and, in turn, an evaluator's influence over how people are represented in data and what findings and conclusions are drawn. What are some ways that evaluators can share power with participants in all aspects of the evaluation process? How can we become more aware of our own situational power and its effects on an evaluation and on participants? What are some good practices we can adopt and what are some harmful practices we should drop to rebalance unequal power relationships? These are some questions we will discuss.
Relevance Statement: Many widely recognized evaluation approaches have core principle that implicitly touch on power-sharing, including empowerment evaluation, participatory evaluation, realist evaluation, and others. And in recent years. more evaluators are recognizing the need to "decolonize" evaluation which is largely dominated by Western-centric norms which have, in turn, been advanced predominantly through history by white, cis-gender men. The Equitable Evaluation Initiative is a notable example of how the field of evaluation is shifting to challenge orthodoxies and propose alternatives that promote more equitable evaluation. While there is increasing interest in the topic of power-sharing, many evaluators are still eager to learn more about how to practice it. Real world experiences shared by their peers in an informal setting are effective for sharing ideas and asking questions about a topic that makes many people uncomfortable.