“So What?” – Your Weekly Guide to Advocacy With Impact
Lovingly selected and lightly snarked by Team APEP: David Devlin-Foltz, Susanna Dilliplane, and Christine Ferris
We’re off to AEA!
We are looking forward to participating in the American Evaluation Association’s annual conference in Chicago next week: Exemplary Evaluations in a Multicultural World: Learning from Evaluation’s Successes Across the Globe. We like exemplary successes – and even hearing about ideas that didn’t pan out – that is, evaluation’s successes in revealing what not to do. We’ll be participating in totally exemplary panels:
How We Talk about Child Marriage: Measuring and Influencing the Quality of Discourse (Wednesday, November 11, 4:30-6:00 pm)
How people talk about an issue (aka discourse) matters. CARE’s Milkah Kihunah and APEP’s Susanna Dilliplane will present our pilot approach to tracking the quality of discourse among U.S. officials who shape implementation of policies on gender-based violence and child marriage. And we’ll share research from Tostan International’s Ben Cislaghi on how child marriage is talked about within rural West African communities. Bonus: you can attend this panel without missing Happy Hour.
Advocacy as a Team Game—Evaluating Multi-Stakeholder Advocacy Efforts (Friday, November 13, 8:00-9:30 am)
Drag yourself out of your comfy hotel bed to hear advocacy evaluation experts Jared Raynor (TCC), Carlyn Orians (ORS Impact), Jewlya Lynn (Spark Policy Institute), and Sue Hoechstetter (Alliance for Justice) discuss analyzing who contributed what to policy change, assessing the way organizations rely on each other, and using a field-building perspective to evaluate multi-stakeholder advocacy initiatives. APEP’s own Moderator-in-Chief will chair this Awesome Panel of Awesomeness.
Til next time…
Since we’ll be busy paneling, absorbing our colleagues’ Smart Thoughts, and eating deep dish pizza, So What? will be on hiatus next week. Look for your next installment on November 20!
The Aspen Planning and Evaluation Program helps leading foundations and nonprofit organizations plan, assess and learn from their efforts to promote changes in knowledge, attitudes, behaviors and policies in the US and internationally. To learn more about our tools and services, visit http://www.aspeninstitute.org/apep.
