Who We Are
Evaluations you will use! YEARS started from a place of deep commitment to the products of an evaluation. Why bother doing an evaluation, steeping yourself and your colleagues in capacity building, labour through a whole research process only for the results to rust on a shelf? Why bother evaluating a project, teaching passionately on a subject only to observe no meaningful change as a result of your effort? From watching work done in various contexts, I wondered about “the letter of the work” and the “spirit of the work.” YEARS was started to pay homage to both the letter of the work and the spirit of the work, because at the frontline of any assignment I have done in Canada and elsewhere are real people, real families, and real communities who deserve their shot in life. It does not matter if YEARS is conducting a policy evaluation, an organizational audit or a program evaluation. There are people at the end of the line of each assignment.
When I was doing my doctoral studies in Human Geography and Development Studies, I sometimes was the odd voice who was not satisfied with the orthodoxy of what we were learning? Why is losing a thatch roof for a zinc roof a sign of development in Northern Ghana? Why do we academics keep complaining about colonialism but do not seem to be doing anything meaningful to upend that status quo? Why does it feel like all we are doing in the development-scape is jumping as high as we are told to jump by our “development partners?” As I got introduced more and more into evaluation, I wondered why everyone was keen to tell the positive story and not the negative story.
I started YEARS for these reasons but also to grow spaces of comfortability in telling the “negative story” of evaluative work, of strategy work, or work processes that do not go as planned. Just because key milestones were missed does not mean someone was sleeping on the job. I am keen to dig up those “negative stories” in a manner that provides the most potential for growth. What is the growth that happens when we are resting on our laurels?
These are some of the reasons why at YEARS, practice is infused with decolonial ways of thinking, strategizing, working with people and producing deliverables that clients will use.
Ten years ago, Dr. Hippolyt Pul, opened a door and I stepped in, understudying his work, supporting his work, and discovering a world I was oblivious to. Then one day, he told me “you have that kind of brain” later I understood Hemant a brain that thinks evaluatively, strategically so I leaned into the compliment. Inspired by this, YEARS operated on a model of mentoring young minds to discover the cool arts of evaluation, strategy and evalu-strategy. Explore “our team” to see who these young minds are supporting the diverse work YEARS gets to do. Welcome to YEARS. Feel free to connect with us at _________________and let us work together.
