Introduction to Participatory and Empowerment Evaluation

“Participatory monitoring and evaluation is not just a matter of using participatory techniques within a conventional monitoring and evaluation setting. It is about radically rethinking who initiates and undertakes the process, and who learns or benefits from the findings.” Institute of Development Studies, 1998

Participatory and empowerment evaluation places all stakeholders at its heart, especially those who will live with the results of the programme. In such an approach the evaluation is not seen as a final judgement on whether the project or programme has been a success or not, but as a means to help people help themselves and improve their programmes. In this approach the evaluator is not an external judge but a critical friend, holding up a mirror to those involved in delivering the project, and facilitating the generation of solutions to problems and a more accurate self-image.

Participatory approaches to evaluation are used extensively by organisations working in the Third World, such as OXFAM and the United Nations Development Programme. The characteristics of participatory evaluation as opposed to more traditional evaluations are:

• the participation if a broad range of stakeholders rather than a limited number in a traditional evaluation

• the focus on participants: residents, project staff and stakeholders, rather than funders and programme managers

• the evaluator as facilitator and critical friend, rather than as expert

• a focus on learning through the process rather than on accountability/judgement

• the involvement of the participants in collecting the data, with the support of the evaluator, rather than the outside experts doing so.

There are many ways of delivering participatory evaluation and many tools for the job, especially rapid appraisal techniques, which will be familiar to the world of community development and regeneration.

Extract from paper by Zoe Brooks CEO East Oxford Action, 2007