We desire for communities to take action so that their spiritual, social, and physical goals are met (or even exceeded). The goal of evaluation is improvement not criticism: we want to be encouraged and prepare for the next steps. We can always learn from our projects—the successes and the failures teach us valuable lessons for next time.
After taking action and implementing a resource, discuss how it went (or how it is going) as a group.
Choose Criteria
How are we going to look at our plans? Decide on evaluation criteria and a standard. The Community Profile is helpful, because we can use it to see what our community looked like before, and then revisit those conversations to understand what it looks like now. Define what success looks like. This might be a big, ultimate end goal, so also remember to choose some milestones along the way.
Here are some questions to help you get started:
- How did it go? Or, how is it going? Did this move our community in the direction we hoped for?
- What worked well with this resource? What didn’t?
- What would we do differently next time?
- What questions do we need answers to before we take action again?
- Revisit our community profile. How have the different conditions changed, either because of our action or other factors? Does this change what we should do next?