Dear colleagues and friends, We hope you are well! We want to share with you the answers to questions that were not answered in our webinar held during the Evaluation Week.
We hope these responses will be useful as we continue to share and learn about this exciting topic and add new participants to this community of practice and learning.
Dear EvalParticipativa friends and colleagues, we are very pleased to announce that EvalParticipativa is growing. Due to several requests from people and organisations interested in the topic who do not speak Spanish, we are working on creating and updating the English version of this website.
It is possible that there will be moments, such as early this morning, when you will see test publications. Do not worry, they are only small hiccups. The Spanish version will remain the same, and soon you will be able to access its twin version in English.
All growth implies a few setbacks. We will keep in touch as we continue with our efforts to build this community of practice and learning in evaluation and participation.
See you soon! ! !
EvalParticipativa Coordination Team
On Tuesday 2 June, we held the EvalParticipativa seminar as part of the 2020 gLocal Evaluation Week. The slogan for the week was “Sharing local and global M&E knowledge”.
The main purpose of the seminar was to publicise and expand the community of practice and learning on participatory evaluation by sharing experiences and reflections on the potential and challenges inherent in this evaluation approach across the region.
Juan Carlos Sanz, from DEval, moderated the seminar with the support of Daniela Miranda from the Poverty Alleviation Foundation/Servicio País and Esteban Tapella from the EvalParticipativa coordinator team. Alejandra Gomez and María Carolina Sandoval from Focelac facilitated the recording and live transmission of the meeting.
The seminar had the pleasure of hosting the following four speakers:
On Tuesday 2 June from 10 a.m. to 11:30 a.m. (CST) we will have the opportunity to present our community of learning to the world and converse with other colleagues on this evaluation method that excites us so much.
If you are interested in participating, sign up to the event through this link
On the actual day, you can access the webinar through this link
If you have any doubts, ask us by clicking on ‘RESPOND’ (below) or by sending an email to eval.participativa@gmail.com
Don’t forget to check your time zone! You can check here. See you there!
Greeting colleagues,
We greet you on behalf of the Evaluation with Participation, team, a joint initiative between Ministry of Planning evaluation units in Costa Rica (MIDEPLAN) and the state of Jalisco in Mexico. As with EvalParticipativa, we have technical and financial support from the FOCELAC project. Yet we feel linked to this project for more than just these reasons: a central hypothesis of our work is that an openness to bringing different interest groups to participate in projects and programs puts to use evaluation methods that better respond to some of the core 2030 Agenda principles.
We are convinced that mutual learning lies not only in what we have in common, but also, perhaps even more so, where we differ. For this reason, we hope you will take advantage of the fantastic opportunity that this forum offers to identify similarities and differences between both initiatives. Thus, in this post we will briefly describe our work and invite you to join us in reflecting on some questions that can guide us. We are already very grateful for your participation.
Dear Colleagues, we hope that despite the COVID 19 pandemic and the difficulties brought about by the lockdown and social isolation, you are in good health and motivated to continue learning and sharing information on this evaluation topic that excites us so much.
We are pleased to announce that the events calendar for Evaluation Week #EVAL2020 is now available. As already announced in several forums and networks, this year it will be totally online.
You can see the interactive map on this site , where you can see the online activities that will take place between 1 and 5 June. As you can see, they are ordered by country, but it is possible to participate in any of the events from any of the countries. You will note that there are a number of activities closely related to the broad theme of evaluation and social participation.
Best Wishes!
… who turn up all wet, to walk against the current, stumbling along the way…
Hear, hear colleagues!
Here we share the video/memoire of the Gathering of Participatory Evaluation Experiences in Quito, which we have talked extensively about in this community of practice and learning.
The video recalls our work in Ecuador over five days, covering five modules, in order to remind ourselves of the activities and results achieved. It is hopefully useful for communicating what we were doing there, remember each other’s faces and re-live those intense moments of sharing and learning.
Many thanks to Ana Clara Bustelo, from the PETAS team, who managed to summarise five days of intense work in just five minutes. We would love you to share it with your networks and contacts to encourage others involved in participatory evaluation and motivate them to join our community. In the near future, we will share a document summarising the gathering’s contents and conclusions, as well as the work plans for 2020.
Greetings from the EvalParticipativa team! Let’s stay in touch!
Hello colleagues,
After a short break following the intense end of year activity at EvalParticipativa, I’m back to encourage us to keep discussing the same evaluation approach that excites so many of us. Today, I want to reflect not so much on evaluation itself, but rather on those who conduct it. In other words, the evaluators, those who have made evaluation their profession.
Those who attended the gathering in Ecuador will recall that this issue was not really highlighted in any of the cases presented. Rather, it was a new topic which emerged as a key to successfully conducting participatory evaluation: the facilitator. As we began to talk about the professional profile, the importance of training and experience in evaluation came to the fore in order to integrate the necessary rigour in participatory evaluations. But above all, we emphasised attitude and the ability to manage informed and equal participation during the constant decision-making that takes place in evaluation.
So, how is the participatory approach seen in the wider evaluation community? If the focus on participatory evaluation is on other groups, is this approach considered to be professional intrusion? Or rather an opportunity to extend the culture of evaluation and expand the professional evaluator’s tool box?
Greetings to you all… we are keen to hear your opinions!
Juan Carlos Sanz Vaca | Evaluator, Focelac Team – DEval (Germany)
Dear colleagues,
We wish you all a happy new year!
Many of our EvalParticipativa members are also members of the Latin American and Caribbean Network of Monitoring, Evaluation and Systematisation (ReLAC). In some cases directly, in others through their national evaluation networks. ReLAC is also one of EvalParticipativa’s strategic partners. Therefore, given the link between ReLAC and EvalParticipativa, in this post we want to share ReLAC’s Executive Committee Management Report for 2017 -2019 (Spanish).
As communicated by ReLAC, it focuses on issues that concern ReLAC’s positioning, governance and strengthening within the framework of the ReLAC 2.0 project. In order to move forward in these areas, the Executive Committee is currently preparing a face-to-face assembly, to be held in April/May 2020, with the purpose of co-building and planning ReLAC activities until 2030.
Here is the Management Report 2017-2019 . If you have any questions or comments, please communicate them to the Executive Committee by email: cejecutivorelac@gmail.com
Bye for now,
EvalParticipativa team.
Greetings friends and colleagues!
Now that all our first EvalParticipativa gathering participants have returned home and are processing everything they have experienced, we are left with mixed emotions! We are nostalgic after our farewell but at the same time thrilled to have met such courageous people, both professionally and personally, and to have heard all about their experiences.
As the gathering’s organisational team, we want to once again thank everyone who got involved and contributed their best so that this gathering was, as so many of you commented, an unprecedented success and amazing experience. We are happy and tired as it required a lot of organisational energy… But oh so very happy! We hope to continue building this new community of practice and learning together. EvalParticipativa belongs to everyone involved and together we will make it grow even more.