Greetings Program Leaders and Evaluators!

Important updates on our activities from the PE&D team:

===New Community Discussion!===

Let's Talk! Program Evaluation and Metrics [1]

The focus of the Program Evaluation and Design team is peer learning, practice sharing, and the adoption of shared language and approach to program evaluation across the movement, to support the discoverability and innovation of programs that will achieve high impact. Importantly, the team is charged with developing learning resources and tools to support program leaders to self-evaluate their program efforts and impacts. As we come upon one year’s time since our team began started on this initiative we’d like to hear from the community of Wikimedia, program leaders, evaluators, volunteers, and other stakeholders in program evaluation and design, about your perspectives on the evaluation initiative efforts. Please visit the dialogue pages to share your perspective on: How we should evaluate and report on the program evaluation and design capacity-building initiative, the evaluation learning opportunities and resources made available so far, program metrics piloted so far, and how we should assess grantmaking to groups and individuals.

===New Virtual Meet-up!===

Survey tools and program leader experiences piloting survey strategies [2]

The program evaluation team will facilitate a brief survey tools overview and resources and sharing of program leader experiences piloting survey strategies. The program evaluation and design team will be joined by Daria Cybulska (WMUK) and James Hare (WMDC) who will share their recent experiences piloting survey tools for their program evaluation. (June 12, 2014; 4-5 p.m. UTC).

===New Team Member!===

Maria Cruz, Program Evaluation Community Coordinator [3]

We have hired Maria Cruz as our new Program Evaluation Community Coordinator. Maria is extremely personable and has a good understanding of the Wikimedia Landscape. She is familiar with both the nonprofit and Wikimedia world and has a passion for free knowledge, and a background and experience in communications and journalism. She has two bachelor’s degrees, one in Communication, Art & Design and another in Communication with and emphasis in Journalism. In addition, she has a full year’s experience as communications coordinator of Wikimedia Argentina (WMAR).

Maria expresses a natural curiosity and propensity toward capturing people and stories and has a strong history of productivity with blogs and reporting communications in her role at the chapter as well as in previous activities and positions. She is a patient and passionate communicator who will add depth and perspective to how we communicate about program evaluation and design.

On a more personal note, María enjoys writing short narratives, taking pictures of people when they don't look in the camera, and swimming. She likes to cook for friends and go further east (if possible) each time she travels. She can watch almost any movie, but prefers independent filmmaking. Oftentimes, she thinks a bike ride will make anything better.

Join us in welcoming Maria by visiting her user page [3] on Meta!

As always, stay up-to-date by watching the news page [4] on our portal or reach out to us in the parlor [5] or privately at eval@wikimedia.org

Best regards,

Jaime

References:

[1] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/Parlor/Dialogue

[2] https://plus.google.com/b/117126229120807344920/events/c1kgb4kkpn72dahhapkavsbopu4

[3] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:MCruz_(WMF)

[4] https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Programs:Evaluation_portal/News