by María Alejandra Lucero Manzano
Only a few days remain before the workshop, and there are still many issues to resolve, decisions to make, and a proposal to fine-tune. This time, we have a group bringing together a diverse range of people: community members, municipal technical staff, and young people from the communities involved in the project. We need to design activities that facilitate and encourage dialogue without fear of judgement, prepare accessible materials, and anticipate specific arrangements in case the group atmosphere is not particularly conducive.
Anyone who facilitates this kind of space will remember the stress of these days, when circumstances can change and, with them, the methodologies and activities we have proposed. Yet designing a participatory workshop is rarely the methodological problem it may appear to be at first sight. Above all, it is a time problem that becomes particularly pressing in the days leading up to the event.
The chapter we present in the book 
Recognising the political nature of evaluation opens a transformative door: the possibility of turning it into a tool for democratisation. When we recognise that evaluation has a political role, we acknowledge its capacity to challenge narratives and make realities visible. It is about expanding our understanding of what constitutes valid evidence and who has the right to produce it.
We continue to share the knowledge and feelings of colleagues and friends who are leaders in participatory evaluation in Latin America and other regions as well. In these podcasts we want to give a close and human perspective, where evaluative practice is closely linked to the personal experiences, stories and territorialities of the interviewees.
Hello community EvalParticipativa. In this post, I will present a tool that has been designed to help people talk about their projects by answering important questions that underpin their intervention’s Theory of Change (ToC).
The ideas I share in this post are largely based on my experience working as an analyst and consultant in the 2018 evaluation of the Mexican Pensión para el Bienestar de las Personas con Discapacidad Permanente (Financial assistance to promote the wellbeing of individuals with permanent disabilities; hereafter 
On 9 November, the webinar ‘Transformation through evaluation’ hosted a discussion on the intersection of participatory evaluation and the gender perspective. These two pillars are critical to the design of inclusive, equal and transformational evaluations.
In this article I’ll present a tool designed jointly with Vanesa Castro and Valeria Sarmiento, members of the EvalParticipativa team, which was designed to help players participate in the review and critical analysis of a project, addressing the variables or feasibility factors that are most relevant to the intervention in question.
In our quest to keep moving forward, we look back to examine evaluation processes that we have accompanied or implemented. As we do so, it is common to ask ourselves about the impact of the decisions taken, the results produced and the recommendations made. It is normal to wonder if the experience has been useful. It can be even more challenging to respond to these questions when an evaluation has been carried out using a participatory approach, given that a great deal of effort in these cases is focused on capacity building and learning for all stakeholders.