aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Alejandra Garcia Diaz Villamil (Vital Voices Global Partnership)

Stories told by participants are valued as one of the most relevant sources of information to assess the impact of a program and ultimately, produce social changes.  Narratives speak the truth and create opportunities for activism and influence change.  Nowadays, the use of technology offers a more efficient way to compile, interpret and analyze stories through the lens of the storyteller. For this reason, Vital Voices Global Partnership, as part of its efforts to bring the voice of women leaders at the forefront and understand their impact, piloted SenseMaker®. SenseMaker is a narrative-based evaluation methodology online enables leaders to be story tellers and make sense of their experience in order to understand complex change. Some of the questions this evaluation tries to address are a) how the perception on women's leadership has changed since their participation in Vital Voices, b) what are the factors including social and cultural norms that limit women's ability to lead and c) how has the network helped challenge constrains around women's leadership? The methodology to answer these questions focuses on using participant's stories to uncover attitudes that inform and influence behavior.  It draws upon anthropology, complexity theory and neuroscience. This allows for automated collection of large numbers of short stories that, together, create a nuanced picture of a given topic. Using the SenseMaker® approach, VV fellows told their stories but also conducted the primary analysis of their own stories as well. This helped reduce the potential for interpretive bias and empowering fellows to analyze and reflect on their leadership paths.  This presentation offers helpful valuable insights using SenseMaker® as part of an evaluation focused on the impact of a women's global leadership network to shape their context and change perceptions of women's leadership.