Making Evaluation Meaningful: Building Capacity for Community-based Evaluation in Times of Disruption

The trend of community-based evaluation has shifted the focus from seeing evaluation reactively to appease funder expectations, to seeing evaluation proactively for healthy organizational development. A community-based approach to evaluation can help evaluation to be meaningful and support adaptive management, especially during disruptive and uncertain times. This workshop will explore how service provider organizations can build their community-based evaluation capacity. Each presentation will provide a unique angle from service provider, researcher, and government perspectives and bring examples of evaluation capacity-building during the global pandemic. Presenters are involved in the national project “Evaluating Refugee Programs” funded by IRCC (see www.eval4refugee.ca).