PROJECT Focus:
program evaluation
Client: Changing the Way We Care (CTWWC), a global collaborative initiative focused on shifting foster care systems across multiple countries from institutional care to family-based care for children through community programming and advocacy.
Goal: In its fifth year, the initiative sought a partner to conduct a evaluation with a human-centered approach to understand not only their impact on national care systems, but also the experience of stakeholders and staff who interacted with the program. Findings would inform plans for sustainable, scalable approaches in the upcoming remaining 5 years of the program.
Role: Integrate into broader evaluation team to provide bilingual (Spanish/English) qualitative research facilitation and analysis
Questions explored:
❋ What are takeaways and lessons learned from the initative in the past 5 years?
❋ What must the initiative do moving forward in the last 5 years of funding to meet our goals?
❋ How satisfied are program directors and on-the-ground implementers with program participation? Is there a disparity in satisfaction between the two groups?
Project contributions:
QUALITATIVE RESEARCH AND INTERVIEWS
Key informant interviews with initiative staff and project partners to gather in-depth reflections on program outcomes. Interviews were conducted in Spanish, allowing for more direct engagement with key stakeholders.
TRANSLATION AND DOCUMENTATION
Interview guides and documentation were translated and back-translated between English and Spanish, ensuring accuracy and maintaining cultural relevance throughout the data collection process.
DESK REVIEW AND THEMATIC ANALYSIS
The team conducted an extensive desk review of project documents and external contextual articles identifying key insights and coding qualitative data surfacing common themes and trends, providing a foundation for the evaluation’s final recommendations.
WORKSHOP AND ASSET CREATION
In preparation for in-person strategy workshops, curated data sets and created materials to help stakeholders reflect on findings and collaboratively plan the next steps.
Impact
This project ensured a robust, data-driven evaluation of the initiative’s contributions to care sector reform, focusing on how the initiative’s strategies influenced change. The conversations and tools created formed the basis for mapping out actors and building new frameworks of change.
Feedback
Our small international development evaluation and design firm contracted with Keara to provide qualitative data collection and synthesis support for a multi-country program evaluation, and her contribution was invaluable due to both the quality and ease in working with her! She took up new information very quickly, was a clear and direct communicator with thoughtful questions, and was clearly very skilled at both desk review …and semi-structured interviewing and deep listening. It was truly a pleasure to work with her, she was flexible and communicative, meeting both shifting and tight timelines. I would highly recommend working with her as a qualitative research or evaluation partner, or any other way you find to use her talents in your work!
JENNIFER COMPTON
Instructional Design | Evaluation | Program Management
Why this work lights me up
I love to explore the connections between diverse communities, and to do so on a global scale is a privilege. I enjoy making clear connections that are otherwise lost in surface-level observations about how regions and cultures vary. At the same time, I enjoy highlighting distinctions that I uncover while conducting cross-cultural research to propose new solutions that may address problems experienced in different contexts.
Additionally, I have a special interest in issues regarding children and families, especially when it comes to innovative initiatives to protect children while preserivng community and family units.