AEA 2009 Collaborative, Participatory & Empowerment Think Tank

AEA Think Tank. We had an excellent Think Tank session this year. The participants were asked to write down the strengths and limitations of collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation. They engaged in a dialogue about the topic and then reported back to the larger group.

The "expert" panel consisted of: of Drs. Shula, Rodriguez-Campos, O'Sullivan, and Fetterman commented on the participant's work and insights.

The group had a series of significant and thought provoking questions about the use of the approaches.


The group also generated a list of topics to stimulate our thinking about next year's sessions. A few of those topics are listed below:

• Degree of participation
• Time factor
• Sharing what we know best
• Organizational contextual factors
• Empowerment of individuals vs. groups
• How negotiate people's resistance
• Generating buy-in

See our Collaborative Web Site for additional information about the session and the opportunity to create your own web pages on our collaborative web site. It is at:

https://sites.google.com/site/cpeevaluationcenter/Home

Here is the URL for more information about our work at the Think Tank at AEA 2009:

https://sites.google.com/site/cpeevaluationcenter/Home/discussion-board---next-annual-meeting