121 - Building service provider competencies in data culture, capacity, and infrastructure to tell the story of their work and amplify community voice

Abstract Information: To support organizations with monitoring, evaluation, and impact assessment, evaluators often create data collection systems and processes for the primary purpose of answering specific evaluation questions. As a result, evaluators may inadvertently create data burden for organizations they seek to support. This Birds of a Feather presentation will highlight the role of evaluators in building data culture, capacity, and infrastructure to ensure that service providers are integrally involved in making meaning of data. Through empowerment evaluation capacity building, evaluators can support providers to have the data they need and want to use for their own purpose, including sharing the story of their work and uplifting community voice. We will share our experience using a participatory approach with providers to build data culture, capacity, and infrastructure by co-designing processes, tools, and products through active engagement with providers. We will share examples of how we tailor our capacity building approach to meet providers' unique needs and our work with funders to center strengths-based, empowerment evaluation. We will engage in discussion to share empowerment, participatory evaluation successes and lessons learned, including experiences centering strengths and equity in evaluation design processes with funders. By the end of this conversation, participants will learn and discuss how an intensive and iterative participatory evaluation approach can make substantial improvements in data collection capacity for providers, and how this approach best supports providers in telling the story of their work. The discussion will support participants in generating supportive ideas to center equity in their evaluation capacity building practice. This presentation encompasses three AEA competency domains (1, 3, and 5). It supports evaluator's professional practice using participatory evaluation methods, supports evaluators learn and understand provider's unique context to tailor capacity building, and supports the development of strong interpersonal relations to ground evaluation and capacity building effectiveness.