Empowering Voices: A Proposed Unified Model for Inclusive Evaluation in the Global South

Abstract Information: Title: Empowering Voices: A Proposed Unified Model for Inclusive Evaluation in the Global South Abstract Making the issue of marginalized voices a priority in project evaluation not only enhances project design and effectiveness but also promotes social justice, accountability, and positive social change. It is widely documented that evaluation designs that incorporate not only quantitative tools but also qualitative approaches —interviews, photo voice, and focus group discussions—are especially effective in capturing a richer diversity of voices and perspectives in evaluations. Yet during project evaluations, numerous individuals and groups, particularly those in the global south, are often inadvertently or intentionally excluded or underrepresented because of a range of barriers, especially those rooted in cultural or religious world views, or because of methodological choices. During evaluation design, these barriers are sometimes superficially or dismissively addressed by the evaluators, or else are treated as afterthoughts. This is especially true in women-specific and youth-specific projects in the global south, where project beneficiaries continue to face multiple barriers. At other times, evaluation design choices, data collection methods, or data treatment measures (such as omitting outlier observations entirely or replacing them with average observations) have the effect of overlooking and suppressing marginalized voices instead of acknowledging and uplifting them. This invariably leads to missed learning opportunities. Worse, it helps to perpetuate inequalities, exacerbates social exclusion, and reinforces an imbalance in the power dynamics of a society. Another weakness in evaluation design is that, despite some attempts by researchers to propose inclusive, participatory evaluation models, the current models have often taken a piecemeal, siloed approach that results in incomplete analyses of the biases inherent in projects. Drawing on a Mixed-methods approach, this study proposes a four-tier, unified evaluation framework that incorporates a sequence of Transect Walk (TW) – Gender Progress Markers (GPM) – Gender Action Learning System (GALS) and Randomized Control Trial, the goal of which is to locate and draw in the voiceless and the left behind. In vulnerable settings across agribusiness value chains in MEDA West Africa intervention areas, this comprehensive holistic framework has empowered many women and youth entrepreneurs by highlighting concrete instances of marginalization, and the strategies and pathways that marginalization typically takes. Using evidence from these studies, we propose an improvement to the theory and practice of evaluation by offering two personas of the “marginalized”: the hard-to-reach and the reachable-but-silenced. Hard-to-reach participants are those that evaluators find difficult to engage because of an assortment of participant-side barriers. Examples: Constricting religious views, cultural stereotypes, and presuppositions, war/conflict, difficult terrain, great distance, inconvenient time, or other mobility restrictions. Reachable-but-silenced participants are, in principle, accessible but often are not adequately included or considered in evaluation processes owing to methodological or programmatic biases. Our proposed framework could offer evaluators useful lessons and tactical advice, especially in the areas of negotiating traditional constraints with cultural or religious authorities to empower marginal populations.