IDENTIFIERS *Empowerment Evaluation

This study considered how 25 highly diverse after-school programs with funding of $5.6 million were evaluated during a 10-month period. The paper describes the evaluation methodologies used and determined which methodologies were most effective within a diverse and political context. The Bayview Fund for Youth Development (name assumed for purposes of this paper) was the result of a ballot initiative to set aside a large sum to fund programs for children and youth. The Fund supported 25 programs, 4 for children aged up to 5, and 21 for children and youth aged 6 to 20. Overall the 25 programs implemented a total of 369 different program activities. Because of the diversity of program activities and the requirements of city administrators, the evaluation approach used methodologies from the empowerment evaluation model of D. Fetterman (1996) and traditional evaluation strategies. Both fund accountability and individual program-level accountability were studied. Traditional evaluation methods included projec