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Session Title: Race, Class, and Power: Bringing The Issues Into Discussion and Evaluation
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Panel Session 251 to be held in BOWIE B on Thursday, Nov 11, 10:55 AM to 12:25 PM
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Sponsored by the Multiethnic Issues in Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| Dawn Smart, Clegg & Associates, dsmart@cleggassociates.com
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| Abstract:
Part of the jigsaw puzzle in making change in communities is the effect of race, class and power differences among groups. Historical and present-day inequities translate into significant barriers to participation in decision-making affecting people’s lives. Bringing these issues into the conversation can be difficult and uncomfortable, but without direct attention to them, community change efforts often stall. Evaluating race, class and power — what these issues look like in their community context, how people feel about them, and how the dynamics may change over the course of an initiative — is equally challenging. Putting race, class and power on the discussion table is a first step. Learning together what is relevant and how to measure it is a second. Examining the findings and interpreting their meaning is a third. This session will look at the efforts of two national organizations engaged in this process and provide a forum for further exploration.
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Race, Class, and Power in Rural Development
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| Tracey Greene-Dorsett, National Rural Funders Collaborative, tracey@nrfc.org
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With its focus on expanding resources for families and communities in regions of persistent poverty, the National Rural Funders Collaborative recognizes that the work of building rural economies also entails confronting structural barriers that foster racial disparities and discrimination. Transforming poor rural communities into viable living environments ultimately requires creation of a rural movement for social and economic equity. Projects funded by NRFC include those in the South, with African American families and communities; the West, with Latino and immigrant families and communities; and the Northern Great Plains, with Native American families and communities. NRFC’s theory of change is based on an understanding of the relationship among local and regional economic strategies, policy development and advocacy, and addressing equity issues. Establishing sustainable measurement systems with their grantees, often small and grassroots organizations, around this theory of change, and specific to local race and power issues, has been an enlightening venture.
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Developing Tools to Measure Race, Class and Power
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| Jessica Anders, NeighborWorks America, janders@nw.org
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In 2005, the Mary Reynolds Babcock Foundation supported creation of a set of racial justice indicators and tools for NeighborWorks America’s Success Measures project using a participatory approach including practitioner, researcher and foundation input. Managing the participation from various parties required difficult decision-making directly related to power issues. Whose voice should be privileged in the process if the outcome was to be a set of useful tools designed to improve programs and attract funding. For the racial justice tools, we privileged practitioners’ voices for direction and content and brought in research partners to craft tools that would stand up to rigorous evaluation standards. Originally, the project was to capture outcomes for racial justice organizing, policy and advocacy work. Through the participatory process the emphasis shifted to focus on the issues the groups were directly addressing, racial equity in the classroom and individual racism rather than a broader reach.
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Evaluating Race, Class and Power
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| Dawn Smart, Clegg & Associates, dsmart@cleggassociates.com
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As an evaluation coach for NeighborWorks America’s Success Measures project and for the National Rural Funders Collaborative and its grantees, learning to really listen to and build evaluations from the ideas of organizations working on social justice issues has been a humbling and remarkable experience. Understanding how race, class and power play out for each group and their communities is one aspect of this learning. Figuring out with each group how to measure these issues in ways that are respectful, feasible and meaningful is yet another. I’ve come to recognize how my perceptions of what’s important to measure can sometime be incorrect, my suggestions for how to measure the issues sometimes inadvisable, and how much I have to learn. But it has been through this learning that my skills as an evaluator have developed and my practice has grown with more opportunities to explore race, class and power through evaluation.
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