On February 1 at 12:00 pm PT, I will be holding my annual virtual tea party.  This is something I’ve been doing since February of 1993.  I was in Minnesota and the winter was very cold, and although not as bleak as winter in Oregon, I was missing my friends who did not live near me.  I had a tea party for the folks who were local and wanted to think that those who were not local were enjoying the tea party as well.  So I created a virtual tea party.  At that time, the internet was not available; all this was done in hard copy (to this day, I have one or two friends who do not have internet…sigh…).  Today, the internet makes the tea party truly virtual–well the invitation is; you have to have a real cup of tea where ever you are.

How is this evaluative?  Gandhi says that only you can be the change you want to see…this is one way you can make a difference.  How will you know?

I know because my list of invitees has grown exponentially.  And some of them share the invitation.  They pass it on.  I started with a dozen or so friends.  Now my address list is over three pages long.  Including my daughters and daughters of my friends (maybe sons, too for that matter…)

Other ways:  Design an evaluation plan; develop a logic model; create a metric/rubric.  Report the difference.  This might be a good place for using an approach other than a survey or Likert scale.  Think about it.