Short Abstract

This presentation explores the equity and power dynamics in co-creating a Theory of Change for a systems change programme. It shares how evaluations can navigate equity-related challenges while embedding reflection, inclusion and usability in participatory evaluation practice.

Description

Participatory approaches have been increasingly promoted as ways to ensure diverse voices are heard in evaluation and to build a shared understanding across stakeholders. Yet in practice, they usually present evaluators with challenges and difficult trade-offs - balancing divergent perspectives and reconciling conflicting priorities while still delivering evaluation responsibilities within resource constraints.

This presentation reflects on what this “equity knot” (Gates et al. 2024) looks like in practice, drawing on our experience of co-designing of a Theory of Change (ToC) for a place-based systems change programme aiming to improve education, employment, and training (EET) outcomes for South Asian young people, particularly those from Pakistani and Bangladeshi backgrounds who face persistent barriers to good-quality work.

As action researchers embedded in the programme, we worked closely with a wide range of stakeholders, including young people, youth ambassadors, local partners, employers, communities, and funders, to co-create a ToC that valued and reflected multiple perspectives. While the process sought to ensure transparency and equity, it surfaced significant tensions around which forms of knowledge (e.g. practitioner, lived, research) most strongly shaped the ToC, whose ideas were prioritised or left out, and how divergent views on success could be brought together without losing evaluation focus or feasibility.

We documented these tensions through keeping a reflective learning log, tracking key decision-making points, rationales, trade-offs throughout the development of the ToC. This helped embed evaluative thinking and reflection into the programme’s ongoing learning and delivery to address systemic barriers influencing local youth employment.

Through the presentation, we will invite the audience to reflect on the “equity knots” in their own evaluation practice and to see equity not as an endpoint or a tick-box item, but as a continuous process of negotiation, reflection, and adaptation – an integral part of embedding evaluative learning in complex systems change initiatives.