Dear colleagues and friends,

We are delighted to launch EvalParticipativa, Community of Practice and Learning for Participatory Evaluation for Latin America and the Caribbean, a joint initiative run by the research programme, PETAS, at the national university of San Juan, Argentina, together with Focelac, an evaluation capacity development and networking project in Latin America run by the German Institute for Development Evaluation, DEval.

We have already attracted a few partners including TECHO, ReLAC and the Poverty Alleviation Foundation and its programme, Servicio País and rely on the strength and motivation that comes from peer-to-peer work.  We believe that community is incredibly useful for deepening knowledge and experience through different ways of interacting (training sessions, tool fairs and events, webinars, publications, etc).

We want to share with, and learn from, all those who are involved in an evaluative process in one way or another: evaluators, decision-makers who request an evaluation, civil society organisations who make use of programmes and projects, researchers and teaching staff dedicated to evaluation, among others. Our aim is to create virtual and/or face-to-face spaces where people who are interested in participatory evaluation can reflect upon and improve their practices; be supported in their efforts; and build products together (methodologies and tools) which help professionalise the practice of participatory evaluation. A key feature of our learning community, given its dialogic framework, is that the facilitator has the role of encouraging each participant to share their knowledge and suggest concepts, methodologies and tools.

We, therefore, invite anyone who is interested in this topic to get involved and participate in this Community of Practice and Learning. This online space for the EvalParticipativa community includes MORE information about who we are; our aims and activities; resources and materials that we want to share; and ways and means to communicate and network. We will continue to post news and updates from our Community of Practice here. We invite you to follow us, subscribe and share your own experiences, materials or tools. You can also follow us and participate on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

We trust that this project will keep growing and we are relying on the active presence of diverse participants from our region. We look forward to hearing from you!

Bye for now!

Esteban Tapella, Pablo Rodriguez Bilella (PETAS-UNSJ), Juan Carlos Sanz and Andrea Meneses (Focelac-DEval)