Evaluators working with Indigenous peoples and communities are often advised to become familiar with a Native community’s social, cultural, and spiritual values before beginning a project. As an evaluation community, how can we be more intentional about moving beyond mere familiarity and acknowledgement of these value systems to actively centering them in our evaluation work? …
We are Linda Khumalo and Gert Van Hecken. We collaborate on a project to reimagine M&E from a decolonial perspective. Here we share some lessons learned. Linda is an evaluation practitioner and scholar contributing to the Made in Africa Evaluation (MAE) discourse who sees the challenges of applying a transformative evaluative lens. Gert is an …
Hi! My name is Marcia Mundt, and I oversee research, evaluation, and learning at the Consortium for Elections and Political Process Strengthening (CEPPS). I am joined by Linda Stern (NDI), Rakesh Sharma (IFES), and Natalie Trisilla (IRI).
I’m Linda Raftree and I founded the MERL Tech community about ten years ago, back when monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) practitioners were just starting to explore mobile phones, digital devices, and digital data for MERL purposes. Technology has changed a lot since 2013 – and so have the ways that MERL practitioners use …
Greetings AEA365 readers. I’m Linda Cabral from the University of Massachusetts Medical School’s Center for Health Policy and Research. Many evaluations that I’ve been a part of in my 15+ year career have required a review of existing program documents. This has involved a range of documents such as program descriptions, meeting minutes, proposals and grantee reports. There can be many purposes to performing a document review. Often, it can provide you the background necessary to formulate your primary data collection tools. Other times, document review can be your sole data collection method when your evaluation only requires descriptive information such as number and type of sites or a description of participants and program costs. Funders appreciate this data collection method because it does not pose a burden to program staff as the data already exists. Regardless of the main purpose of your document review, I’ve found it helpful to be able to approach this type of review in a systematic way.
Hello, AEA! We are Britt Lake, CEO of Feedback Labs, which seeks to make feedback the norm in aid, philanthropy, nonprofits, and government, and Melinda Tuan, Managing Director of Fund for Shared Insight, a national funder collaborative seeking to improve philanthropy by promoting high-quality listening and feedback in service of equity. Both our organizations are …
Hi all, I’m Linda Raftree and I have been leading the MERL Tech community of practice since 2014. MERL Tech is a term we use to describe technology-enabled Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning (MERL). Our vision is a world where the use of digital tools, technologies, and data for MERL in humanitarian, development, human rights, peacebuilding, and social impact programming is inclusive, ethical, responsible, safe, and sustainable.
From Oklahoma, the land of ‘red people’, from the Choctaw word oklahumma, my name is Linda Sue Warner. I am a member of the Comanche Tribe of Oklahoma and have worked in schools since 1970. As a former tenured faculty member at Tier 1 universities and President Emerita of the oldest continuously operated American Indian …
IPE TIG Week: Lessons Learned from the Colonizer by Linda Sue Warner Read More »
Hi! We’re Zach Tilton, Linda Raftree, Kecia Berterman, and Ichhya Pant from the Integrating Technology into Evaluation Topical Interest Group. We’re thrilled to share with AEA365 readers a week of posts about the intersection of technology and evaluation. Though we’re certainly biased, we believe the new year provides a great opportunity to pause and take …
I’m Linda Stern, Director of Evaluation & Learning at the National Democratic Institute. I also lead a Research, Evaluation & Learning (REL) initiative with seven other democracy, human rights and labor (DRL) organizations under the Fundamental Freedoms Fund (FFF). Sponsored by the US Department of State, the objective of our consortium initiative is to build …
