Everybody wants to know what we do at UBUNTU!
Hi! My name is Koren Dennison. I am a dancer, roller skater, daughter and granddaughter, sister, beginner gardener, a double alum/ Master’s grad of Marquette University in Corporate Communications, I wear glasses, I’m learning French and I take great care of my hair. I previously worked my way up to Program Coordinator at a Montessori elementary school over 6 years. Although I was passionate and engaged with those children, that wasn’t what I’d studied in school for and I was excited for a dreamlike opportunity to grow and show myself in new ways at UBUNTU. This event was divinely timed in my life. Currently, I am a Managing Evaluation & Communications Strategist at UBUNTU Research and Evaluation. I get to exercise my knowledge in a brand new way. I am the youngest at 25 and newest on UBUNTU’s team since June 2022, and I’d like to break down what I do for y’all. (Bear with me.)
So, what do evaluators actually DO at UBUNTU?
Our own families have a hard time understanding the work we do. To most of our parents, we are teachers who point out the racism hiding in the corners of white folks’ organizations. We’re freedom fighters. Although this is true, we do so much more. The work is so much bigger.
Simple answers include: We teach. We help/defend/support Black folks. We are researchers. We facilitate. We educate. We evaluate. We study. We bond and relate. We write. Sweet, right? Yes, and I know you’re still wondering. But what do these things actually mean though? Like for real, how do they spend their 40 hours a week? What do they work towards? (I love that you wanna know, lemme do my best to break it down.)
In essence, my role as an evaluator, I consult, collaborate, and go into contracts (alongside 1-2 UBUNTU teammates) with program managers and funders to develop or adapt programs to better serve marginalized and/or minoritized communities. (Still a mouthful, I know, let’s go further.)
When I say program, I want you to think about any public offering, initiative, or campaign intended to serve or engage a particular group or meet a social need in an organized way. The word program in this case umbrellas things like the Boys & Girls Club, WIC, a community garden that invites neighborhood kids to eat and grow food, College Possible, Upward Bound, Wraparound MKE, a series of classes offered to new mothers at a birthing center, Community Advocates, Pearls for Teen Girls, Running Rebels, a church-based food pantry, and many more.
When I say program, think of organizations (or individuals) who offer something of value to people who need or want it in any regard. (We still tracking? Okay, cool.)
So there’s a few ways we can get in partnership or contracts for projects that an evaluator will strategize with a client on:
The developer could say “Hey UBUNTU. I have an idea and the funding, help me figure out the details in between to ensure I reach and honor my audience.”
A manager might say “Hey UBUNTU. We’ve been doing this thing for 2 years now, come observe us and talk to our people, then let us know how to make it better over the next 2 years.”
A government agency could release a public statement, called a request for proposal (RFP), that announces the intended idea, describes it, and solicits bids from qualified contractors to complete it and UBUNTU would apply for the work.
An executive director of an organization could request an evaluation by UBUNTU’s team to uplift and understand the qualitative experiences of participants, rather than the traditional quantitative measures (we dig words and stories over numbers).
Dignity is our framework for the work and we put that in those contracts. We looking at every instance like everybody is worthy because I am worthy, with a focus on shifting power toward black aliveness. (UBUNTU translates to ‘I am because we are’) (See also: We not free til we all free!) Each contract with a client is called a project. Each managing evaluation strategists at UBUNTU might have up to 10 projects at any time; 2-6 architect projects, and an accomplice on 3-5 other projects, each with a different shuffle of teammates.
Side note, right haha: the order of who holds the tiers of leadership, direction, vision, and responsibility for a project are talked about in these terms respectively: architect, accomplice, and assistant(s).
So, that’s basically the bulk of the role as managing strategist as far as projects.
There’s approximately 5 hours a week of mandatory team time: updates, peer learning, group study, and Beloved Community. Our directors hold office hours weekly as well. We co-work over zoom (and in-person frequently and voluntarily) collaboratively on projects or just for the camaraderie, company and thought-partnership. (This is when the magic is happening!!)
Yeah, but then over the last quarter or so, Koren is getting into facilitation (EOW!) I was an accomplice on a couple projects and got loving guidance, modeling, and nudges into leadership. As facilitators, we teach folks dr. monique liston’s definition and application of dignity, power and humiliation, specifically how to identify and leverage the concepts in your organization, and how to utilize them to right historical harms. We also teach about whiteness, anti-blackness, transformative justice and radical accountability. We tend to offer these learnings in a series of 1 to as many parts as your organization needs. (Don’t forget though, budgets matter.) I recently led my first major facilitation on Dignity, Power and Humiliation, at an in-person presentation alongside 2 teammates to Community Engaged Scholars 2023 Cohort of the Medical College of Wisconsin (2 snaps!).
Okay, so boom, remember I said we all got around 10 projects at at time? Yeah, then it’s a little bit more to get the work done.
We study and read A LOT.
We read books as a team on a bi-weekly schedule. These books are a mix of Black content, Emergent Strategy, self-help, industry, equity and liberation, abolitionist, decolonized and funny type writings. We read scholarly articles relevant to our field and specific project load. We read about recent and riveting ways to do our work. We gotta stay fresh on our textbook knowledge to inform the other ways of knowing, y’know. (Y’all I gotta be honest I’m not even a heavy reader like that, so I struggle here but I literally have a book on me at all times and if I don’t, I prolly should.) My current study and project load centers restorative justice and reproductive justice. I find both topics fascinating and ever so relevant to my own dignity and livelihood in my racial, social, economic, afro futurist, and otherwise tangible environments.
And then, y’all want to revisit Beloved Community? (I’m glad you asked) Our team of 11 exercises practices aligned with Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and bell hooks’s visions of community and the world. These practices include, but are not limited to, radical honesty, embracing conflict, generative conflict, forgiveness, reconciliation, seeing redeeming qualities, and accepting our multitudes.
This means we love on each other real good. We humanize and forgive each other. We challenge and hold one another accountable. We use iron to sharpen iron. (We be in each other business, lovingly.) We stay fresh on our practices by modeling them in-house. We aim to bring the future we envision into existence by embodying principles in the present. We be showing up, calling folks in, letting them know, and picking each other up, and being mirrors for one another.
(Now this one is the one that wears me out tho, IN A GOOD WAY. You can’t get nothing past Black women with big Auntie vibes, especially not ones that believe in you. I got 10 extra TTs and one cuz (Hey Elliot!) who see me, know me, push me, and hold me accountable in my work and my personal growth. WHEW. It is hard being seen in my wholeness and sometimes in my emptiness!)
All in all and I’ll wrap it here, ultimately, UBUNTU evaluators listen and write.
We listen to Black (and other minoritized) people’s stories, uplift their truths, and write them down in ways that bring life to their experiences AND translate to continued funding, success, growth, understanding, etc. Evaluation, as a traditional industry, has been used to exclude as much as include; invalidate as much as amplify. We can guess what groups were excluded and invalidated, but UBUNTU works to remedy, create solutions to, or at least bring attention to these disparities in the pursuit of equity as a STEP, not the destination, toward liberation. I love it here, but it’s hard work: personal inner work, reading, sensemaking, expanding, vulnerability, working with clients, being voluntold, living and just learning all the time!! I hope I painted a somewhat clear picture of what I do in my role at UBUNTU Research and Evaluation as an Managing Evaluation Strategist. If not, here go some of my fav cute work pictures anyway!
