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Session Title: Evaluating and Empowering Agricultural Workers: The Poder Popular Experience in California
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Panel Session 665 to be held in the Quartz Room Section A on Friday, Nov 7, 3:25 PM to 4:10 PM
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Sponsored by the Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Ellen Braff Guajardo,
The California Endowment,
ebguajardo@calendow.org
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| Abstract:
This session offers an overview of a participatory, empowerment evaluation of the Promotores Comunitarios de Salud Strategy, a component of The California Endowment's Poder Popular initiative, which seeks to provide agricultural workers in California with tools to advocate for improved community health through policy and systems change. The qualitative evaluation design utilized several innovative methods, including a combined photography/interview process and SWOT analyses. These methods were designed to include stakeholders as more active participants in the evaluation process, while allowing them to reflect more deeply on issues affecting their communities, and opportunities and challenges in addressing them.
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The Evaluation of Promotores Comunitarios De Salud Strategy: A Grassroots Education and Mobilization Strategy for Improving Community Health
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| Nuria Ciofalo,
The California Endowment,
nciofalo@calendow.org
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The Promotores Comunitarios de Salud Strategy, promoted by the California Endowment, is a health literacy and leadership development approach that utilizes popular education to help community residents understand and respond to physical and social environmental threats to their health. It increases the community awareness and understanding on the social and physical environmental factors that affect health and well-being through local grassroots leadership development, reflection, learning, and dialogue between Promotores Comunitarios and local agencies and institutions. The program and its evaluation provide technical assistance to communities as they develop, implement, and evaluate local action plans. The evaluation is designed to produce 'learnings' for multiple audiences to support unfolding efforts in the pilot sites, and to refine the strategic approach for potential implementation in other regions. It assesses social networks and synergies in place and contributing on learnings in the area of community health, placed-based initiatives, and culturally compatible evaluations that promote policy and practice without borders.
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Challenges and Successes in a Participatory Evaluation Process with Farmworkers: The Experience of Poder Popular
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| Gloria Sayavedra,
California Institute for Rural Studies,
gsayavedra@cirsinc.org
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| Ron Strochlic,
California Institute for Rural Studies,
rstrochlic@cirsinc.org
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Capacity-building and empowerment strategies are not easy to assess, and the experience of Promotores Comunitarios is no exception.
This presentation highlights the participatory evaluation of the Promotores Comunitarios de Salud Strategy, to collecting evidence about changes happening in the residents¦ lives, through the words of the different actors involved in the project: promotores, comitTs, agencies and collaborating partners. Methods include a combined photography/interviewing component, in which promotores took photos of issues affecting them and interviewed residents about, and SWOT analyses with staff and promotores at each site. This approach afforded important insights regarding key issues affecting the project, while providing participants with an important tool for improving project implementation. Expected outcomes identified by the evaluation include resident mobilization to seek improved services, or attendance at the public meetings. Nonetheless, the evaluation also captured other, more subtle personal and familial changes, which were necessary steps in the promotores¦ process of empowerment.
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