After the first CREA Conference in 2014, the Consuelo Foundation agreed to host an ongoing discussion with approximately 20 participants representing community-based organizations, non-profit organizations working with both community and educational institutions including the University of Hawaiʻi, the Kamehameha Schools, Liliʻuokalani Trust, the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, the Hawaiʻi-Pacific Evaluation Association, and the Native Hawaiian Educational Council. This hui (gathering) has been meeting to share our work and approaches, highlight key issues we face, and develop and affirm our dedication to culturally responsive approaches to evaluation and assessment.
CREA-Hawaiʻi is dedicated to idea that “Aʻohe pau ka ʻike i ka halau hoʻokahi” (all knowledge is not learned in one school).
Our mission is to use a Native Hawaiian lens to offer empowering, values-based evaluation approaches that support insights and conclusions which, in turn, promote equity and justice in the diversity that is Hawai'i. To do this we will weave together and share cultural knowledge, tools, and practices that are grounded in and affirm a Native Hawaiian worldview.
We look forward to continuing our dialog and sharing new ways of thinking, observing, exploring, with CREA and all its partners as we seek to identify the practices that best to serve our respective communities in the 21st century. There is much research to share and stories of success that have brought us to this point in time. We hope to have many work products in the months and years ahead that can add to the knowledge and opportunity that CREA has provided. For this we are forever grateful and humbled.
Our first work product will be a Native Hawaiian evaluation framework that can be used by evaluators, program managers, communities, and funders to guide evaluation practice from their various positions. The framework will lay the foundation for the next steps of training and advocacy. This work is being partially funded by the Faster Forward Fund established by Michael Scriven. We are also looking forward to establishing a series of unconferences where we can explore questions and promising approaches in greater depth and with a wider pool of participants.
Authors
Katherine Tibbetts, Hawai'i Evaluation and Research Services
Herb Lee, Pacific American Foundation