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Session Title: The Strategic Use of Data by Community: Experiences and Challenges in Building and Sustaining Local Evaluation Capacity in Four Cities
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Panel Session 880 to be held in Panzacola Section G2 on Saturday, Nov 14, 3:30 PM to 5:00 PM
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Sponsored by the Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Tom Kelly, Annie E Casey Foundation, tkelly@aecf.org
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| Discussant(s):
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| Peter York, TCC Group, pyork@tccgrp.com
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| Abstract:
This panel describes the challenges and successes in building community evaluation capacity in four cities implementing broad-scale, community initiatives: Atlanta, Denver, San Antonio and Providence. Complex community change requires evaluation capacity to be strengthened within residents, organizations, and evaluators. Challenges include the history of exploitation and lack of power and control that community residents have had in past community development evaluations. Success stories capture how local capacity is being built and how strategic and sustained use of data for accountability and learning have influenced organizational and community behaviors. Four local evaluators and researchers from will also address the challenge of ensuring that evaluation capacity is valued and maintained through continued local investment after external (foundation) funding ends. Peter York, an evaluator experienced in building and evaluating capacity building in multi-site initiatives will respond to these examples and lead a discussion of the implications for building and measuring community evaluation capacity.
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The Atlanta Experience: Addressing the Negative Historical Experiences of Research and Evaluation in Community- Dr. Dana Rickman
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| Dana Rickman, Annie E Casey Foundation, drickman@atlantacivicsite.org
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Historic patterns of disadvantage are often deeply entrenched, leading to a culture of despair and hopelessness. The pressure of economic hardships erodes the ability of community residents to participate in civic activities. The Annie E. Casey Foundation's Atlanta Civic Site, however, views residents and neighborhood organizations as critical and indispensable resources for successful community change. The Civic Site used community builders to implement Living Room Chats to stimulate and guide conversation around peoples' own perceptions of the community, especially those related to the quality of relationships and civic activity taking place in the neighborhood. This presentation will review the Living Room Chat process and present results. The methodology provided a deeper knowledge of the quality and nature of interpersonal and inter-organizational relationships, helped to determine the community's readiness and ability to engage in neighborhood change activities, and provided insight into resident perspective on levels of civic participation.
Dr. Dana Rickman brings a strong academic and policy-focused background that supports the Atlanta Civic Site, Annie E. Casey Foundation. Dr. Rickman has over 10 years evaluating and researching projects related to poverty and urban development. She is responsible for evaluating programmatic efforts at the Atlanta Civic Site.
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The Denver Experience: Building the Capacity of Residents in Research and Evaluation, Dr. Sue Tripathi
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| Sue Tripathi, Making Connections Denver, stripathi@mcdenver.org
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Making Connections Denver, an initiative of Mile High United Way, provides a unique perspective on the use of residents as community-based researchers. The initiative teaches residents to develop the relationships, skills, and leadership necessary to take action toward creating positive community change. The Community Research Team oversees research and evaluation and is committed to a resident driven approach to community change. Residents receive training in research and evaluation, and then help to build similar capacity in other community based organizations to use data and evaluation in their work. This presentation focuses on the challenges and successes in engaging and empowering community researchers in ways that are congruent with the guiding principles of community change. Also, it provides a framework on scope, scale and sustainability of a community change initiative where addressing capacity building of residents is integral to the sustainability of the initiative.
Dr. Sue Tripathi has worked in several non-profit, local and national foundations and government agencies for the past 13 years in the field of research and evaluation related to health, poverty, urban and rural development, education, social services and child welfare. Apart from research and evaluation, Dr. Tripathi has taught at several universities and has experience in budgetary and policy issues. She is a past National Science Foundation Fellow and a Junior Fellow, National Geographic Society and is responsible for evaluating the efforts of the initiative in Denver.
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The San Antonio Experience: Building the Evaluation Capacity of Organizations, Systems, and Nonprofits, Sebastian Schreiner
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| Sebastian Schreiner, Making Connections San Antonio, sebastian.schreiner@sanantonio.gov
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An integral part of the evaluation capacity building in community change initiatives lies in addressing issues of capacity development of individual organizational partners and the overall collaborative systems being developed to evaluate progress and steer strategies. Appealing to organizational self-interests in demonstrating their own successes is a prerequisite for any structural changes to be implemented and sustained in the long term beyond the life of a community initiative, thereby highlighting the need for individualized approaches in capacity building activities. This session addresses the elusive issue of developing collaborative capacity between organizations and lessons learned when convening organizations with differences in scope and the resulting power differentials. Also addressed will be the effects of varying organizational cultures in the use of data, differences in organizational structures and organizational understanding and acceptance of the concept of community accountability and commitment to the process of joint learning.
Sebastian Schreiner coordinates the Local Learning Partnership and its efforts for the Making Connections site in San Antonio and has been working with the initiative since 2007. He has a background in community advocacy and grassroots organizing in homeless, immigrant and low income communities and holds a Master's of Science in Social Work from the University of Louisville, KY and a Diploma in Social Work from the Catholic University of Applied Sciences in Munich, Germany.
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The Providence Experience: Building the Capacity of Evaluators to Work in and With Community, Tanja Kubas-Meyer
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| Tanja Kubas-Meyer, Providence Making Connections, tkubasmeyer@cox.net
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Providence's Local Learning Partnership has provided a unique "on the ground" capacity that has been directly engaged in the community change work as well as providing evaluation services. The skills that local evaluators need to help support and move community work forward include participating in and supporting the development of work that may be led by others; building capacity of residents and program staff/partners with a wide variance in skill or interest in data or evaluation; and providing timely information to support learning and practice. As the end of the initiative approaches, evaluators need to help community shift to more evaluative and critical analysis; a difficult transition when local context, need, and resources have not been in place to maximize learning practices along the way. Examples of learning work with program partners and residents in projects including resident database development and school-based participant family data collection will be discussed.
Tanja Kubas-Meyer, MSW, MA has more than 25 years experience in administration, policy, and evaluative work with non-profit human service providers and has been a consultant with the Providence Local Learning Partnership since 2006. She is a doctoral student at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University.
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