Mirroring Social Justice and Equity in Evaluation Projects by Incorporating Lived Experiences and Community Voices

Abstract Information: Our evaluation projects are intentionally selected as opportunities to shed light on social justice, and reflect the voices we amplify and empower in evaluation. The questions we raise in this think tank will take us from “So what?” to “To whom does it matter?” The question we raise stems from our professional and personal interests in making the invisibility of communities’ evaluative expertise visible to practitioners beyond the academic halls in which we were formally trained. Our own published work in academic textbooks for evaluators has elevated the importance of acknowledging “lived experiences” among participants of evaluation processes i.e., design, data collection, and sensemaking. The work we do also applies to evaluators who are academically trained as such and/or having crossed over from science-based academic disciplines. In our practice, we observe that evaluators can adhere to the principles of the evaluation profession while conducting work through a social justice lens that illuminates, and offers insights about communities impacted by evaluation findings. These offer diverse perspectives in the work, uplift the voices of systemically underrepresented communities, and provide opportunities for the voices of the communities to heard and included in the decisions that eventually impact them. We seek emerging evaluators as the audience we anticipate will want to carry on evaluation work for the ultimate benefit of inclusion and diversity in thinking, practice, and the eventual development of organizational and programmatic policies to address inequities in social, economic, and political arenas. The context of this think tank discussion will include a recent submission of written work for African Evaluation Journal, where we explore how our evaluation practices are derived from pride in Ghanaian and Mexican ancestral roots, lived experiences as foreign born and first-generation “Americans,” formal training in the United States, and ongoing interest in evaluation to enhance the quality of life for systemically underrepresented racially and ethnically diverse communities. We will also discuss the applicability of that work across systemically underrepresented communities in the United States. As we explore the question of “To whom does it matter?”, breakout group members will explore from their own work how they center the communities they work with, how they ensure the voices of the communities are uplifted, and ideate through collective sharing on how to further enhance social justice and equity.