Let’s talk about evaluation

When most people think of evaluation, they associate it with something that happens at the end of a project. Then, we look at the project after it's done and decide whether it was a success or not. When designing I AM EUROPE concept we felt that project evaluation actually needed to be an integral part of the project from the beginning, and we were sure that involving stakeholders - people directly connected to and affected by our project – was tremendously important. This is the reason why we decided to use PARTICIPATORY EVALUATION methodology, and invited Susanne Ulrich from Centre for Applied Policy Research in Munich and dr. Tilman Eckloff as our experts to conduct the process throughout the way.

Such a process, as we shall see, is not just a matter of inviting stakeholders to take part.  Involving those who are affected by the project shifts the whole nature of it from something done for a group of people to a real partnership between beneficiaries and project initiators.  Rather than powerless people who are acted on, beneficiaries become the “copilots” of a project, making sure their true wishes and expectations of the project are recognized and addressed.  In I AM EUROPE case, we would like to see that our professional evaluators, project staff, project participants, and representatives of European institutions all become colleagues in an effort to improve the quality of European citizenship.

The first successful Stakeholders meeting in Berlin is behind us. We got to know and took responsibility for the approach of participatory evaluation and managed to develop criteria and indicators of I AM EUROPE success. The interactive and participatory exchange between different stakeholders of the project enabled us to radically rethink who initiates and undertakes the process, and who learns or benefits from the findings. 

Let’s meet at Joint Meetings and find out how our proposals work in practice. See you there!

Joanna Krawczyk

(EF)