The Harvard Family Research Project separated from the Harvard Graduate School of Education to become the Global Family Research Project as of January 1, 2017. It is no longer affiliated with Harvard University.
Volume lll, Number 3&4, 1997
Issue Topic: Community-Based Initiatives
From the Director's Desk
 |
| Heather Weiss |
Those of us who have watched social services over the years know that fundamental and exciting changes are occurring. Decreasing confidence in top-down, one-size-fits-all solutions to persistent problems and increasing disengagement of people from services and one another are once again leading to a focus on communities—local solutions to local problems. The possibilities of this focus for our most troubled communities are tremendous, both in terms of the social and economic changes and of empowering people and reconnecting them with one another—what Robert Putnam calls civic engagement. Our challenge as evaluators, policymakers, practitioners, and funders is how we begin to document and examine community-based initiatives (CBIs) in a way that enables us to learn all we can about them. Evaluation of CBIs, like CBIs themselves, requires flexibility, the inclusion of many voices, a willingness to try new approaches, and a desire to share practices and experiences with one another.
This issue of The Evaluation Exchange carries on a discussion of CBIs that we began in our Winter 1996 issue. In that issue, we identified challenges that face people seeking to understand CBIs, promising methodologies for studying CBIs, and evaluation work currently underway.
In this issue, we continue to offer a variety of viewpoints, perspectives, and practices. Our “Theory and Practice” article summarizes practices, observations, and challenges in evaluating CBIs based on the comments of nine CBI evaluators. The three articles in our “Promising Practices” section each address different aspects of evaluating CBIs, reminding me, and hopefully others, of how many facets there are to our practice. Sharon Milligan and her colleagues examine the application of a theories of change approach to the Cleveland Community-Building Initiative. Joe Hall and Marianne Cocchini write about evaluation as a learning enterprise for a CBI. Tom Kingsley discusses the work that the Urban Institute is doing on the establishment and use of community- based indicators. In our “Questions and Answers” section, we speak with Mercer Sullivan about the use of ethnography in studying CBIs. We highlight an ongoing evaluation of the W. K. Kellogg Foundation's Youth Initiatives Program in our “Evaluations to Watch” section. In “Spotlight,” HFRP researcher Louisa Lund summarizes findings from her recent paper on common themes in community development. Our “New and Noteworthy” and “Electronic Mailbox” identify publications and Web sites of interest. Finally, we have included an insert which provides information on other resources to assist those working on CBIs.
From the inception of this newsletter in 1995, we have sought to provide an interactive forum for exchanging ideas and practices among policymakers, practitioners, funders, and evaluators. I encourage readers to send us comments on the newsletter and suggestions about how we might strengthen it. I would like to thank all who have contributed their thoughts and writings to this issue.
Heather B. Weiss, Ed.D.
Founder & Director
Harvard Family Research Project