Empowerment Evaluation in the Digital Villages by Fetterman David;

Author:Fetterman, David;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Stanford University Press
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

8 THE FINISH LINE: MEASURING CHANGE OVER TIME

We have had a decent year, but we need that big finish to end the year right. I am anxious for the first win. I am not obsessing about it, but I am ready for it to happen so we can move on to the next challenge.

—Vitor Meira

There are many ways to measure change over time. The focus may be on lap time or the finish line in a race. These correspond with program progress and outcomes. However, they all have one thing in common. They have at least two data points:1 one before the intervention and another after the intervention.

We began this story with the ending—Digital Village success stories. These were really measurements of change over time. The Tribal Digital Village built the largest unlicensed2 wireless system in the country and launched a successful digital printing press service. East Palo Alto Digital Village created an online resource center, digital community centers, and distributed hundreds of laptops to teachers and students. The Baltimore Digital Village distributed hundreds of computers and printers to families in their community and teachers in their schools. They also provided professional development training programs to local businesses. All of these accomplishments represent second data points, typically compared to a zero baseline when there was not any wireless system, digital printing service, or distribution of laptops to parents, teachers, and students.

There are many ways to document change over time. Everyone loves a story. Brief narratives3 are an efficient way of documenting and highlighting outcomes. A few are included in this chapter. Photography4 is an even more succinct manner of capturing and communicating about accomplishments. A picture is worth a thousand words, according to Barnard (1921). Illustrations, in the form of numbered figures, are sprinkled throughout this book. Storytelling5 adds a more personal dimension to data collection. Photovoice6 (photographs) and digital storytelling7 (videocamera) were tools used to enable Digital Village members to tell their own story while highlighting program outcomes and impacts. They are useful approaches to accommodate diverse voices in a community.8 The Digital Village empowerment evaluations relied on these among many other tools9 to document successes and to identify areas meriting attention.

However, in telling their stories, the Digital Villages’ most powerful language was the language of business: spreadsheets and bar charts.10 This language was appropriate because most of the success stories were told by small business entrepreneurs to a donor—a big business—who also spoke their language.

TRIBAL DIGITAL VILLAGE

Contrary to popular belief, people do not overinflate ratings of their performance, particularly if they are committed to social change, personal growth, and community well-being. In fact, they are often hypercritical of their own performance because they want to do a better job and they want their programs to work. People working in less than optimal environments are often looking for a way to fix what’s not working and to lead a more satisfying and productive life. Empowerment evaluation provides people with a window of opportunity to improve the organizational health of their work environments and to transform their communities’ well-being.

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