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·	Evaluation Forum Newsletter
·	From Theory To Practice

Once participants are assembled, it is important to let them know:

• Who you are - some personal characteristics such as name, nation, experience
• The purpose of the meeting - The role of AHRDA and the relationship to HRDC
• What you want to accomplish over the next two days
• What you expect from their participation

Introductions

Introductions have always been and are a very important part of most Aboriginal people’s way of doing things. Elders say that traditionally, hours were spent on introductions before a meeting could start. The significance of person’s name, family, clan or nation was given the utmost respect. Many times, one whole day was set aside for introductions. To respect this traditional practice, emphasis should be made on the introductions as it signals the starting point of something important for which people are being asked to provide their thoughts, opinions, experience.

Some individuals in the RBA environment work together all the time. Others may work together occasionally or have only spoken on the telephone to each other. Some individuals may not know each other at all and it may be the first opportunity that they have meet other people working in the RBA environment. Whatever the case, the introductions will be important. It is important that people say their names at least one time. In addition, they should be asked to talk about the role that they have within the community they are working.

At this point the participants should be given the opportunity to get settled before the overhead presentation begins.

Slides should be presented with a brief explanation. The presentation should not take any longer than 15 to 20 minutes.

1) The Mid-Term Review of the RBA program undertaken in 1998 found that:

• Some RBAs needed to build their organizational capacity to deliver labour market programming.
• In particular, RBAs needed to increase their capabilities to:
  • perform functions,
  • solve problems and achieve objectives; and
  • understand and deal with labour market needs in a broad context and in a sustainable manner.

Conclusion:

There was a need to develop tools that lead to improvements in program design, delivery and results.

2) RBAs held a conference in February 1999; “Thinking of Evaluation: RBAs and Beyond” where the participants discussed evaluation and the accountability needs of various stakeholders:

• HRDC is accountable to Parliament for the program it sponsors,
• RBAs have to be accountable to their chiefs and councils,
• Community accountability is important but is not receiving sufficient attention,
• Self-evaluation is one element of the review strategy for the AHRDS and
• Many RBA holders lack the capacity and skills needed to undertake effective evaluation to be accountable to all stakeholders.

Summary

There are many stakeholders in the RBA process and each have different evaluation needs and accountabilities. All those needs can be addressed, as will be seen in the following illustrations.

Conclusion:

The evaluation capacity of RBAs is unknown. There is need to assess the capacity of RBAs to measure the performance of their programs. There is a need to provide tools to strengthen their evaluation capacity.

View Program Performance Components - Hierarchy of Importance to Stakeholders

View Program Performance Components - Hierarchy of Importance (Stakeholder's Perspective)

• Provide AHRDA holders the opportunity to compare their performance against best practices and identify areas for development and improvement.
• Identify gaps in capacity for human resources development.
• Develop capacity building plans.
• Assure all stakeholders that AHRDAs are meeting their needs.

The Capacity Self-Assessment will help in developing a plan to:

• Develop capabilities to respond to client needs,
• Strengthen the human resources skills and abilities within the organization,
• Improve and build upon existing management processes; and
• Strengthen accountability.

View Scope of the Capacity Self-Assessment

Participants should be given the opportunity to pose questions at this point. Listed below are the most commonly raised questions and issues.

Do I have to be here the whole time?

Keeping Copies

You are now ready to proceed with the assessment. You will need to keep a copy of the tool filled out and leave one with the RBA/AHRDA.

For you own copy, use the overhead version of the tool. Fill it out as you go, putting each page on the projector. Use indelible markers. It will be the copy you will be using to prepare your report. For the copy that will stay with the AHRDA, ask a participant to fill-out a paper copy of the tool as you go through the assessment.

Getting Started

Before you start, remind people that there is a manual explaining each issue, and that they should feel comfortable referring to it. Leave a copy in the middle of the table.

Before you go into a capacity dimension, we suggest that you provide a brief introduction to participants. You could read aloud to participants the definition of that capacity dimension that is found at the beginning of each section of the guide.

Making Sure People Understand

As you go through the tool, check people’s body language. If a question does not seem to be clear, do not hesitate to pick-up the manual and read the explanation. Some people may be embarrassed to say that they don’t understand something. If necessary say that you are not sure you understand and read from the manual.

There are a few places where we strongly recommend that people refer to the manual before answering. Those terms are identified with italics in the tool.

Closure

If you were able to compile the score cards for each capacity dimension, show them to people.

The assessment will have more value for the organization if an action plan is developed and someone is put in charge of implementing it. Offer to work with that person on developing the action plan, which will become a capacity building plan. Those plans are part of their AHRDA agreements.

At the end of the session, let participants know that you will prepare a summary of the results and send that to them shortly. Commit to a specific date. Ask someone to be in charge of presenting that report to the board with the capacity building plan.

If a photocopier is available on site, make a copy of the paper version of the filled-out tool. This will be useful if the overhead version is not always readable.

Within a week after the workshop, the facilitator will provide a report to the RBA/AHRDA summarizing the results. A template of that report follows.

Thank you very much for your participation in that process.

Intervention Capacity Summary
Item	Maximum possible	Custom	Actual
Number of criteria	11	11
Number of issues	30	30
Number of indicators	150	150	108
% capacity (this dimension)			72%