Capturing unpredictable and intangible change : Evaluating an asset-based community development (ABCD) approach in Ethiopia

Using the words of Moses Coady (1939), after whom the Coady Institute is named, an ABCD process leads people to “use what they have to secure what they have not.” The Complexities of Measuring Change within the Framework of ABCD In 2006, three years after initiating the ABCD process in communities in Ethiopia, staff from Oxfam Canada and the Coady Institute began assessing the results of this work [...] Accordingly, the evaluation of its progress had to be designed in such a way as to ensure that all the actors obtained the information they needed to inform their decision-making: •. Community groups were given an opportunity to reflect on the changes they experienced and to use the evaluation as a stimulus to reinvigorate current community activities and plan their future directions. [...] Institute expected the learning outcomes of the ABCD evaluation exercises to shed light on how to work at the community level most effectively, how to work with local part- ners sensitively, and how to determine and provide the appropriate level of stimulus for communities when they reach the limits of what they can achieve themselves using their own resources. [...] Historical Trend Timelines Along a horizontal line drawn on flipchart paper, members of the local ABCD committee (or volun- teers who had a good understanding of the entire ABCD process) described the state of the commu- nity before the ABCD training, indicated what had occurred since the training, and articulated plans for the future. [...] While recog- nizing the importance of providing all group members an opportunity to learn about the history of the ABCD process in their community, the evaluation team felt it was not fair to ask them to devote extra time to this exercise (in addition to the 2.5 days that each community had set aside for evaluations).