Empowerment Evaluation and Social Justice (new book)
Empowerment Evaluation and Social Justice:
Confronting the Culture of Silence
Definition
Empowerment evaluation is the use of evaluation concepts, techniques, and findings to foster improvement and self-determination. It is an approach that "aims to increase the likelihood that programs will achieve results by increasing the capacity of program stakeholders to plan, implement, and evaluate their programs. It is the "Give a person a fish, and you feed them for a day. Teach a person to fish, and you feed them for a lifetime" concept applied to evaluation. It cultivates a sense of ownership and is mainstreamed as part of the planning and management of a program or organization. In essence, empowerment evaluation is a tool to help people produce desired outcomes and reach their goals.
Scope
Empowerment evaluation has become a global phenomenon, reaching the four corners of the earth in less than a couple of decades. It is operating in over 18 countries, including Australia, Brazil, Canada, Ethiopia, Finland, India, Israel, Japan, Mexico, New Zealand, South Africa, South Korea, Spain, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. It is a change process that has supported people and communities in improving their lives in places ranging from small townships in South Africa where sustainable community health initiatives were created to large-scale Silicon Valley corporations, including Hewlett-Packard and Google, where the process helped to build tech and small-business capacity in communities of color.
Social Justice
Empowerment evaluation is grounded in an emancipatory tradition. It is designed to help people learn to confront the status quo by questioning assumptions and prescribed roles, unpacking myths, and rejecting dehumanization, and no longer blindly accepting the "truth" about how things are or can be. Empowerment evaluation helps people think critically about the world around them.
Empowerment evaluation is also inexorably bound to the pursuit of social justice. Social justice is fundamentally about fairness. It involves respecting and protecting everyone's human rights. Social justice applies to a wide variety of areas, including health care, education, employment, housing, and safety. It requires access to essentials; being heard (and not silenced), including hearing marginalized and vulnerable voices; participation; and equity. A few of the most pressing social justice issues include racial equity, gender equality, and LGBTQ+ rights.
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