260 - How do we begin? A practical toolkit to bring equitable and participatory approaches to action, today.

Abstract Information: How do we listen? How do we learn? How do we balance the tension between amplifying the voices of the underrepresented and attending to participant and team needs throughout the evaluation process? Though we as evaluators may carry our own lived experiences into our evaluations, we are not experts in the lives of our participants; we are not experts of the communities we seek information from. If we are truly dedicated to amplifying voices in the field of evaluation and within the communities we serve, we must battle with our sense of urgency to pause, to listen, and to learn from the people we have tended to undervalue or ignore. We need to amplify the voices of those we often silence, and consider our participants and our own positionality at every stage in the evaluation process. Thus, how we structure our evaluation work in the service of equity matters just as much what information we gather through our evaluation. In this poster session, we will use brief case studies to share three tools in our data + soul toolkit across different phases of evaluation: (1) Centering lived expertise in project scoping: We will  present a simple method given to us by an early career evaluator on our team that centers lived experience as expertise, and guides scoping and go-no-go decisions about projects tackling social issues that touch close to the identities we hold. (2) Centering care in data collection: We will share how we created and implemented “data care packages”: a person-centered, trauma-informed data collection process, to center the needs and experiences of survivors of domestic violence and increase participation in data collection. (3) Analysis guided by equity: We will welcome attendees inside our process for equity checkpoints guided by our Data Equity Deck. We will show how we pause and reflect on how we’ve centered equity in our evaluation process or identify where we need to re-center, and stay accountable to amplifying community voice and creating accessible content. For each practice shared, attendees will be invited to engage with and explore these tools alongside the presenters. It can be intimidating to move beyond a framework or checklist and actually put equitable, and/or person-centered approaches into practice. While caution around getting things wrong and doing harm to communities guides us to act with humility and care, perfectionism can serve as a point of paralysis for taking the first step in shifting power. Attendees will leave this poster session supported with bite-sized, actionable approaches to creatively and confidently incorporate equity centered practices in their own evaluation landscapes.