Removing Barriers, Increasing Effectiveness - amarc

efers to using evaluation logic and processes to help people in programs andorganizations learn to think evaluatively. This is distinct from using thesubstantive findings in an evaluation report. It’s equivalent to the differencebetween learning how to learn versus learning substantive knowledge aboutsomething. Learning how to think evaluatively is learning how to learn. Learningto think and act evaluatively can have an ongoing impact, especially whereevaluation is built into ongoing organizational development. Values are thefoundations of goals. By providing a mechanism and process for clarifying valuesand goals, evaluation has an impact even before data are collected. Likewise,the process of designing an assessment often raises questions that have animmediate impact on program implementation. Such effects can be quitepronounced, as when the process of clarifying the program’s logic model ortheory-of-action leads to changes in delivery well before any evaluative data areever collected.The context and institutional assessment approachThe action research methodology allows for an assessment on the legal andcultural context and its dynamic influence on the existence and development ofcommunity radios in different regions of the world. Precisely one of the keyAMARC objectives is to contribute to the creation of enabling environments fircommunity radio. Thus, Lusthaus and others closely link the performance ofOrganizations to the environment conditions as suggested. 16The key dimensions of the external environment influencing organizations are theadministrative, legal, political, socio-cultural, economic, technological, andstakeholder contexts.16 Charles Lusthaus, Marie-Hélène Adrien, Gary Anderson, and Fred Carden Enhancing Organisational Performance. AToolbox for Self-assessment, IDRC 1999, 140 pp.AMARC Community Radio Social Impact Assessment 2007 Page 16 of 128