|  March 15, 2019 * Madison, WI
Vu Le
Keynote Vu Le (“voo lay”) is a writer, speaker, vegan, Pisces, and the Executive Director of Rainier Valley Corps, a nonprofit in Seattle that promotes social justice by developing leaders of color, strengthening organizations led by communities of color, and fostering collaboration between diverse communities. Known for his no-BS approach, irreverent sense of humor, and love of unicorns, Vu has been featured in dozens, if not hundreds, of his own blog posts at NonprofitAF.com, formerlynonprofitwithballs.com. We are excited to welcome Vu Le to Wisconsin, and hope you can join us for this important event and participation in ongoing discussions around the intersection of social justice and evaluation in the current political, economic, and social context in Wisconsin and beyond. Check out his blogs! How the concept of effectiveness has screwed nonprofits and the people we serve Brett Kavanaugh, and why we must stop intellectualizing and take more actions Philanthropy and the Destructive Illusion of “Leveling the Playing Field” |
 Asma M. Ali and Grisel Robles-Schrader, Chicagoland Evaluation Association Culturally Responsive Evaluation aims to integrate constituent’s specific cultural and contextual factors into programs to improve their effectiveness. However, few instructional guides exist to support diverse stakeholder engagement in this manner. Design Thinking (DT) is a streamlined user-centric process that can facilitate the integration of participants’ needs, life experiences, and understandings in the culturally responsive evaluation process. Often utilized in instructional and product design, DT techniques provides a guided process that is time-limited and utilizes participatory strategies that are transferable for evaluation settings. The facilitators will introduce the hands-on tools and techniques of DT, and brief examples from their own practice utilizing this approach in Latinx and other cultural communities. Participants will have an opportunity to apply these tools to an evaluation case study in this skill-building session in order to increase diverse stakeholder participation in culturally responsive evaluation.  Eric Hagedorn, MATC, Hagedorn Evaluation Services Do you want to establish the validity and reliability of your survey? Evaluators develop surveys all the time to administer to new populations. Join Eric Hagedorn to learn about several types of validity and reliability and the statistical tests you need to use. The session will include how to run several basic tests, interpret the results, and use them to fine-tune your survey. Bring your laptop for hands-on practice of the quantitative exercises and techniques presented in the session.  Lea Denny, HIR Wellness Center This session will encourage evaluators to think about how trauma and healing impacts their evaluation projects. The session will include some grounding work to get a pulse of each person's background/ comfort/ awareness with trauma, its causes (e.g., micro-aggression, implicit bias) and how it shows up in our mind, body, and actions. The session will include a mini-lecture on key concepts such as compassion resilience, toxic stress, vicarious trauma and healing. Participants will get to practice healing for themselves. The entire session will help evaluators foster explicit intentionality to using a healing lens in their evaluation practice.  Kate Westaby and Troy Willams, Milwaukee Evaluation, Inc. ¡Milwaukee Evaluation! Inc. created and distributed our Culturally Responsive Evaluation (CRE) survey to understand when, how and if people conducting evaluations are using CRE. This session will review reactions and recommendations from Wisconsin evaluators to the CRE survey data and further engage conference participants to discuss how evaluators can increase knowledge about CRE, advocate for systems change, and produce changes in evaluation practice. |  Stephanie Steigerwaldt, Julie Swanson, & Nola Walker, What’s Possible Now We can't create new possibilities by using the same kind of thinking we used to create our current situation. We need to change the way we think and imagine. To think differently, it’s not enough to change the words we use…the images need to change as well. We need to make the diverse wisdom in the room visible. In this hand’s-on springboard session, you’ll learn simple visual skills that make it easy, fast and fun to see in new ways, explore possibilities and work with people who see the world differently than you. Words are only one way to communicate. Change leaders need to expand their tool kit to include visual literacy. This session will get you started then you can practice throughout the day recording what you hear. Participants will be invited to re-group at the end of the conference to celebrate their triumphs, and reflect on and hold in compassion, any growing pains.
Lucy Mkandawire-Valhmu, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee How do the concepts of feminist, emancipatory, and post-colonial theories inform your evaluation and research methodologies? What about capitalist globalism? In this advanced session, we will explore these ideas and more as they apply to evaluation practice and social change  Eastside Youth Evaluation team and Centro Hispano's Escalera Program Youth Evaluators will give a short description of their current projects and then be available to consult with evaluators hoping to better engage youth voice in their work.  Armando Ibarra This presentation will use The Latino Question: Politics, Laboring Classes and the Next Left and other applied research conducted by Prof. Ibarra, as examples of how to write and develop case studies using a critical and or transformative lens and methodology. Participants will be asked to engage in a discussion on the characteristics of sound critical case study approaches; the (dis)contents, challenges, and barriers faced by mixed methodological approaches; and, the role of research, if any, in transformative social movements engaged in attempting societal change. 
Linda Xiong, Zeidler Center Decolonizing outcomes: Program outcomes are often determined and defined outside of the impacted community. In this session we will explore key concepts, engage in an activity to critically reflect upon your own program outcomes and examine how to work towards decolonization. This session is good for emerging evaluators and practitioners. Please bring your program outcomes from past or present work if you have them. All are welcome.  More than just a talking shop, this conference will also provide you a chance to practice your graphic recording skills throughout the day. We need graphic recorders who can work with social justice concepts and the conference will offer a space to do just that. Paper will be provided, please bring your own markers and other art supplies. |
