Promoting Program Success and Fulfilling Accountability Requirements in a Statewide Community-Based Initiative

Abstract

Large community initiatives are a growing phenomenon both in the U.S. and worldwide. These initiatives address a wide variety of issues, including early childhood development, by integrating institutions such as schools, health agencies, and faith-based institutions that focus on separate but related aspects of community concern. A major challenge facing these initiatives is the competing demands of developing organizational capacity to promote effective programming while simultaneously delivering demonstrable results and accountability. Empowerment evaluation (Fetterman, Kaftarian, & Wandersman, 1996) is an approach to evaluation and organizational capacity building that equips participants at all levels of an organization to pursue programming quality and results. This article describes and presents lessons learned from the development and implementation of a system of tools and processes, grounded in the principles of empowerment evaluation, designed to promote quality in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of a statewide school readiness initiative. While these lessons are specifically applicable to community-based early childhood development initiatives, they are broadly applicable to initiatives fostering systems change through community development.

Key Words:

• Empowerment
• program evaluation
• school readiness
• early childhood