Paper short abstract:

Impact Evaluation in North-South vs. South-North relations describe a process of Power Shift where all stakeholders are involved in a negotiation process, taking into account different and conflicting interests, within a decolonization dynamics promoting community empowerment and reframing of roles.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on the Lab-Com experience of social change and empowerment in “real” communities worldwide, namely in fragile contexts in times of crisis.

While “traditional” evaluation approaches favour the role of external consultants for the sake of impartiality, objectivity, accountability, applying rigorous rules and procedures, deepening unbalanced relations between donors and development organisations and between development organisations and communities/people, impact evaluation adopts a participatory and decolonising frame, promoting equity and redefinition of roles, focusing on power shift rather than measurability.

According to the Theory of Change approach, development interventions facilitate processes rather than mere results, empowering communities and people to take the stage with their own interests and conflicting positions: adopting an impact evaluation frame the assessors are more facilitators than experts, valuing change more than respect of initial plans and pacts: a successful community development project generates new plans and pacts, new dynamics, so that what was planned in the design phase cannot be positively evaluated if it has not evolved into something different.

Impact evaluation tells new stories and reframes the contexts, thus generating new needs and hope in continuos changes and achievements. The paradox being that the evaluation step opens new paths, communities and people involved are less satisfied because new perspectives and expectations emerge, contradictions are raised rather than appeased.

Examples form the community of practitioners involved in these processes include action-research, equity evaluation, participatory regranting mechanisms, community score cards assessment, collaborative practices and transformative approach requiring a mindset change in national and international contexts.