My consultancy is one year old so I celebrated by making my first Infographic!

Reflection: Thanks Tom Grayson

So since I started a stroll down memory lane, I thought I'd share this too. In 2002 I decided I wanted to be an evaluator. I was working at an evaluation company, and I decided to start my own consultancy, so I was getting great practical exposure.  But I really did not have a good academic grounding in the theory and literature surrounding Evaluation. This was back in the day when there weren't MOOCS and webinars... so I had to READ to get my education.

During my studies I had read Cook and Campbell, and somehow I also stumbled upon Guba and Lincoln. I was introduced to Utilization Focused Evaluation.  In 2004 I got Rossi, Lipsey and Freeman for a going away present from Khulisa, and I read any evaluation journal articles I could lay my hands on.

Its after reading something that Tom Grayson (from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign) wrote in a journal article about teaching evaluation, that I decided to email him. I asked him for some reading material that will give me a good basis in Evaluation. He responded by sending me a package of course reading materials via post... This was such an unexpected gesture of goodwill. Above is a little handwritten note that he sent with the material.
 
So Tom, thanks a lot. And this is me letting you know about my adventures in evaluation!

Reflection: I decided to become an evaluator in May of 2002

As I was packing up the FeedbackRA office, I found a few files that I needed to clear out. This one is special, because it was during this workshop that I chose to relate to the identity of Evaluator.

It is a file for a workshop titled "Evaluation for Development: An Advanced Course in Evaluation". It was presented by Michael Quinn Patton in Pretoria in 2002, and it was arranged by Zenda Ofir from Evalnet.

  

My academic training in the field of Research Psychology meant that I was comfortable with research methods, but I also wanted to be involved in Development...  I didn't have a good idea of what I wanted to do with the research skills, and frankly, before joining Khulisa I had never heard of evaluation as a career option. The Community Psychology training I did at Honours and Masters level resonated deeply with me. Previously I had thought that I wanted to be a project officer at an NGO or international development organization, but I also realised that I like doing the research. I think that after about a year's working experience I started to think of myself as a researcher. 

I will forever be grateful for the experience I got at Khulisa Management Services, and the fact that Jennifer Bisgard let me go to this workshop in 2002. Thanks to Zenda Ofir for arranging it, and thanks for Michael Quinn Patton for preaching/teaching so convincingly.