Category: Events

ONLINE TRAINING ON PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION

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Dear community,

A few weeks ago, we shared an interesting conversation on our platform about participatory evaluation possibilities in times of covid-19.

Many of you had already demonstrated great optimism and confidence that it could work and today we are pleased to be able to back this up with a little more information.

As you know, online formats have become the safest, if not the only, way to build capacity in these pandemic times. This has also been understood by the EvalYouth initiative and Focelac project leaders who have arranged a series of online workshops aimed at strengthening the capacity of young and/or emerging evaluators (YEEs) in the region. The University of Costa Rica has taught a Masters in Evaluation for over 17 years and is now delivering its program fully online and asked us to participate in the section on Participatory Evaluation which features in the modules on evaluation approaches for the Latin American reality.

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ROUND TABLE DISCUSSION: “BY REASON OR BY FORCE” DOCUMENTARY LAUNCH

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Dear friends and colleagues, we hope you are all well!

We would like to invite you all to participate in the official launch of our documentary By Reason or By Force and its accompanying round table discussion which will be held on 24 July at 6pm UCT -3 (see the trailer and link to participate at the end of this entry).

The documentary was part of the participatory evaluation of the Working Groups and was organised together with TECHO, one of EvalParticipativa’s strategic partners. The evaluation methodology was replicated in different countries of the region.

Here, we let you see behind the scenes of this documentary and the evaluative experience; topics that we will touch on in addition to the film in the round table discussion.

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ANSWERS TO THE QUESTIONS RAISED IN THE WEBINAR “EXPERIENCES OF PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION IN LATIN AMERICA”

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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.

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WEBINAR: “EXPERIENCES OF PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION IN LATIN AMERICA”

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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:

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EVALPARTICIPATIVA WILL BE GIVEN SPACE IN THE 2020 INTERNATIONAL GLOCAL EVALUATION WEEK. JOIN US!

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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!

2020 GLOCAL EVALUATION WEEK IS COMING

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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!

WE ARE NOT STARFISH, WE ARE CRAYFISH…

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… 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!

THANKS, THANKS, THANKS!

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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.

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THE FAIR HAS COME TO TOWN!

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The last day of the First Gathering of Participatory Evaluation Experiences for Latin America and the Caribbean began with an invitation to reflect on the various techniques, tools and instruments used in PE.

Participants took it in turns to select tools that they felt comfortable using and put them into different categories: audiovisuals, narratives, graphics and texts, group/experiential activities. Then, they exchanged their experiences and perspectives on them.

The narrative tools included systematisation, testimonies, journals, the More Significant Change, stories from the future, studies of good practice, lifestyle analysis. Graphics and textual tools included collaborative drawings, transects and maps, stones and fishes, mind maps (of networks, resources and stakeholders), calendars, diagrams and matrices.

For group/experiential experiences, participants proposed simulation games, maps, sociometry, focus groups, collective mapping, community meetings and assemblies, timelines, workshops on varied themes.

Finally, in terms of audiovisual tools, they focused on techniques which include videos and photolanguage.

Then, armed with advice to practise active listening, we held a conversation over coffee around the following question: What is the main challenge we face in making sure that PE tools and instruments reach their full potential?

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THE ART OF BEING A FACILITATOR

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One of the most eagerly awaited sessions began with a challenge for those participants who arrived late: to carry out the Make an Eight forfeit, which involved drawing a figure of 8 with their bodies. This was a fun way to start our discussion on the following question: “What are we talking about when we refer to facilitation and facilitators?”.

Using a kinaesthetic version of multiple choice, the participants decided between true and false options regarding evaluation matrices, questions, social action theory, sources and tools.

Jorge Chávez–Tafur ran the session for facilitators and invited us to use introspection and hindsight to evaluate our own practice. He also took us on a tour of accepted international definitions of the term facilitation, which included entries as varied as yanapai -a Quechua term which means help- and Voorlichtingskunde -which alludes to the science of “lighting the way” in Dutch-. Taking into account the diversity of names, which at times shared little in common, he insisted that rather than agree on terms, the important thing was to capture all that they covered: content, effects and impact.

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