It is with great joy that we share the news of the launch of a new resource in our community of practice and learning EvalParticipativa, aimed at accompanying and illustrating the Sowing and Harvesting, participatory evaluation handbook .
This is a set of five short videos, one for each core chapter of the manual, done in Whiteboard-animation format.
The Whiteboard-animation format (or whiteboard animation) has gained popularity as a form of communication and distance training. The logic of this tool is to tell an illustrated story, simulating that it unfolds and develops on a blackboard. The animations are accompanied by a scripted narration with the purpose of explaining, in an entertaining and simple way, concepts that, explained in another way, would not be easy to grasp in a few minutes.
Our professional paths crossed in Valencia in 2016, when Viola was finishing her European Master in Public Health (EuroPubHealth) and about to start her PhD at the University of Sheffield (UK) and Joan was working as Deputy Director General of Health Promotion at the Valencia regional health authority.
The term “experience capitalisation” is increasingly used to refer to the process of describing and analysing a project, programme or specific experience in detail, and producing lessons that can be shared and used to improve development interventions.
Creating spaces where -regardless of their levels of education- people feel they can truly participate in planning and evaluation processes, in an informed and active way, has been a principal methodological concern during my work with communities, particularly in rural areas.
Participatory Evaluation experiences value and validate the interpretations of participants concerning the projects, policies and interventions that are being analysed (Fetterman, 2005). These experiences create space for participants to share their knowledge and particular ways of looking at the real-life situations and problems that the interventions under evaluation are seeking to address (Gil & Heras, 2010; Menéndez, Torralbo & Luque, 2021; Paño, Rébola, & Suarez, 2019).
“Integrative Evaluation” (IE) is an approach that mitigates polarising discourse by integrating various seemingly contradictory perspectives and/or hypotheses. Participatory evaluation (PE) allows for the incorporation of the population’s perspectives on the processes and results of policies, programmes and/or projects, limiting or avoiding technocratic bias.
While celebrating a greater openness toward participatory evaluation (PE), many evaluators continue to adhere to traditional ways of understanding “rigour”. Within these frameworks, quality standards are based on the supposed existence of a methodological hierarchy, in which objective and quantitative methods are placed higher than others, considered to be less “rigorous”.
Dear colleagues and friends of EvalParticipativa: after a little over a year of work, we are delighted to officially launch and share with you the documentary series, SOWING & HARVESTING, an accompaniment to the participatory evaluation handbook of the same name.
It is increasingly common to hear of participatory evaluations that give leading roles to a large range of actors affected by a particular intervention. This allows evaluations to be carried out using a more comprehensive vision, one that recovers the different perspectives involved.
The Benjamin Franklin quote that we have used as the title is perhaps the best way to introduce this post, in which we wish to share some of EvalParticipativa’s recent experiences as part of its capacity development strategy in the region. Our contribution to capacity strengthening in Participatory Evaluation (PE) has made use of both online and face-to-face formats, and has focused on specific personal and organisational contexts.