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 […]

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

An Evaluator’s Contribution to Sandy Hook

Supporting Healing and Empowerment On December 14, 2012, a tragedy occurred at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT. A strong reaction rippled across the country and, in many cases, this inspired action to build awareness, peace and stronger communities. Within days, the Sandy Hook Healing Project (SHHP), developed by Heather Gunn-Rivera, opened its […]

Theory of Action/Theory of Change- A few tips and lessons learned…

For a ToA to be more than just a map, the facilitator needs to be sure that the organization has the understanding and capacity to take on facilitation itself (for example by providing suggestions, a simple toolkit). The goal is for the   process of critical thinking to  happen independently of a facilitator, and for […]