Learning to Listen: What Program Participants Can Teach Us About Empowerment. 1999.

A presentation to the 5^th International Qualitative Health Research Conference, University of Newcastle, Australia. Based on the regional CAPC evaluation.
By Nicole Bernard, Pauline Raven, Michelle Rivard, Yolande Samson, Madine VanderPlaat, and Lynn Vivian Book
9 pages
...html
...download full report (22 KB)

Description

Learning to Listen is a paper presented by staff of Health Canada's Population and Public Health Branch, Atlantic Region, in April 1999 to the 5^th International Qualitative Health Research Conference.  Its purpose is to provide insight into the complexity and value of an empowerment approach to community-based evaluation.  It is based on the Atlantic Region evaluation of the Community Action Program for Children (CAPC) and outlines some of the learnings of the Evaluation Management Team, which was made up of community, government, and university representatives.

The Atlantic Regional CAPC evaluation used a qualitative, participatory action research approach to evaluation.  The paper describes the process and then proceeds to discuss some of the challenges and benefits of empowerment evaluation.

CAPC project participants involved in the evaluation taught the Evaluation Management Team about empowerment evaluation and what is required to bring about change.  Learning to Listen discusses some of these learnings that relate to issues such as ownership, credibility, use of language, redistribution of power, social activism, and social change.  It concludes that an emancipatory model of empowerment evaluation recognizes that social change requires individuals, social structures, and systems to change - not just participants - and that success must be judged by what happens in the overall environment as well as to individuals and organizations.

Credits

Learning to Listen was written by Nicole Bernard, Pauline Raven, Michelle Rivard, Yolande Samson, Madine VanderPlaat, and Lynn Vivian Book for presentation at the 5th International Qualitative Health Research Conference, 1999.

Availability

This publication is available for download in English (22 KB) and French (25 KB). You will require the Adobe Acrobat Reader.

For more information on obtaining copies of the document, call or write

Public Health Agency of Canada
Suite 1525, 15th Floor, Maritime Centre
1505 Barrington Street
Halifax, NS B3J 3Y6
Tel: (902) 426-2700
Fax: (902) 426-9689
E-mail: atlantic-atlantique@phac-aspc.gc.ca