Hi there! My name is Bemene Piaro. I am an epidemiologist, a longtime resident of the Greater Atlanta area, and peace and social justice activist. Atlanta is known for promoting change through social justice.
Rad Resource: Social Justice Opportunities. Whenever Georgia has an execution scheduled, one can elect to protest the death penalty at the state capital with Georgians For an Alternative to the Death Penalty (GFADP) and a host of other organizations; or on any Wednesday, one can protest war or any number of issues he or she is passionate about on Moreland Avenue and Ponce de Leon with the Georgia Peace and Justice Coalition. The Health Law Partnership (HeLP) offers legal services for clients of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta who would otherwise be unable to afford a lawyer. Similar to HeLP, the Georgia Justice Project and the Southern Center for Human Rights provide legal services free of charge to those in the prison system or facing criminal charges and their families. A host of other nonprofits carry out direct services as well as legislative advocacy aspects, including, Lost-N-Found Youth, which advocates for homeless LGBT youth, and the Central Outreach and Advocacy Center, which provides a wide variety of services to homeless men and women in addition to advocating around key legislative issues which they believe impact homelessness. While many of these organizations regularly write about their work and produce facts about their fields only HeLP and the Lost-N-Found Youth showcase quantitative assessments of their impact on their websites.
Questions to Ponder: How might evaluations inform us about the unique roles peace and justice organizations serve in addressing health determinants in a quantifiable way?
Rad Resources: Atlanta AEA affiliate. The Atlanta affiliate of the American Evaluation Association recently piloted a pro-bono evaluation program, which could aid peace and justice focused non-profits ready to explore evaluation. For more information visit: http://atl-eval.org/get-involved-with-aaea/pro-bono-evaluation/.
Rad Resources: The Health Law Partnership (HeLP)’s website is a good resource for nonprofits trying to understand what evaluation could mean for them. Check out this link to learn more: https://healthlawpartnership.org/evaluation__research/program_evaluation/.
We’re looking forward to October and the Evaluation 2016 annual conference all this week with our colleagues in the Local Arrangements Working Group (LAWG). Do you have questions, concerns, kudos, or content to extend this aea365 contribution? Please add them in the comments section for this post on the aea365 webpage so that we may enrich our community of practice. Would you like to contribute to aea365? Review the contribution guidelines and send your draft post to aea365@eval.org.