“The difference between work and play is only a matter of attitude. Work, fully done, is play” Gerald May
Anyone who’s worked with me knows the importance I give to playfulness! It changes the perspective on the work we do and gets people to think outside the box.
When I presented ReThink Social Change cards at the American Evaluation Association Conference a few years back, I came up with this origami “fortuneteller” for a teasing video and printed some for attendees. If I had assessed the success of the session based on how many of those were folded and discussed, it was a huge success! But I digress…
If you have an evaluation coming up, I have a better suggestion to “copying and pasting” text from a previous evaluation TOR. Try to carve out some time to sit down and think about what you want out of the evaluation.
No more than 2 hours!
Around the table you’ll need managers, M&E folk, some participants and some implementing partners.
Apart from being an inclusive process in and of itself, it will be a useful learning exercise. If inclusion and learning are not important to your organization, then see it as an efficiency exercise from a budgeting point of view. The returns on investment will be huge!
Benefits of having these conversations:
- Clarifying the purpose of the evaluation
- Listing the most USEful evaluation criteria and questions
- Clarifying audience and utilization
- Choosing the most appropriate evaluation methodology
- Choosing the evaluator more purposefully
During the conversation you will reflect on and unpack the usual evaluation criteria…
- RELEVANCE – what questions will allow us to know if we did the right things?
- COHERENCE – To what extent did the intervention fit the needs, context, beneficiaries?
- EFFECTIVENESS – how successful was the intervention in achieving its objectives?
- EFFICIENCY – how well were resources being used?
- IMPACT – what difference did the intervention make?
- SUSTAINABILITY – will/how will the outcomes/benefits last?
And explore other criteria that are appropriate to your area of work
- INTENT – how intentional was the intervention?
- INCLUSION – how inclusive were the activities?
- SCALE – was the scale appropriate for the objectives?
So go ahead, print out a few copies to get the conversation starting!
Hope this is helpful.
Cheers,
Ratiba
