Field Notes

In "Field Notes" we'll be regularly reporting on our evaluation work, discussing challenges, approaches, strategies, sharing learning. Hopefully colleagues will share any of their own insights!

Theory of Change Guide – In Spanish!

We recently translated our guide for a three day workshop we are facilitating for members of  Lutheran World Services in Central America. We hope you find it useful, and please feel free to share! ToC Guía_AEC_Oct2017

Decolonizing Development

We recently participated in a conference Decolonizing development: Whose Voice, Whose Agenda?  co-produced by INTRAC and the Centre for Global Development at the University of Leeds. The full summary of the three day conference can be found here at the bottom of the page. Catherine Borgman-Arboleda’s comments as a key contributor are here: Decolonizing Development_Catherine Borgman-Arboleda_full

Evaluating Communities of Practice & Social Learning

During one of the days of the KM4Dev Seattle convening  we discussed the CoP Value Creation Framework. The framework identifies five stages of value creation for social learning – Immediate value (what you experience), potential value (what you get out of it), applied value (what you do with it) , realized value (results), and transformative […]

Reflections on Social Learning & Communities of Practice (KM4Dev Convening, Seattle 2017)

I recently attended a KM4Dev convening in Seattle Washington. KM4Dev is an international “Community of Practice”  focused on knowledge management, sharing or more generally social learning for development. The workshop was facilitated by the extraordinary Nancy White  who brings years of wisdom (and fun!) to the deep work of collaboration and learning and thought leaders […]

Embedding Evaluative Thinking into Social Change Initiatives

Embedding Evaluative Thinking_Reflections & Recommendations Included are some of our reflections and recommendations drawn from the last five years of longer-term engagements with foundations and international NGOs interested in developing within and between organizations and communities. (These were largely taken from recommendations of final reports, so to some degree written for an internal audience). Also see our […]

Framework – Evaluating Social Justice Work

A visual we put together a number of years ago that illustrates some key concepts in theories of change for Social Justice work. We have found this to be helpful for understanding what to explore in evaluation projects, as well narrating the significance of findings in a context of longer-term change. Theories – Social Justice […]

Participatory Action Learning

Blog posts on our learning over the last few years, with lots of resources and links to concrete tools! Participatory Action Learning – Insights into a catalyst for transformative change. Details on the Action Learning Approach – Concrete tools and resources.

Our Comments on Evaluation and Social Justice Philanthropy

Catherine Borgman-Arboleda recently presented an evaluator’s perspective for the National Network of Consultants to Grantmakers webinar on Social Justice Philanthropy. Here are her comments.cba_social-justice-philantropy-slides_fin

How do we support knowledge sharing and learning?

  Recently AEC member Catherine Borgman-Arboleda was involved with leading the design and implementation of a multi-country participatory monitoring and learning process for groups working on issues of women’s empowerment. These are a few key take-aways from the experience:  *Timelines need to come from the pace, rhythms, and priorities on the ground. This does not lessen […]

Building Community Advocacy Capacity: A Few Lessons Learned from Tobacco Policy Change

In the spirit of making sure that evaluation resources provide the greatest benefit, we are sharing these findings from an evaluation conducted from late 2009 to early 2012, for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Two members of AEC were senior evaluators on RWJF’s Tobacco Policy Change (TPC) evaluation. AEC believes in the importance of evaluation’s role […]