From Bland to Delicious: Spicing Up Evaluation – Webinar, Oct. 15
Posted: October 5, 2015
Categories: Events / GoodFoodBites / News from Sustain Ontario / Webinars
This November 20-22 is the Bring Food Home conference in Sudbury Ontario, which will feature a forum on evaluating and financing community food initiatives. Funders and grantees will be able to offer their input into a process to accelerate sector impact and make tools and resources more widely available. Learn more about the conference session at bringfoodhome.com.
From Bland to Delicious: Spicing Up Evaluation
Date: October 15th, 2015
Time: 1:00-2:30pm
Cost: Free to attend, space is limited. Pre-register by Wednesday October 14th at 3p.m. EST.
Join us for a free webinar on Thursday, October 15th from 1:00-2:30pm to discuss the myths, needs, benefits and diverse perspectives on evaluation practices for community food initiatives. The webinar will also provide an overview of a joint project focused on evaluation that Sustain Ontario and FoodShare Toronto have engaged Eco-Ethonomics to undertake. The project underway is to scan, document, develop and provide publicly available evaluation tools and resources to enhance the capacity of the food sector in Ontario. Webinar registrants will be invited to engage in an open discussion on their evaluation practices, intended outcomes, and help to identify tools and resources that would be most useful when conducting evaluations.
Who’s coming?
Join facilitators Ryan Turnbull and Areeta Bridgemohan from Eco-Ethonomics Inc., a social innovation and sustainability consulting firm. We encourage grant recipients and funders of community food initiatives in Ontario to join us for this in-depth discussion. We welcome non-profit staff, entrepreneurs, food producers/processors/distributors/buyers, government staff, students, volunteers, professional evaluators and funders.
Register here.
Speaker Bios
Ryan Turnbull (M.A.) is the founder and president of Eco-Ethonomics Inc. (www.ecoethonomics.ca), a consulting company committed to bringing a new ethics to the economy. Eco-Ethonomics specializes in strategic thinking, social enterprise development, sustainability, community-based research and policy development, evaluating impact and collaborative development.
Ryan has led over 70 agri-food sector and sustainable food system projects including: business plans for over 35 food sector social enterprise start-ups; food policy development for 10 municipal/regional governments; community food assessments and environmental scans; sustainability plans for urban and rural agriculture; healthy food initiatives with public health units and healthcare providers; innovative food distribution initiatives, i.e. provincial online route map and food hubs; theory of change and evaluation plan for Food Secure Canada; evaluation of the 8th National Food Assembly in Halifax; and Canadian food funding landscape assessment for McConnell Family Foundation, Community Foundations of Canada and Tides Canada Initiatives. Ryan is also a sessional instructor on corporate social responsibility at Ryerson University.
Ryan’s evaluation work has taken him from Whitehorse to Halifax having completed projects in evaluation for White Ribbon, Food Secure Canada, Childminding Monitoring and Advisory Services (CMAS), Dixon Hall, Christie Ossington Neighbourhood Centre, East York East Toronto, Sustain Ontario, St. Leonard’s Place Peel, Peel Alternatives to Choosing Hospitalization (PATCH), Niagara Region, Caledon Community Services and many others.
Areeta Bridgemohan has over 8 years of experience in research, training and evaluation in a variety of settings in the non-profit and public sector. Most recently, Areeta was working in the public sector providing training and consultation services to public health units, community health centres and non-profits in program evaluation.
Areeta specializes in community-based social research, including situational assessments, logic model development and program evaluations. Having provided technical assistance to over 70 grantees in her role with funding organizations, Areeta is familiar with the challenges that non-profits face in program evaluation and skilled at facilitating the development of evaluation systems that provide meaningful data for their users. Areeta has experience in developing evaluation frameworks in both non-profit and public health unit settings, which she did as part of her capacity building work at Public Health Ontario. Areeta believes that evaluation is an opportunity for stakeholders to get together and create a space for reflection, learning and innovation.
Areeta has strong project management skills, which she employed to manage granting and review processes as well as coordinate community collaboratives. As part of her experience with funding community development initiatives, Areeta gained familiarity with community gardens and their role in providing food security in priority neighbourhoods as well as in strengthening the social fabric of the community.
Areeta holds a Master’s degree in Public Health, Health Behaviour, Health Education, from the University of Michigan as well as BA in Psychology and International Development Studies from McGill University.