With the rise of storytelling as a form of advocacy and resistance, and various forms of research and evaluation that place communities, researchers, and evaluators on the same playing field gaining in popularity, I’ve been refining my thinking and processes in develop more effective strategies for centering the voices and lived experiences of women and girls of color.
When I’m working with my clients, I always have in the back of my mind who I’m really working for. And it’s not my clients. My clients are essentially the gatekeepers. They provide the programs, services, and initiatives that are designed to reach women and girls of color. Depending on what I’m doing with clients, I’m tasked with finding ways to engage women and girls of color to share their experiences in order to measure the program, service, or initiative’s impact. But before I’m an evaluator or program designer, I’m an activist and community organizer.
The Center for Evaluation Innovation’s 2010 brief, “Grassroots Action and Learning for Social Change: Evaluating Community Organizing”, posits that evaluating advocacy initiatives and community organizing campaigns should be participatory, more prospective rather than less retrospective, learning-based, culturally responsive, and less academic. The brief also shares a framework for evaluating community organizing campaigns, which includes:
- Craft evaluation questions that are relevant and useful to organizers to generate buy-in and participation
- Set clear yet flexible interim benchmarks that focus on outcomes related to various organizing components (such as participation and membership, organizing wins, and organizational capacity)
- Utilize data collection methods that fit the style of the organization and tailored to capture various components of organizing
- Develop buy-in and trust for successful implementation
- Set achievable expectations to maximize learning and sustainability
- Use evaluation results to create impact
- Clarify what “success” means
Innovative and engaging frameworks and methods like these is what making program design and evaluation fun for me. And you’d think that processes like these are a no-brainer, but they aren’t for many organizations and communities.
“Should I pass you the mic, or speak for you?” is a question I first heard posed by Sahar Pirzada of HEART Women & Girls while attending her workshop at the Civil Liberties and Public Policy Conference earlier this year. She said it during a conversation with the workshop participants, and the question resonated with me so much, I wrote it down.
A month ago, I met with a client in the Chicago area to facilitate an evaluation meeting for the organization’s staff. At one point during the meeting, we discussed various factors that can impact an evaluation, including power dynamics, being culturally responsive, and being aware of how we show up in someone’s community. As a Black woman, a community or group may resonate with me due to my race or gender, but I’m aware of the identities I hold that add to the power dynamic. Also, there’s a prominent history of researchers and evaluators going into communities to collect data and not returning back to those communities as a form of accountability.
When I think of Sahar’s question, I’m reminded of the dynamic between people in positions of power and often marginalized communities and groups. It’s a question I now keep in the back of my mind as I work with the gatekeepers, and ultimately the communities they serve.
For me, passing the mic means meeting women and girls of color where they are, honoring their stories while inviting them to be part of the change making process. And speaking for them means holding myself and my clients accountable in how we share their stories and statistics, along with being creative and engaging in the storytelling and reporting back.
There are a myriad of ways that research and evaluation can be used to further the efforts of community organizing and engagement. Moving away from traditional academic means of doing so can cultivate richer experiences for the researcher/evaluator,the gatekeepers and the women and girls of color they serve.
