Empowerment Evaluation: A Practical Method for Evaluating a National School Breakfast Program

Abstract

Over the past decade, empowerment evaluation has demonstrated its worth as a practical and valuable alternative to traditional program evaluation methodologies. Following a brief overview of the development of empowerment evaluation, we outline its 10 underlying principles and the three key steps involved in conducting an empowerment evaluation. A preliminary case study on our use of this methodology to evaluate the Good Start Breakfast Club program is presented. The Australian Red Cross operates this program in nearly 100 primary schools around Australia with sponsorship and support from the Sanitarium Health Food Company and other organisations. This case study highlights the potential effectiveness of empowerment evaluation in improving and assessing the impacts of other public health and community-based programs in Australia and some of the lessons we have learned so far from using this methodology. We identify strengths and limitations of empowerment evaluation and argue that a more critical approach is required to avoid the idealism that tends to underpin this approach. We suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the communicative and relational dimensions of empowerment evaluation in order to increase its effectiveness.