Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation Business Meeting

Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Evaluation Business Meeting (CP&E)

We started the meeting with a brief review of the highlights of the year.

They included Cindy's work on Facebook - keeping us up-to-date on the latest CP&E news:

We highlighted our tools to help people learn more about our group, including posters and fliers:

We also highlighted a few recent publications.

However, the CP&E business meeting was no ordinary business meeting.  

It was a consciousness raising activity designed to help us gain a better insight into our strengths and weaknesses as evaluators.

We asked everyone to stand by the type of tool that best represented their strengths or what tool they identified with as an evaluator:  a drill, a shovel,  or a tape, measure.  We also posted a blank sheet they could fill in.

To our surprise only one person stood by the tape measure.  She was committed to measurement - that part was not surprising.

Many of us thought that is where we would find the cluster of evaluators.  

The drill represented the next group - drilling down into the issues.

The shovel represented the second largest cluster of evaluators.  They wanted to unearth things, get the soil ready, and well I thought I had a good handle on what they were looking for.

Finally, the largest cluster of evaluators selected the blank sheet.  We are a fiercely independent lot.  Each evaluator selected a different tool that best represented their strengths.  The tool box was one of the best metaphors selected during the evening, highlighting how we look at the issue or problem first and then find the appropriate tools to address the issue (rather than letting the methodological tail wag the evaluation dog).

The CP&E TIG Business Meeting was hosted and orchestrated by the co-chairs:

David Fetterman and Liliana Rodriguez-Campos

See you next year.

X