Jan 12, 2010 10:00:56 PM | GB News Research & Evaluation Program Now Underway!

Research & Evaluation Program Now Underway!

Johanna Chapin, 01/13/2010

How many of you have asked yourselves, What kind of impact are we really making in the community? What happens to the projects once we leave? What kind of services or sustainability are we ensuring to meet the ongoing and diversified needs in the community?

Well, those questions have led Global Brigades to start a new program in Community Research and Evaluation…and it’s now underway! Led by our new director, Johanna Chapin, the R&E program seeks to plan and carry out needs assessments in the Honduran communities where we work to better understand and tailor our programs to meet those needs. This will be done through a mixed-methods approach using surveys, community forums, in-depth interviews, and already-existing demographic and clinical information.

Currently in its formative stages, the program is building a network of partner organizations that do similar work and have monitoring and evaluation plans in place, in order to create a solid foundation, pool resources, and use best practices in developing and implementing our community assessments.

In addition to focusing on community research, another important aspect is program evaluation. Are our programs creating lasting change? From an evaluation perspective, the R&E program is working on strategic planning and developing frameworks called logic models that will prepare GB to evaluate the programs’ ability to achieve their defined goals and objectives.

In this way, our programs can begin gathering evidence and monitoring their successes and failures, so that the programs at GB can constantly be improving and becoming better equipped to achieve the impact we all aim to make in the lives of our Honduran compañeros.

Johanna and Joy working with the girls during the kids’ health education program.

It works! Johanna making sure the first latrine built in Joyas de Carballo is working well…