aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Poppy Wise (Urbis Pty Ltd), Malcolm Haddon (Multicultural NSW), Tim Carroll (Bankstown Youth Development Service)

Co-design is a buzzword in evaluation, and for good reason. Genuine engagement with the parties being evaluated supports strong outcomes for evaluations and strengthens relationships with stakeholders.

We will share lessons from the co-design process we adopted for the development and evaluation of the COMPACT Program - a community-based resilience program funded by the NSW Government as part of the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) package. COMPACT funds 12 locally-based projects, focussed on young people, to "safeguard Australia's peaceful and harmonious way of life".

We will explore our learnings through a joint presentation:

• The NSW Government agency will share the critical importance and key benefits of co-designing the first-of-its-kind COMPACT program with the communities it intended to influence. This ensured the design was culturally appropriate and strongly supported by the community in a potentially divisive policy landscape like CVE.
• The consultant evaluator will outline our approach to co-designing the program logic and evaluation framework with the 30+ organisations involved in delivering the COMPACT program. We will reflect on the benefits and trade-offs associated with undertaking genuine co-design.
• The community organisation will reflect on the experience of being a co-designer, and how this has influenced their own impact measurement practices. They are an an arts-based community development organisation based in South Western Sydney. They were one of the 30+ partners selected to deliver the COMPACT program.
• Finally, together we will summarise what it means to undertake genuine co-design approaches, for clients, evaluators and participants. We will share our learnings regarding the value of adopting a co-design approach when developing and evaluating programs in an emerging policy area like CVE, where there is currently a lack of robust evaluation work, and the definition of CVE is still evolving.