Date: Monday, April 13, 2026
Hello, AEA365 community! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. This week is Individuals Week, which means we take a break from our themed weeks and spotlight the Hot Tips, Cool Tricks, Rad Resources and Lessons Learned from any evaluator interested in sharing. Would you like to contribute to future individuals weeks? Email me at AEA365@eval.org with an idea or a draft and we will make it happen.
I am Lucila G. Lagace, Latina, Mexican-American, and the proud daughter of parents who knew a thing or two about migration and survival. My co-author is Naya Diaz, Principal Consultant-Organizational Learning. We are at Lagace Consulting, LLC. I come from a community rich in culture made up of colorful cuentos (stories), collective care, long days making tamales in community, and evenings playing bingo with family and friends. This does not take away from the reality that, like many Latino communities across the U.S. and Puerto Rico, we have been historically under-resourced. Witnessing what Latino communities are navigating today has sharpened how I approach my work in evaluation and facilitation.
As an evaluation practitioner working at the intersection of nonprofit systems, public health, and community-based learning, a question has become central to my practice: How do we lean into curiosity while practicing accountability to Latino communities?
In this moment of urgent equity demands and rapidly shifting community realities, curiosity becomes more than a mindset. It becomes a methodological response-ability—the disciplined ability to respond in ways that shape how questions are formed, whose knowledge is centered, and what kinds of learning are possible.
Western-based evaluation approaches have long emphasized empirical outcomes and “evidence-based” methods grounded in dominant cultural norms. While rigor matters, evidence-based does not automatically mean culturally competent, much less culturally relevant. In fact, research across the public health sector and community interventions shows that outcomes vary drastically when evaluation instruments—though valid and reliable—are not designed by and for the Latino community. Tools that are linguistically mismatched, culturally misaligned, or insufficiently vetted by community members often yield poor or misleading results.
Multicultural evaluation differs because it is community driven. It emphasizes meaningful participation, cultural and systems analysis, and relevance to lived experience. For example, evaluating mental health or social interventions in Latino communities requires a broader ecological framework—one that understands individual outcomes as inseparable from family, work, school, migration history, and broader political and economic conditions.
Below are several practical entry points for practicing curiosity in action.
Before selecting indicators or tools, pause to ask: What assumptions are embedded in this question? Who defined “success,” “impact,” or “change”? Reviewing questions with bilingual or bicultural community partners often reveals hidden assumptions about time, progress, and individual versus collective outcomes. In Latino communities, relevance carries weight, meaning that how questions are asked matters as much as what is asked.
Evaluation does not end when data is gathered. Latino-centered approaches often privilege qualitative practices such as storytelling, mesas de trabajo (work groups), testimonios, and pláticas. These methods create space for shared interpretation—sometimes framed as a “cafecito with your evaluator” or debrief called informe comunitario. Participatory sense-making in Spanish and English builds trust, surfaces contextual insight, and increases the likelihood that findings will be used in culturally relevant ways.
Curiosity without cultural humility risks becoming extractive. Culturally competent evaluation requires experience in diverse communities, openness to learning, flexibility in design, self-reflection on bias, trust-building, and an understanding of historical and institutional oppression. When curiosity is paired with accountability, evaluation becomes a tool for connection and shared power—rather than a process that reinforces irrelevance or “power over” dynamics.
Given the challenges Latino communities are navigating today, asking better questions together is not only good evaluation practice. It is an ethical commitment to equity, relevance, and shared learning in a complex world.
We co-presented this topic at the 2026 Texas Evaluation Network (TEN) Virtual Institute in a session titled “Inquiry that Connects: Strengthening Nonprofit Evaluation by, with, and for Latino Communities.”
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