Principle 5: Transboundary Engagement

Join us as we explore the new directions for Utilization-Focused Evaluation through Blue Marble Evaluation.

This month, we will be providing a space for Q&A with Michael Quinn Patton, founder of Blue Marble Evaluation, as well as time for BME members to connect with one another. We will also talk about how the Blue Marble Evaluation community might collaborate to contribute to the upcoming American Evaluation Association conference call for proposals. 

Under a massive and slowly spinning earthen globe in the SSE Hydro in Glasgow Scotland, I joined a meditation circle of 12 people led by two monks from Plum Village Monastery in France. The Monastery, founded by Thich Nhat Han, has become a spiritual lifeline for several of the leaders of CoP26. This makes sense when you consider the stakes of the event well named as the “last best chance” to get it right.

As part of preparation and building momentum for the 2021 UN Food Systems Summit more than 900 Independent Dialogues have taken place around the world. These Summit Dialogues aim to offer a seat at the table to all interested stakeholders, giving them an opportunity to debate, collaborate, and provide input into deliberations on the future of food.  

In 2021, UN Secretary-General António Guterres will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. The Summit aims to support transformation of the way the world produces, consumes and thinks about food.

This article explores the notion of the need to decolonize systems thinking and awareness. Taking a specifically Indigenous approach to both knowledge creation and knowledge sharing, the authors look at awareness based systems change via a Haudenosaunee (Mohawk) two row visual code. The authors explore the sacred space between Indigenous and non-Indigenous ways of thinking and knowing, to identify pathways for peaceful co-existence of epistemologies.