How can we reflect on the citizen-led action results?
Description
Reflecting and evaluating actions and results is a helpful practice for communities and individuals committed to continuous improvement and making a positive environmental impact. By engaging in thoughtful reflection, citizens can gain valuable insights into their processes, outcomes, and overall effectiveness of our citizen-led action. This introspective exercise allows to refine strategies, optimise impact, and foster a culture of learning and innovation.
Why is it relevant?
Reflecting on action results serves multiple purposes and brings numerous benefits. Firstly, it provides an opportunity to assess the achievements and challenges encountered during the citizen-led action. It allows initiatives to evaluate whether the intended goals were met, identify any gaps, and determine the factors contributing to success or hindering progress. This assessment not only helps in understanding the action' effectiveness but also guides future decision-making and resource allocation.
How can this be done?
By engaging in self-assessment and seeking feedback, initiatives can gain insights into their actions and results. This introspection enables strategy refinement, learning from experiences, and making informed decisions, ultimately contributing to their growth, effectiveness, and long-term sustainability. A variety of tools can be used to reflect on citizen-led actions, some of which are listed below.
Starfish model
The Starfish model reflection tool is a visual framework used to facilitate reflective discussions and gather feedback on a specific project, event or action. It encourages participants to provide insights based on their experiences and perspectives, focusing on five key aspects represented by different parts of the starfish metaphor: Start, Stop, Continue, More of, and Less of.
Feedback collection of participants
Feedback collection from participants can take various forms dependent on the depth of the collected feedback desired. Feedback can be collected online, through email, or in-person, and are most effective during or directly after an action. Examples of formal collection frameworks are surveys and questionnaires that structure the data collection and information from participants in a systematic manner. Informal and/interactive feedback collection could take the shape of e.g. a bullseye feedback, or a feedback wall on which sticky notes or comment cards are collected on which participants can share their experience and feedback about the action.
Spark, Solve, Sustain
Spark, Solve and Sustain is a framework to help you evaluate a process with a group of participants by transforming insights into concrete actions points. It helps groups or individuals to reflect and learn from mistakes and successes that were encountered. The action points and insights can then be directly integrated into the planning of the next citizen-led action of the CO.
Useful resources
https://eu-citizen.science/projects and https://citimeasure.eu/comparability-tool/ This two platforms provide several examples and inspiration through a catalogue of different citizen science projects. Engaging in peer exchanges within Citizen Observatories enables initiatives to share experiences, challenges, and best practices with other organisations or individuals working in similar fields.
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