118: Authentic Community Engagement in Culturally-Responsive Evaluations: Opportunities and Challenges in a Multi-Site and Multi-level Initiative

This poster brings together contributions from grantees from the Youth Innovators Empowering Agriculture Across America (YEA), who are using positive youth development and culturally-responsive strategies to prepare underrepresented youth for careers in agriculture and food sciences. YEA grantees – all of which are based in Cooperative Extension programs – have adopted diverse evaluation strategies that reflect unique community contexts and programming needs. The initiative’s YEA Coordinating Network (YEA-CN), meanwhile, is charged with “telling the collective story” across grantees. In this poster, YEA grantees, YEA evaluators, and YEA-CN staff, will present the opportunities and challenges of conducting culturally-responsive evaluation in the context of a multi-site and multi-level initiative that is designed to authentically engage communities in shared leadership and governance. 

Karyl Askew; Mitchell Mason; Belisario Nigenda Perez