Greetings! I’m Seema Mahato, board member (student representative) for The Ohio Program Evaluator’s Group (OPEG) and a member of the Local Arrangements Working Group for Evaluation 2018.
‘Evaluation without Borders’, a pro-bono evaluation consulting program was piloted by Washington Evaluators at the 2017 AEA conference. As a participant of this event during AEA 2017, as a pro-bono consultant, I realized the tremendous value this event holds in terms of materializing AEA’s end goals “Growth in the effective use of evaluation as a means for enhancement of the public good (with results optimizing use of available resources)”. This volunteer consulting event provides a platform for evaluation professionals to share their knowledge and expertise with professionals from community-based organizations (non-profits), and thus advances AEA’s commitment towards greater public good. Other professional organizations such as Bankers without Borders, Engineers without Borders USA, and Statistics without Borders live the similar philosophy of sharing technical expertise for the enhancement of public good.
Given the current times of facts versus alternative facts tussle, evaluators and evaluation could play an important role in creating the awareness necessary to distinguish facts from alternative facts as we deliberate Speaking Truth to Power in Cleveland this year. Continuing the Washington Evaluator’s initiative from AEA 2017, OPEG would like to invite evaluators and non-profit professionals to participate in the second iteration of Evaluation without Borders in AEA 2018. This pro-bono consulting event provides an opportunity for conference attendees to reflect on this year’s conference theme and understand how evaluation could facilitate and contribute towards Speaking Truth to Power.
Rad Resources:
Giving back to the community. We would like to invite you to participate in Evaluation without Borders and have created a sign-up form, also available on the OPEG website, to facilitate participation in this event. Please share some details about your evaluation experience and areas of expertise that you would like to volunteer with as a pro-bono consultant. The pro-bono consulting sessions are scheduled for Monday, October 29th, Tuesday October 30th and Wednesday October 31st. On Wednesday, October 31st the event ends at 2pm so that we can attend the opening plenary.
[For additional information, please contact Seema Mahato at sm618312@ohio.edu]
We’re looking forward to the fall and the Evaluation 2018 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.