Join DME for Peace on Thursday, April 25th at 10:00am EDT, as Michelle Helman, Rotary Peace Fellow, hosts the M&E Thursday Talks to lead discussion on “Monitoring, Evaluation, and Learning from the Inside-Out.”
Participatory evaluation, development, and peacebuilding methods aim to decolonize top-down approaches by integrating inclusive, bottom-up practice which can unintentionally reinforce asymmetrical power dynamics. Michelle Helman will address how applying ‘inside-out’ evaluation tools in collaborative monitoring, evaluation, and learning (ME&L) practice can transform this obstacle into opportunity.
Michelle draws from experience monitoring the 2016 Colombian Peace Accord with Kroc Institute and her own research on peacebuilding evaluation as a Rotary Peace Fellow. She encourages participants to examine, engage with, and re-imagine their own tools and practice. She will offer opportunities to explore how, together, we can co-create definitions of commonly used vocabulary, check our assumptions, and ground theory in lived experience to design and integrate collaborative evaluation tools.
A learning outcome for participants is to have increased awareness of, and the capacity to, engage in collaborative ME&L, from the inside-out. Following the presentation, participants are encouraged to ask questions and discuss how to best apply these skills within their own practice.