Let's Make and Use Our Own Tools

2 GUIDING QUOTES ON THE PATH TO THE FUTURE OF EVALUATION

 This week many of us venture to 14-degree weather to attend the 2019 American Evaluation Association Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. As we connect with our community of practitioners and learners two quotes lift up the central tensions of our work. How and when do we apply culturally responsive and equitable in our contexts? How do we seed incremental change and spur transformational change in our institutions?      

It is my belief that the path to the future of our field is to develop practitioners who lean into evaluation as service to the communities that we love. These leaders will usher in community-first practices, accountability and learning processes, and systems change transformation that will shake up evaluation for the better of the least of us, for all of our sake. I see an evaluation future where these fundamental shifts reverberate from Foundation board rooms to Non-Profit convenings to Government policies and beyond.

This year, I show up to AEA to co-facilitate a professional development workshop on Utilizing a Racial Equity Lens in Strategic Engagement and Evaluation with dynamic colleagues Dr. Paul Elam, Dr. LaShaune Johnson, and Dr. Kristine Andrews. I show out at AEA by engaging graduate students and new evaluators in a skill builder on Finding Your Evaluator Identity. Both offerings extend beyond the confines of what we read in our classic texts and learn in our traditional programs, with the goal to sharpen our tools as we collectively build the path toward the future of evaluation. The through line in each is an invitation to refuse to play a flawed game, and instead to use our gifts and talents to build a more just and equitable field of evaluation. My contributions are to facilitate accountability and learning opportunities for folks to iterate and construct anew their evaluative practice.

Why do you attend AEA every year? What is on your learning and professional development agenda? What do you see on the path to our collective evaluation future? Join the community conversation, planning, collaboration and action. 

#transformation #Eval19 #evaluation #LEEAD #CREA #CREE #equitableeval #mirrorgroup

Mindelyn Anderson is Founder + Principal of Mirror Group LLC