From the field: Implementing culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE)
Network Impact is a part of the national evaluation team for W.K. Kellogg Foundation’s Trust Racial Healing and Transformation (TRHT) efforts in 14 communities across the U.S. This team contributed an article to the book “Culturally Responsive & Equitable Evaluation” as an example of a practical application of culturally responsive and equitable evaluation (CREE).
Chapter 14
Evaluating the Truth, Racial Healing, and Transformation Framework
Implementing CREE Principles Across 14 Communities
Sylvia R. Epps, Cynthia Castaldo-Walsh, Rodney Hopson, Natalia Ibañez, Russell H. Jackson, Ron McCowan, Madeleine Taylor, and Howard Walters
This chapter presents the developmental evaluation approach grounded in CREE across different cultural, geographical, and sectoral lenses used to evaluate the WKKF’s TRHT efforts This chapter presents the developmental evaluation approach grounded in CREE across different cultural, geographical, and sectoral lenses used to evaluate the WKKF’s TRHT efforts across 14 communities. The underlying hypothesis of the TRHT framework as articulated by WKKF is that by advancing narrative change (or truth-telling) and racial healing (trust-building) agendas, local coalitions would be strengthened and empowered to drive transformative change within three key systems: law, economy, and separation. To implement the work, TRHT places (locations funded by WKKF grants) identified representatives from influential sectors in their communities to form a design team and conduct community visioning, planning, and implementation of the TRHT framework, focused primarily on narrative change and racial healing. WKKF contracted with Decision Information Resources, Inc. (DIR) to conduct the national evaluation of the implementation of the TRHT framework under the leadership of Dr. Sylvia Epps. DIR augmented the national evaluation team to include a social network analysis expert (Dr. Madeleine Taylor of Network Impact) and a subject-matter expert (Dr. Rodney Hopson of the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign).
Understanding that each community operates under different historical, geographical, and cultural settings and with the premise that the evaluation should not be done to communities but with them, we used CREE principles to guide and adapt the evaluation across the 14 TRHT communities. More specifically, in this chapter, we discuss the following:
the history, formation, and framework of TRHT
our approach to designing and implementing CREE principles in the evaluation
how the 14 communities implemented local evaluations
the gaps in our approach
The book can be purchased at: Cognella Publishing or retail booksellers : Amazon, Barnes and Noble or Bookshop.org