Description

Traditional evaluation approaches often perpetuate power imbalances where external evaluators extract data from communities rather than empowering local ownership of assessment processes. This interactive World Café workshop challenges participants to reimagine evaluation as a community-led practice that builds local capacity while meeting accountability requirements.

Drawing from experiences in small-scale irrigation evaluation in Uganda and participatory monitoring frameworks across agricultural development contexts, this session explores four critical dimensions of community-led evaluation through rotating table discussions:

Table 1 will examine what genuine community ownership looks like in practice, moving beyond tokenistic consultation to meaningful control over evaluation design, implementation, and utilization. Table 2 will explore how external evaluators can shift from leading to supporting community evaluation processes, examining facilitation versus extraction approaches. Table 3 will investigate capacity building strategies that enable communities to conduct their own monitoring and evaluation, including training methodologies, resource requirements, and sustainability mechanisms. Table 4 will address the persistent tension between development partner accountability demands and community evaluation priorities, seeking practical approaches to satisfy both.

The World Café methodology enables diverse perspectives from across sectors to build collective intelligence around these complex challenges. Participants will engage in structured dialogue that builds upon insights from previous groups, creating layered understanding of how evaluation cultures can genuinely embed community ownership.

This workshop contributes to the evaluation field by providing practical strategies for redistributing power in evaluation processes, demonstrating how participatory approaches can enhance both evaluation quality and community empowerment. Expected outcomes include actionable frameworks for community-led evaluation design, strategies for evaluator role transformation, and approaches for balancing accountability with local ownership.

This proposal challenges traditional evaluator-community power dynamics by providing practical tools for genuine community-led evaluation that maintains rigor while building local evaluation capacity and ownership.