Learning from the EMI Process

To learn more about the impact of the EMI trainings and facilitation, a Master’s student at SNRE conducted a more detailed study of our first evaluation training for the Resources for Community Collaboration (November of 2003) and our first facilitated planning process for the Columbia River Greenways Alliance (March of 2004). Pre- and post-workshop interviews of participants were used to better understand the value of our process and to obtain information about how it could be improved.

In general, participants from these two events were very impressed with the evaluation training and facilitation. For some, the process helped them clarify group goals or to think more strategically about the importance of a particular activity. Others stressed that they learned new tools in evaluation that could be used or readily adapted to suit their needs. Still others pointed to the benefit of simply interacting with other practitioners facing similar challenges.

In facilitating these two evaluation initiatives, the trainers learned the importance of incorporating evaluation into a group’s every day activities. They also came to appreciate the need to provide long-term evaluation assistance to help people make use of EMI’s evaluation tools. These results and others are discussed in the thesis report, Building Capacity for Evaluation: Insights from Pilot Testing a New Approach to Ecosystem and Community-Based Evaluation.