Empowerment Evaluation in Baja California Mexico: The Gray Whale Exhibition

The Gray Whale Exhibition

The “Gray Whale” exhibition (http://www.proyectoballenagris.com/EN/tag/travesia/ ) was developed in Vancouver, San Francisco and Ensenada (Canada, USA, Mexico). The exhibition has been donated to the community of Guerrero Negro, Baja California Mexico. The donation, paired with an empowerment evaluation approach, is being used to establish a museum for the exhibition.   The ultimate goal is to attract tourists and build a more economically sustainable future.

Empowerment evaluation was helped to achieve two main objectives: 

1. First, determine the interest and value, as perceived by community members, of establishing a museum in the community

2. Secondly, if interest and commitment was confirmed, establish a dashboard with specific activities to be developed and monitored in order to achieve the established goals.

The community's mission was clear and they then took stock of the situation to better plan for the future.

They graphically represented their democratically selected options to facilitate understanding and discussion for action.

A dashboard helped the community highlight their goals, benchmarks, and actual performance.  It helps them monitor their progress toward their goals.

In this case, a more refined mission came out of the third step in the process - planning for the future.

Please contact Oscar Figueroa (oscar.l.figueroa@gmail.com) for additional details about the initiative and the empowerment evaluation.