Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty

Transformative Engagement: Blue Marble Evaluators’ role in uncovering social structures that limit human potential

Leave a Comment / Past Events / admin / January 20, 2023 / Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Education, Eval21

Several members of the BME network will be presenting the following session at the American Evaluation Conference: All over the world schools serve indigenous populations and/or immigrants from other cultures. How do we create and evaluate education systems that are responsive to diverse cultural backgrounds? How do we balance accountability measures such as standardized tests with […]

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Food Systems Summit Synthesis Deep Dive Reports

Leave a Comment / Blog Posts / admin / October 18, 2022 / Agriculture, Children & Youth, Culture & Ethnicity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Equality & Justice, Food security, Food Systems Summit, Gender, Global Networks, Health & Well-Being, Human Rights, Race

Blue Marble Evaluation (BME) teams have been working to synthesize themes across the hundreds of Independent Dialogues, resulting in the following reports: Interim Synthesis Report 1: Based on the initial 17 feedback forms, presents a generative and illustrative set of emerging themes. Interim Synthesis Report 2: More than 100 Independent Dialogues have produced 10 guiding themes. Final Synthesis

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Principles-Driven Responsive Philanthropy: Building Bridges Across Communities for Peace, Prosperity and Planet

Leave a Comment / Webinar Recordings / admin / December 16, 2021 / Culture & Ethnicity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Globalization, International Development, Race, Sustainability

This webinar provides an in-depth look at how one foundation applied the Blue Marble Evaluation principles to their work. GHR Foundation, an independent foundation based in Minneapolis, Minnesota, exists to be of service to people and their limitless potential for good. In 2016, the global call from Pope Francis to “build bridges, not walls”

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Fostering an Intergenerational Approach to Transforming Evaluation

Leave a Comment / Webinar Recordings / admin / December 16, 2021 / Climate, Culture & Ethnicity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Education, EvalYouth, Gender, Global Networks, Innovation, Race, Sustainability

In this webinar, we heard from several young and emerging evaluators and leaders from the EvalYouth Global Network about the ways they are embedding BME principles into their work, both as a network and as individual evaluators. EvalYouth is a global, multi-stakeholder partnership/network that supports and promotes young and emerging evaluators (YEEs) and youth-led accountability around the world. The

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A Clarion Call for Food Systems Transformation

Leave a Comment / Blog Posts / Michael_Patton / August 17, 2021 / Biodiversity, Climate, Consumption & Production, Culture & Ethnicity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Equality & Justice, Food security, Food Systems Summit, Gender, Health & Well-Being, Human Migration, Human Rights, Industrialization & Infrastructure, Innovation, Principle 1: Global Thinking, Principle 10: Bricolage Methods, Principle 12: Skin-in-the-game, Principle 2: Anthropocene as Context, Principle 3: Transformative Engagement, Principle 4: Integration, Principle 5: Transboundary Engagement, Principle 6: GLOCAL, Principle 7: Cross-Silos, Principle 8: Time being of the essence, Race, Sustainability

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. Conveners of

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Praxis Makes Perfect? Transcending Textbooks to Learning Evaluation Experientially and in Cultural Contexts

Leave a Comment / Articles / admin / June 15, 2021 / anti-racist evaluation, BIPOC evaluators, culturally responsive evaluation, Culture & Ethnicity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, equity evaluation, evaluation praxis, evaluator professional development, Indigenous evaluation, Race

This article provides aspiring Blue Marble Evaluators with an alternative framework for thinking about professional development outside of “formal” and “scholarly” learning spaces. Particularly relevant in the context of the anthropocene, the article offers experiential learning in the field and within cultural contexts as a much-needed professional design component for developing responsive, effective, and transformative

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An elusive BME ideal: Harmonizing South/North interests, worldviews and frameworks

Leave a Comment / Webinar Recordings / admin / May 5, 2021 / Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, International Development, Poverty, Principle 11: World Savvy, Principle 3: Transformative Engagement, Principle 6: GLOCAL, Principle 7: Cross-Silos, Principle 9: Yin-Yang, Transformation

Description: World-savvy, glocally-orientated evaluators have to be adept at working across all sorts of silos and boundaries. Over the past 3-4 decades, North-South cooperation in the ‘aid’ or philanthropy sectors has been an important focus for evaluation; much less so South-South, North-North or triangular cooperation. Despite some recent shifts, significant differences remain between the ‘Global South’

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Relational Systems Thinking

Leave a Comment / Webinar Recordings / admin / April 23, 2021 / Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Equality & Justice, Human Rights, Sustainability

This webinar was a celebration of the 1 year anniversary of the Transformation Systems Mapping & Analysis Working group and highlighted the work of the hosts of our 13th workstream – Decolonizing Systems Mapping. Turtle Island Institute (TII) is a global Indigenous social innovation think & do tank, a teaching lodge. Over the past couple of years TII

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Relational Systems Thinking: That’s How Change Is Going to Come, from Our Earth Mother

Leave a Comment / Articles / admin / March 11, 2021 / Biodiversity, Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, decolonizing, healing, mother earth, ndigenous Knowledges, Systems Thinking

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

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Perspectives on Precedents: Viewing 2020 in a Larger Historical, Cultural, and Political Context

Leave a Comment / Blog Posts / Michael_Patton / December 14, 2020 / Decolonization & Indigenous Sovereignty, Principle 12: Skin-in-the-game, Principle 2: Anthropocene as Context, Principle 3: Transformative Engagement

Kim van der Woerd and Michael Quinn Patton worked together in 2016 as part of a team that created the Evaluation for Social Change and Transformational Learning Program at Simon Fraser University. This interactive blog illustrates and updates the kinds of conversations that framed the generation of that program MQP: This is the time of year when

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