Thursday, July 12, 2007

It should start at the beginning but...

The first point of note is that while ideally these sort of evaluations would start at the beginning of the programme, East Oxford Action has yet to experience one that has done so. The reality of funding programme rounds with the short notice between the funding being announced and the project or programme being submitted virtually prohibits this. Another inhibitor is the need to fit the programme to the funder's specification, to balance the participants' objectives and those of the funder – power dynamics in play before the project/programme even starts. However where participatory and empowerment evaluations are employed albeit after the start of the programme, it is possible to use them as the starting point for the next programme, hence the end-of-programme evaluation session is also the opening session of the next programme.

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