Greetings, AEA365 readers! Liz DiLuzio here, Lead Curator of the blog. To whet our appetites for this year’s conference in beautiful New Orleans, this week’s posts come to us from the feature the perspectives of the Gulf Coast Eval Network (GCEval) members, where the uniqueness of doing evaluation in the gulf south will be on display. Happy reading!
Greetings from the Gulf Coast Eval Network, and we look forward to welcoming you to New Orleans, Louisiana in just a few short months. You may have previously seen previous posts about topics like the launch of our somewhat new organization, the evaluators without boundaries program, and an entire week of LAWG-developed posts back in June.
Also, once the big event begins, we will provide a number of other opportunities as we desire to help make your travel to our city for the conference as meaningful as possible. These will include a local area restaurant, nightlife and cultural guide, a greeting table with additional local information inside the meeting hall, and some curated cultural performance within the conference itself. We really do look forward to seeing you, and potentially meeting some of you at our table.
With that in mind, this post intends to introduce you to a few of our gulf coast area evaluators and the amazing work that they are doing with their partners to further equity, social justice, and the decolonization of evaluation activity and practice in this area. In fact, the following local evaluators will be leading workshops and sessions or presenting posters at the conference itself. We encourage you to check out a session or two to get a feel for the work being supported by evaluators in our gulf coast communities.
Workshops
Designed for justice: Embodying community feedback in criminal legal system data & accountability; William Faulkner, Court Watch NOLA
Tues, Nov 8, full day workshop
We will immerse participants firsthand in the New Orleans criminal legal system, providing an opportunity to shape how a local non-profit performs culturally-responsive, equitable community monitoring of the courts.
An intro to Qualitative Comparative Analysis: An approach for investigating nuance and complexity; Jason Torres Altman, TerraLuna Collaborative
Wed, Nov. 9, 8:00am-10:45
Qualitative Comparative Analysis can be a strategy for formative and developmental purposes, that elevates voices, and celebrates nuance. This workshop will show how QCA purposefully investigates complexity, asking in what ways, and to what extent did multiple pathways influence desired implementation.
Conference Sessions
Sharing power when stakes are high: Trust-based and equity-focused grant evaluation in post-disaster contexts; Steve Mumford, University of New Orleans; Kellie Chavez Greene & Isabel Barrios, Greater New Orleans Foundation; Michelle Lawrence Bidwell, Granted Advisors; William Stoudt, Rebuilding Together New Orleans
Wednesday, Nov 9, 5:30-6:30 PM
This think tank will guide participants in sharing promising approaches to trust-based and equity-focused evaluation of disaster response grantmaking, based in part on the facilitators’ experience responding to Hurricane Ida in Southeast Louisiana.
(Re)evaluating inclusive methodology: Best practices for hearing young voices; Shannon Sharp & Moira Ragan, Center for Research Evaluation – University of Mississippi
Friday, Nov 11; 9:15-10:15 AM
We will provide lessons learned and tips from other evaluators to help in obtaining meaningful data when involving young children in data collection.
Seeding new connections between evaluators, researchers, and funders in the Gulf Coast region; Vanessa Lazar, Gulf Research Program at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine
Friday, November 11th; 12:30-1:30pm
This session invites evaluators into the ongoing conversation about how, and how equitably, the funding, scientific research, and ecosystem restoration efforts post-Deepwater Horizon oil spill are benefitting the Gulf Coast.
(How) Can Evaluation Be Healing?; Summer Wood & Kathy Namba, Ampersand
Friday, Nov 11; 4:30 PM – 05:30 PM
This roundtable will share the experiences of a team committed to documenting and evaluating a program in a way that explicitly attempts to heal from past harm, using a framework that promotes data sovereignty, respectful co-creation, and innovative digital technologies that open opportunities for deep engagement.
Deconstructing identities to (re)shape evaluation: Dismantling biases and advancing community advocacy and equity; Monica L. Coleman, LeKesha Perry, Moira Ragan, and Olivia Melvin, Center for Research Evaluation – University of Mississippi
Friday, Nov 11, 4:30 PM – 05:30 PM
In this roundtable, evaluators who work in Mississippi share lessons learned while conducting evaluations among multiple cultures, contexts, and funders throughout a state often referenced for its poverty and disparities.
We’re looking forward to the Evaluation 2022 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. The views and opinions expressed on the AEA365 blog are solely those of the original authors and other contributors. These views and opinions do not necessarily represent those of the American Evaluation Association, and/or any/all contributors to this site.