The 'P' in our CAPE: Participatory Evaluation - by the community + for the community
A recent book club discussion about the challenge of adult friendships in the present day has had me thinking a lot about the importance of a sense of community.
On that note, a portion of a recent conversation between two of my favorite thinkers, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy and writer Anand Giridharadas, really struck me. Surgeon General Murthy shared that statistics show that people now are working more - “and parents are parenting more, even though they’re also working more.” He asks, “Where is that time coming from, that extra time? You put all this together and that time that is eroding is a time that we spend in person with family and friends, the time we spend for ourselves, and the time we spend for our communities.”
A non-cringey survey that helps coalitions understand themselves
Today, I’m going to talk about surveys.
Does that make you cringe?
I understand if it does. Surveys get a bad rap.
We’re often trying to get participants in a program or members of a community to take a survey, and - often - we don’t provide enough context for them to buy into the value of the information they’re sharing or for them to believe any changes will result from their input. To be fair, and to make matters worse, oftentimes there aren’t changes made as a result of survey responses.
Leveraging the power of in-person gathering
I’ve been thinking a lot about the power of in-person gathering on the professional end as well. After a long summer vacation, this Fall has been a period of reconvening in person.
Last month, we had an in-person kick off for a DC School Behavioral Health Consortium that drove home the energy and sense of community that can come simply from sitting around the same table. I also loved the icebreaker the meeting conveners used to set the stage for our time together - they shared a collage of different images representing collaboration and asked each person, as we went around the room for introductions, to share which image resonated most with them and why. What a great way to orient the group to the reason we had come together and unearth some key distinctions and nuances in how each person at the table might approach this work. We’ve gotten used to “setting the stage” activities in virtual spaces, but they are just as valuable in in-person gatherings.