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Session Title: Building a Learning Culture Within Community Initiatives and Organizations
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Panel Session 104 to be held in Lone Star C on Wednesday, Nov 10, 4:30 PM to 6:00 PM
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Sponsored by the Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation TIG
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| Chair(s): |
| David Scheie, Touchstone Center for Collaborative Inquiry, dscheie@touchstone-center.com
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| Discussant(s):
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| Prudence Brown, Independent Consultant, pruebrown@aol.com
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| Abstract:
This session explores principles and strategies for establishing a learning culture within initiatives and organizations, particularly in an urban community development context. Three case examples will be presented, each with aspirations of creating a lively, participatory learning and evaluation culture within a community organization or initiative. Ways to engage staff and project participants in planning, data collection, analysis and reflection will be examined. Tensions and pitfalls encountered in the three cases will also be considered. Challenges in navigating race and class issues – e.g. multi-cultural and lower income contexts, professional-citizen differentials in authority and credibility, and divergent interests among staff, participants, and sponsoring funders, will be given special attention. Timelines required and stages encountered in the effort to develop an effective participatory learning culture will be explored. A discussant with experience in many other learning and community change initiatives will put lessons from these three cases into broader national perspective.
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Cultivating a Learning Culture in a Community Development Corporation
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| Kate Tilney, Hope Communit Inc, kbport@comcast.net
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This presentation explores the attempts since 2008 to develop sustainable evaluation and reflection systems in an organization dedicated to rebuilding the physical and social infrastructure of a large neighborhood in Minneapolis. Over the last 15 years, Hope Community Inc. has worked to rebuild a square block just south of downtown, while also investing in building the leadership, relationships and social networks of residents. Hope’s “community engagement” work offers a variety of programming for children and adults, as well as community organizing training and systems-change efforts. Since hiring a part-time evaluation consultant who works as an internal ‘participant-observer,’ efforts to cultivate a learning culture and sustainable model have both succeeded in positively impacting the direction of Hope’s engagement work, and been challenged by issues of accountability and capacity. These will be explored, as will the potential for growth and lessons going into the future.
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Building a Learning Partnership in a Neighborhood Transformation Initiative
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| Sue Tripathi, Making Connections, Denver, sue.tripathi@unitedwaydenver.org
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This presentation explores the concept and implementation of a local learning partnership in the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Making Connections Initiative, with ongoing efforts to build evaluation capacity and a learning community. The learning partnership sought to engage grassroots stakeholders in using data to document, assess and propel change, building capacity for learning and evaluation through the process. Three phases are explored: (1) beginning to engage stakeholders to use data to advance goals of strengthening families through neighborhood transformation; (2) creating a formal local learning partnership, a consortium of residents and others with data expertise to develop and track outcome measures and strategies to achieve results; and (3) integrating the initiative and its learning partnership into the local United Way, with potential to influence larger systems and broaden the effort to build and sustain evaluation capacity. Strengths and challenges in each phase will be examined.
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Developing a Learning and Evaluation Partnership in a Regional Capacity Building Initiative
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| David Scheie, Touchstone Center for Collaborative Inquiry, dscheie@touchstone-center.com
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This presentation will explore efforts to develop a “learning and evaluation partnership” in the Capacity Building Initiative of the Raymond John Wean Foundation. The Initiative was launched in 2007 to help revitalize the two-county Youngstown-Warren region in Ohio. In early 2009 the Foundation hired a team (led by this presenter) to guide learning and evaluation in the Initiative with a charge to evaluate progress, sharpen Initiative design and implementation, and deepen the knowledge-building capacity of the Foundation, its partners and grantees. The presentation will report on early efforts to develop learning and evaluation systems in the Initiative’s three distinct subcontexts – a neighborhood grants program, a community organizing collaborative, and a nonprofit capacity program – and to integrate these into a coherent whole for the Initiative such that the Initiative can help strengthen a culture of collaborative learning and innovation in the region overall.
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