This post originally appeared on my blog Folks Gotta Eat. I run a charity. It's a fabulous charity. It's radical in all the right ways, and has an amazing history of facilitating transformation in the lives of youth. However, due to budget constraints, we have to make on-going tough choices around food - we go local and/or organic where we can, but it's hard. In an attempt to further my own thinking on this issue, I'm going to name the key challenges we face in hopes that our readers will weigh in with some creative solutions. 

In my professional life, it's easy to get caught up in present work and forget all the amazing projects and organizations I've had the privilege to collaborate with. These days I'm the Executive Director of a fantastic organization 3.5 days each week. I'm in the exploration mode for what to do with the remaining professional consulting time (other than my constant blogging with Folks Gotta Eat and rabble.ca). 

With each project I engage in my collaborative consulting practice, I dig a little deeper to examine the root causes of policy failure and social injustice as a whole. I'm reminded of my favorite professor in graduate school at Brandeis, Dr. David Gil. In my graduate studies, I focused on oppression: sources, dynamics and manifestations. The first day I walked into one of Dr. Gil's courses, he said (in his thick Austrian accent), "If you want to begin to understand social policy as we have it today, you must go back to the beginning and understand the first roots of oppression - when individuals began to store food and control its distribution." After that, one of my classmates asked about our reading list for the semester. Dr. Gil handed us each a bibliography of no less than 100 books and commented, "You can start here."

One of the most interesting projects I've consulted with in the past few years was with the Ontario Literacy Coalition (OLC).  The goal?  To imagine, convene and implement a cross-sectoral, cross-ministerial strategy in support of intergenerational family literacy programs in Ontario.  (Wow, say that 10 times fast!)  Like many umbrella groups, the Ontario Literacy Coalition is a membership-based organization that works to not only increase the capacity of its member organizations, but also to act as a convening entity in the space between the public, private and charity/non-profit sectors.  This is where I was invited in.

My experience over the last years working with the Most Significant Change Evaluation and Monitoring Framework (MSC) has been insightful, interesting and rewarding.  Having just wrapped up a two-year stint working with Intercordia Canada to imagine, test and implement MSC in the context of their international programs, I'm now settling in for a little reflection on the process.  What I see as a primary challenge of implementing MSC is the tension between story collection for evaluation purposes and story collection for marketing purposes. 

Questions

Over the last couple of years, I've been working with one of the most compelling organizations in Canada, Intercordia.  The organization is a thoughtful off-shoot of the international L'Arche movement, steeped in the philosophy and learnings of L'Arche founder, Jean Vanier.  Intercordia is a radical model of service learning/study abroad programming for Canadian university students.  Among many areas of engagement, the folks at Intercordia came to me to help them answer the question, "How do we evaluate transformation of the heart?" 

I must admit that I am not an evaluation guru, though I've been forced over the years to be thoroughly engaged in the practice of program outcome evaluation (thank you, United Way).  Sure, I took methods courses in graduate school and know my way around a randomized trial.  What I am known for is exploring and applying creative solutions in spaces with limited resources.  You might say I can turn an egg and a beer into a champagne brunch.