Purpose

The activities of this program are directed towards the goal of culturally sensitive and healthy community development in the low-income areas of Rundle and Abbottsfield in north-east Edmonton. CANDORA is a not for profit organization, and was incorporated as a Society in 1988.

The main objectives are:

• Connecting people: to reduce isolation, increase understanding, build self worth, and decrease frequency of crisis.
  
• Addressing community issues: by supporting community capacity, providing opportunities for progressive learning about the issues that affect resident's lives (for example: hunger, child abuse, family violence, substance abuse, community safety), and by providing the opportunity for individual and collective action to address these issues.
  
• Intervening early in crisis: to lower the likelihood that crisis will escalate by networking and collaborating with community partners, providing opportunities for early intervention, supporting people in acquiring coping skills, and providing respite.
  
• Valuing human resources: by creating an environment where people are stimulated, nurtured, encouraged and appreciated.
  

Activities include:

Drop-in centres
Personal and Community Enrichment (PACE) program - a pre-employment program for women
Discovery Centre (free childcare for program participants)
Outreach programs (connecting people, home visits, individual and family support)
A clothing exchange
Food bank depot
Nobody's Perfect Parenting course
To Be Treated With Respect Aboriginal parenting course
Fun Time Rhymes (Mother Goose)
Sewing and Crafts
Candidates Forum (during elections)
Tax clinics
Baby Showers / Health for Two Program
Active Living program for preschoolers and for adults
Storyteller visits at the local library for preschool children
Women's Come and Chat group
English and Spanish as a Second Language
Family Potluck
Preschool Children's Program (based on the High/Scope method)
Collective Kitchens
Workshops
Parent retreats
And numerous community activities, cultural events and special events.
These activities and programs are currently (March 1999) funded by:
Health and Welfare Canada, Alberta Family and Social Services, Edmonton Family and Community Support Services (F.C.S.S.), Local foundations, The Canadian Heritage Department (Status of Women), Children's Services Commission: Early Intervention, and by individual donations and fundraising.

Evaluation Approach
The evaluation of this program includes ... a trial run evaluation of one of the activities (program components) of the Candora Society. The component we are evaluating is the Children's Program. This is an early intervention, community based program for 'at risk' children aged 3 - 6. It runs 3 days a week out of 4 locations. Since 1994, we have done implementation and process evaluation. In May of 1998, Health Canada asked us to supplement this with outcome evaluation.

The Alberta CAPC projects were offered an orientation to the United Way of America's approach for Outcome Evaluation *. A key element in our evaluative process was a participatory evaluation approach, with project staff, project participants, and project partners (ie. Local schools, govt. agencies, local agencies) contributing to the formation of outcomes and indicators. We identified short-term, intermediate and long-term outcomes. These outcomes include children's improvements towards kindergarten or school readiness in five out of six developmental areas. The outcomes also include changes in parents/caregivers as a result of their child's participation in the Children's Program. We are measuring approximately half of those outcomes.

* This approach includes a logic model. A flow chart is developed identifying four functions:
1. Program inputs: Resources necessary to run the activity or program;
2. Activities: A description of the activity or program being measured;
3. Outputs: The number of people participating in the activity;
4. Outcomes: Changes in participants as a result of participating in the activity. These are changes in any of the following: knowledge, attitudes, values, beliefs, behavior, status or condition.

Evaluation Findings
Through the evaluation, we learned that:

• Planning the various stages of the evaluation is critical. A timeline must be developed.
  
• It is important to do a trial run of an evaluation, to identify evaluation process or data collection errors, and to test new indicator tools.
  
• It takes time to build evaluation capacity within an organization, especially if one is using a participatory process where all participants must have some understanding of the evaluation method, process, and goals.
  
• Participatory evaluation is time consuming, but (we think) it has a larger impact on program planning and it builds evaluation competencies in a higher number and broader range of people.
  
• Evaluation is not research and should not be construed as such.

Reason for Success
The program evaluation is successful because We were able to free up a few hours a week for one staff person to coordinate the evaluation.
We developed a time line and followed through on it.
We had a very able consultant assisting us (Renate Oddy of Consumer Education at Grant MacEwan Community College).
Health Canada (the funder of this program component) is very supportive of our process and offered assistance as needed.
We used a participatory process throughout.
Participatory evaluation builds community ownership over the process and results. One example of this is that we had almost a 100% response rate to our parent questionnaire, within a week of distribution.

Challenges
The challenges of doing this evaluation were
Time and financial constraints: Burnout and human resource issues are usually a concern for not-for-profits working in human services. Staff workloads are already heavy, and evaluation training and additional data collection were added to staff work loads with no increase in paid working hours. While we have been able to sustain this workload over the short-term, there are concerns about sustaining it over the long-term.
We were fortunate to have an outcome measurement tool for the children's improvements towards school readiness. This tool was designed and tested for reliability and validity by the High/Scope Educational Research Foundation. However, we were not able to find a tool that appropriately measures the changes in parents/caregivers, so we had to create our own. This tool will be refined as we test it, but the development and testing obviously requires more time and staff resources than if a standardized measurement tool existed.

Contact Information
Diane Sopher, Project Manager &
Amanda Puchalsky, Project Coordinator
The CANDORA Society of Edmonton
500 Village On the Park
Edmonton, AB T5W 4R7

Phone: (780) 477-5655
Fax: (780) 477-5659
Email: caccandora@shaw.ca [1]