by Anthea Rutter

Members who have made a long-term and wide-ranging contribution to the AES and the field of evaluation are recognised through a special category of membership called 'Fellow of the AES'.
 
Dorothy Lucks was made a Fellow in 2021, having been in and contributing to the evaluation profession since the 1990s. Dorothy is the Managing Director of a WA based company, SDF Global, and specialises in the field of sustainable development. A long-time member of the local WA branch of the AES, Dorothy was also a member of the International Relations Committee for the AES Board.
 
In this blog, Dorothy speaks with Anthea Rutter (Research Fellow, Centre for Program Evaluation) about her time in evaluation, her long association with the AES, and what drives her in her work.

by Alison Rogers

In 2020 I wrote a fable about a dog called Champ. This fable was illustrative of anecdotes I heard from evaluators when they talked about non-evaluators on their teams who helped generate momentum for change. Champ from the fable represented the participants from my doctoral research – non-evaluators who were able to effectively persuade their reluctant peers to incorporate evaluation into their routine operations. This follow-up blog shares some the research findings to help answer the question:

by Doyen Radcliffe, Donna-Maree Stephens and Sharon Babyack - Community First Development

Community First Development led an AES seminar on creating a culturally safe evaluation and research space in September 2021.Community First Development is a First Nations’ led organisation that works with First Nations’ communities by invitation only, every project we do is monitored throughout, using indicators designed and evaluated by communities themselves. Our vision is to see First Nations’ peoples and communities thriving.

At the seminar, we shared lessons learnt from a participatory action research project focused on gaining a better understanding of 11 communities with whom we had been working for three years on community development projects. We are pleased to be back to answer the questions from our AES seminar. Most importantly, we would like to thank attendees for the words of encouragement and support.

by Keren Winterford

Applying ethical principles in evaluation is about making fair and just choices relevant to the context, culture of participants and evaluation purpose. In fact, whenever we speak to a person – a participant or stakeholder - as part of an evaluation, we need to think about ethics.

Why? Because this type of thinking ensures that our practice, at a bare minimum, is risk management, and adheres to the fundamental principle of ‘do no harm.’ It also shapes your relationships with participants and stakeholders as one of trust, mutual responsibility and ethical equality.

It is only through such practice that evaluation provides an important contribution to effective policy and change.

by Sarah Oxford

The Australian Evaluation Society recently held FestEVAL21, a week of online activities to celebrate evaluation. This year’s event included more than 1,100 registrants with attendance of about 3,000 people across 23 sessions. The engaging session topics ranged from themes addressing practical application such as capability and capacity building in evaluation to encouraging evaluator reflection and behaviour change. FestEVAL gave us ample opportunities to begin this work by platforming experts with diverse life experiences in evaluation.

The topics that caught my interest were the ones that made me look inwards and ask, what can I do to lead evaluations with inclusive and anti-racist practices? As evaluators a lot of our work involves exploring human behaviour change. But what happens when our behaviour and the systems that we work in and through need to change? How can we improve ourselves, our evaluation practices and the systems at large?

by Danielle Campbell, Marlkirdi Rose Napaljarri and Linda Kelly

Indigenous people in Australia and internationally are increasingly calling for monitoring and evaluation that supports self-determination, decolonisation and better outcomes for their communities.

In this blog, we share some of what we have learned together – as Indigenous and non-Indigenous community development advocates and evaluators – from our work in the Tanami Desert in Central Australia. We hope that by sharing some of our key lessons, from 10 years of trials, successes and failures, we can contribute to the discussion about whether and how genuinely co-created Indigenous evaluation can be done in Australia.