mediadev library

Practice Guide Series on Doing Evaluation in Service of Racial Equity: A Tool Kit for Practitioners

Kellogg Foundation (2024), vi, 91 pp.

"It has been almost two years since the 'Practice Guides on Doing Evaluation in Service of Racial Equity' were published. Since then, evaluators continue their commitment to advance racial equity through their practice as evident in the number of pre-conference workshops at the 2022 American Evaluat ... ion Association conference (almost one-third of total workshops), activities and publications by the Equitable Evaluation Initiative, and the growing network of culturally responsible equitable evaluation practitioners. Since the practice guides’ release, Community Science, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, conducted many workshops and webinars about the information in the guides. Questions were collected as part of the registration and during the events. The questions shed light on the challenges we still face in supporting and doing evaluation in service of equity. In general, people are still working to get concrete about how to implement such evaluations and overcome the resistance — intentional or not — to engaging in courageous conversations about racial equity and shifting current practices in evaluation, community engagement, strategy development, and grantmaking. The questions reaffirm that evaluators alone cannot advance the practice of doing evaluation in service of racial equity. The guides discuss the importance of recognizing this point. The larger systemic issues at play contribute to racial inequity, and social injustice requires all of us in philanthropy, government, nonprofit, and for-profit sectors to work differently. Community Science compiled common questions from evaluators, funders, executive directors, and program staff, organized them into themes, and attempted to answer them in this tool kit. Some questions cannot be answered easily because the solutions aren’t the evaluation profession and evaluators’ responsibility alone. For instance, questions about the distribution of wealth, role of philanthropy in closing the wealth gap, levers of change to prioritize public and philanthropic investments in communities of color, ways to manage and disrupt power differences between foundations and organizations that receive funding, use of power and narratives to center equity and justice in philanthropy, and building leadership that isn’t resistant to racial equity. There were also questions about shifting power, engaging communities, creating space in federal agencies for discussions about community engagement and racial equity, and changing mindsets and behaviors of leadership. In addition, there were questions we can only answer through a broader dialogue with social scientists from different disciplines with various philosophical approaches to research and evaluation (e.g., is community-based participatory research equitable, how to stop relying on pre- and post-outcome data). This tool kit isn’t intended to repeat the original practice guides. It compiles new information in slide decks, tip sheets, and blogs. Some of the blogs have been written by Daniela Pineda and her colleagues at RTI International in support of the Practice Guides. This tool kit also doesn’t contain all the answers. We invite you to take the guidance farther and share your experiences. This tool kit, in our humble opinion, is merely another way to approach evaluation in service of racial equity and a starting place for people interested in this work." (Introduction) more

Download (1)

Development and Promotion of the Right to Information in National Frameworks: Policy Guidelines

Bouchaib Bounabat

Paris: UNESCO (2023), 41 pp.

"The first part of these guidelines describes specific stakes related to Public Sector Information and Data (PSID) Access. It starts by defining PSID and their typology, continues by positioning their access at the heart of RTI, and stresses its ro ... more

External Link (11)

Social and Behavior Change Communication (SBCC) Demand Reduction Guidebook

RTI International

USAID Wildlife Asia;FHI 360 (2020), 69 pp.

"This Guidebook provides simple, easy-to-follow steps on how to use a social behavior change communication (SBCC) approach to plan, implement, and evaluate campaigns to reduce demand for wildlife products. To facilitate understanding and application, each step is illustrated by a case example from t ... more

Download (0)

Open Development: Access to Information and the Sustainable Development Goals

London: Article 19 (2017), 43 pp.

"This report reviews the current state of the right of access to information (RTI) across the world to provide a baseline for future assessments over the lifetime of the 2030 Agenda. It finds that there has been significant incorporation of the rig ... more

Download (0)

Report of the International Mission to Nepal for Promoting Freedom of Expression and Safety of Journalists

Toby Mendel (ed.)

Nepal International Media Partnership (NIMP);International Media Support (IMS) (2016), 25 pp.

"The primary objective of the 2015 NIMP Mission was to provide technical inputs to activities underway under UNESCO’s Safety of Journalists project, particularly in terms of setting up an independent national mechanism on safety at the National Human Rights Commission (NHRC). Another key objective ... more

External Link (9)

Freedom of Expression and Right to Information in ASEAN Countries: A Regional Analysis of Challenges, Threats and Opportunities

Putsata Reang et al.

London: Internews Europe (2014), 59 pp.

"Internews’ research reveals a confluence of conditions in ASEAN that make the present time a critical moment for Freedom of Expression / Right to Information (FoE/RTI) interventions in the region. As donor support dwindles, and threats to FoE in ... more

Download (0)

Global Right to Information Update: An Analysis by Region

Lydia Medland, Toby Mendel (eds.)

Freedom of Information Advocates Network (FOIAnet) (2013), 91 pp.

"The Update reveals that the challenges faced by advocates, and the campaigning tactics used in each region, are at times remarkably similar. National civil society coalitions, for example, are mentioned by many authors as having made a central contribution to campaigns. In other cases, challenges d ... more

Download (1)

Capacity Development in Fragile States

Derick W. Brinkerhoff

Maastricht; Washington, DC: European Centre for Development Policy Management (ECDPM);RTI International (2007), iv, 32 pp.