In Search of evaluations that themselves are peace building, transformative, build community and nonviolent.
In reflecting on the appropriate ways to evaluation conflict transformation, peace building, community building, I have been thinking about how the model and process needs to be congruent with the values and practice being evaluated. Evaluation (based on various definitions found online), means to use information to understand the worth or value of something, to increase effectiveness, to determine the significance of something against a set of standards. As stated in a previous blog, the means and the ends can’t be separated. They can’t be separated in particular in this instance without in a sense doing violence, which is the very essence of what is being addressed in the work.
By this I mean that it is a form of violence to impose a set of values and assumptions about something which is ultimately subjective, the worth of an effort. These projects or programs are about supporting people to find their own capacity to transform conflicts, to build peace, to build peaceful, thriving communities. Evaluation processes that disempower, silence or ignore, or otherwise under privilege the voices of those doing the work and being impacted in and by the work (sometimes called beneficiaries or target groups or partners) are in stark contradiction to the vision, goals, purpose and objectives of the work.
There is a tension between the paradigm that assumes things can be objectively known and in particular can be know through SMART (Specific, Measureable, Attributable, Realistic, and Timebound) indicators and the messy reality of conflict and the movement toward nonviolence and peace in the midst of violence.
On the other hand, it is critical to learn from the work, to discover what is working and what isn’t and how and why and to strengthen and grow the field through knowledge that is articulated and shared. It is important to be accountable not only financially and at some basic programmatic level, but for organizations to be deeply accountable to their partners, beneficiaries, staff as well as funders that they are doing the best they can and modifying their work as needed based on reliable, rigorous and credible feedback or evaluation.
I think the interesting question is how this can be done. How can the fields of conflict transformation and community building use processes that empower, that give voice to all, that privilege local knowledge, that trust participants AND that generate useful evaluation not only for those involved, but that grow the knowledge base.
The Logical Framework Analysis methodology is near ubiquitous with funders. If you add in Theories of Change methodologies, you have covered what the vast majority of funders require, if they require anything, as both planning and evaluation frameworks. As both of these processes often fail, though it is not antithetical to the methods, to include any or sufficient input from partners and beneficiaries, and are rarely implemented in an empowering way, what are the best complementary methods that can address their shortcomings? And how does this vary depending on the kind of program – dialogue, training, unarmed peacekeeping, building civil society organizations, supporting democratic processes, supporting human right defenders for instance. Different interventions require different evaluation methods. How can local, specific, subjective, idiosyncratic knowledge live with, relate to, mutually inform knowledge generated by logic models, often at a distance, often by “outsiders”, including external evaluators. What are the paths to peace building, community building evaluation, processes that determine worth, value, effectiveness and significance in appropriate, nonviolent ways? This is the inquiry I am engaged in. Thoughts, suggestions, resources, feedback, reflection are welcome from all.
