by Alba Ximena Zambrano Constanzo, Vaite Trujillo Burgos, Mauricio García Ojeda, Francisca Román Mella
In contexts of urban vulnerability, evaluation is never neutral. Every evaluation reflects a way of seeing reality, deciding what counts as a problem, what is considered an achievement, and who gets to interpret it. From this perspective came the article Community Strengthening in Urban Neighbourhoods: Psychosocial Dynamics in Vulnerable Contexts, which reports on a participatory evaluation of community strengthening processes carried out alongside urban communities in southern Chile.
The article is part of a broader comparative study involving five urban neighbourhoods: three in Chile and two in Brazil. This publication focuses specifically on the Chilean cases, developed in the city of Temuco, in the La Araucanía Region, areas marked by socio-spatial segregation, urban precarity, and a historically unequal relationship with public policy.
When we set out to evaluate Co-Inspira, a peacebuilding initiative in Colombia, we knew we were facing an unconventional challenge. This was not about assessing a traditional intervention, but something far more complex: a Systemic Action Research (SAR) process that was, in itself, already a collective exercise in knowledge generation.
What happens when those who have historically been evaluated become co-evaluators? How can such a change be fostered, managed, and capitalized upon? Is it possible to promote participatory evaluation from within public institutions? How?
In the third episode of this new podcast season, we share a chapter from the book ‘
‘Readiness’ is an English language term that is difficult to translate into Spanish as it encompasses various themes: preparation, availability, propensity, timeliness, agility, competency, willingness – among others. In the Spanish version of this entry, we use ‘availability’ (‘disposición’) with the understanding that it covers the other themes. In the field of evaluation, readiness is foremost across the first two steps of Utilization-focused Evaluation (UFE) as proposed by Michael Quinn Patton (2008). Readiness is also referenced in other fields, for instance in communication strategy design (Ramelan, 2014).
I’m genuinely delighted to share a personal take on Chapter 7: Participatory evaluation of a public transport support policy: an inclusion and transformation perspective – Jalisco (Mexico), recently published in the book Evaluation, Democracy and Transformation: Experiences of Participatory Evaluation in Latin America. I co-wrote it with Sugey Salazar and Selene Michi, and together with other colleagues we reflect on what it really means to carry out public policy evaluation using participatory approaches from within the public sector.
As we close this seven-year cycle of collective work, we wish to celebrate what we have built together: a vibrant community of practice and learning around participatory evaluation and inclusive approaches. Within it, every voice has contributed, every shared experience has enriched us, and every encounter has woven bonds that go beyond isolated practices, now reaching more than four thousand people and multiple organizations.
In 