What is Participatory Evaluation?
Side by Side is committed to a participatory approach to evaluation. The focus of participatory evaluation is to actively engage those who the project is for in all aspects of the evaluation process. This helps them build skills and knowledge that empowers them to effect sustainable change. Rather than simply giving a report card at the end of a project, participatory evaluation runs in parallel to a community project. It not only accounts for what happens, it also makes use of the insider knowledge of participants to inform the development and implementation of the project.
Participatory evaluation:
- Builds capacities (motivation, knowledge, skills, resources and opportunities) for all of those involved.
- Describes not only what happened, but also how the project’s aims and objectives were enacted. It values the project process as much as the outcome.
- Communicates with the project participants as well as external stakeholders, to support timely action on learning and conclusions.
- Provides direct feedback about how initiatives are building capacities and changing the environment.
- Builds on what people already know and do. Participatory evaluation uses communication processes that are readily understandable to the local context and allow the participants to build on their own ways of doing things.
- Helps people understand the processes by which change actually happens in the specific cultural and local context of a project.
- Directly involves the project participants in the creation of knowledge and its ongoing application in project action. This ensures that a project is closely aligned with local cultural conditions.
- Builds a sense of collective responsibility and ownership of the project and its future.
- Is an integral project strategy as it builds capacities and facilitates local solutions to local issues.
- Encourages the participants to document what they are doing, allowing them to see the story of change unfolding, and reinforcing their capacity to solve problems and successfully plan and undertake initiatives in the future.