دانلود رایگان مقاله شکست خوردن بهتر و هنر تصادفی ارزیابی برنامه اقدام محیطی

Abstract

This article provides insights into the evaluation of a government-funded action for climate change program. The UK-based program aimed to reduce CO2 emissions and encourage behavioral change through community-led environmental projects. It, thus, employed six community development facilitators, with expertise in environmental issues. These facilitators supported and learnt from 18 community groups over an 18-month period. The paper explores the narratives of the six professional facilitators. These facilitators discuss their experiences of supporting community groups. They also explain their contribution to the wider evaluation of the community-led projects. This paper reflects on the facilitator experience of the program’s outcome-led evaluation process. In turn, it also explores how the groups they supported experienced the process. The facilitator’s narratives reveal that often community-group objectives did not align with predefined outcomes established through theory of change or logic model methodologies, which had been devised in attempt to align to program funder aims. Assisting community action emerges in this inquiry as a stochastic art that requires funder and facilitator willingness to experiment and openness to the possibilities of learning from failure. Drawing on in-depth accounts, the article illustrates that a reflexive, interpretive evaluation approach can enhance learning opportunities and provides funders with more trustworthy representations of community-led initiatives. Yet, it also addresses why such an approach remains marginal within policy circles.

5. Conclusion

Despite the burgeoning literature concerning community-led action for environmental crisis, scope remains for empirical studies that consider evaluation of government-supported initiatives. The aim of this study was, thus, to provide insights into how facilitators engaged community groups with predefined assessment processes. It is crucial to note that collaborative programs will differ in terms of individual spatial and temporal contexts (Fitzpatrick, 2012). Moreover, environmental interventions are, according to Rog et al. (2012) “complex programs” that involve social and structural, as well as physical and economic processes. As a result, they require “methodological creativity and adaptation” (Rog et al., 2012: p. 29). This study sought to provide insights on an interpretive basis, into the experiences of a small group of facilitators. From the narratives of these individuals, three key themes emerged as having implications for the evaluation of community-led projects. Firstly, that developing pre-designed theory of change or logic model approaches to the evaluation of community projects emerged as problematic. Within the program under study, community facilitators were trained to address two pre-determined program outcomes. These were changes in behavior and reductions in carbon emissions. However, when community facilitators went into the field they found that these were neither appropriate nor feasible for capturing the outcomes of community-led environmental projects.