<< 1 >>
Rating: 
Summary: Evaluating Sustainable Development
Review: Ukaga and Maser have constructed a book that helps organizations understand and implement power-filled evaluations. This book helps us formulate project objectives that are specific, measurable and time bound and to formulate evaluation questions that are relevant to our objectives. True to the ideals and integration of sustainable development, this work encourages participation by the masses and focuses on economic, environmental and community quality in a simultaneous and interlocking manner. The authors acknowledge the inherent complexity of sustainability and offer methods that reduce the intimidation of a complex working environment. The authors apply the concepts and practice of evaluation to all temporal stages of program management. Their evaluation processes ask us whether we should start a project, how it's working, whether we should change its course, and whether it is accomplishing it's goals and objectives. They advocate ferreting out current values and conditions as a precursor to evaluation. This provides a baseline or starting point; so people can set goals for getting to an even better place, and effectively measure their progress toward that future place. In their model, a baseline description of a community, culture and organization is preparatory step toward crafting an evaluation of community stability and sustainability. They show us how to take our people beyond the usual drudgery and isolation of evaluation process, using the process to facilitate decisions, demonstrate accountability, enhance relationships and support planning. They make it critical for stakeholders to play active roles in evaluation of sustainable development so the challenges, opportunities and circumstances of their world are represented therein. This form of participatory evaluation is a precursor to participatory decision-making. The involvement of advocates in evaluation of their own programs makes them the best judges of its success. This book has broad application. Ukaga and Maser have grounded their recommendations in their respective practices - from Minnesota to Nigeria. It offers evaluation methods for sustainability on both global and local scales; for those addressing immediate problems of survival and development in non-industrialized countries, and for those involved in large organizations and industrialized nations. Dr. Steven B. Daley-Laursen
Dean, College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho
Rating:
Summary: Evaluating Sustainable Development
Review: Ukaga and Maser have constructed a book that helps organizations understand and implement power-filled evaluations. This book helps us formulate project objectives that are specific, measurable and time bound and to formulate evaluation questions that are relevant to our objectives. True to the ideals and integration of sustainable development, this work encourages participation by the masses and focuses on economic, environmental and community quality in a simultaneous and interlocking manner. The authors acknowledge the inherent complexity of sustainability and offer methods that reduce the intimidation of a complex working environment. The authors apply the concepts and practice of evaluation to all temporal stages of program management. Their evaluation processes ask us whether we should start a project, how it's working, whether we should change its course, and whether it is accomplishing it's goals and objectives. They advocate ferreting out current values and conditions as a precursor to evaluation. This provides a baseline or starting point; so people can set goals for getting to an even better place, and effectively measure their progress toward that future place. In their model, a baseline description of a community, culture and organization is preparatory step toward crafting an evaluation of community stability and sustainability. They show us how to take our people beyond the usual drudgery and isolation of evaluation process, using the process to facilitate decisions, demonstrate accountability, enhance relationships and support planning. They make it critical for stakeholders to play active roles in evaluation of sustainable development so the challenges, opportunities and circumstances of their world are represented therein. This form of participatory evaluation is a precursor to participatory decision-making. The involvement of advocates in evaluation of their own programs makes them the best judges of its success. This book has broad application. Ukaga and Maser have grounded their recommendations in their respective practices - from Minnesota to Nigeria. It offers evaluation methods for sustainability on both global and local scales; for those addressing immediate problems of survival and development in non-industrialized countries, and for those involved in large organizations and industrialized nations. Dr. Steven B. Daley-Laursen
Dean, College of Natural Resources, University of Idaho
<< 1 >>
| 
