About Tererai Trent
It is hard to imagine a more amazing journey to become an evaluator and international public speaker than the story of Tererai Trent. From humble beginnings in a cattle-herding family in rural Zimbabwe, where she was denied education because she was a girl and taught herself to read, Tererai has overcome incredible odds to achieve her dreams.
With her mother’s encouragement to aim high, Tererai wrote down her life goals on a scrap of paper and buried them in a tin box beneath a rock in a field where she herded cattle. Then she began systematically crossing those goals off as she achieved them.
From her poor village in Zimbabwe, Tererai left for America in the late 1990s and earned her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in 2000 and 2003 from Oklahoma State University. In 2009 she checked the last item off her list when she was awarded her doctorate – an Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Evaluation from Western Michigan University.
Tererai’s work experiences, which include more than 8 years working for Heifer International as a Deputy Director of Monitoring & Evaluation, have taken her to five continents. As a professional evaluator who now heads her own consulting firm, she draws upon multiple perspectives of evaluation theory, practice and its utilization, as well as from her extraordinary life experiences. Tererai brings together viewpoints from both the developing and developed world to provide a unique and very practical perspective on evaluation.
“Given the norms that govern most patriarchal societies in Africa, should the Western epistemology, ethics and concepts be the main default lens for evaluation” “Despite their blindness to social cultural context, are these evaluations valid even though they are said … Continue reading →
Posted in Appropriate inference, Causal inference, Cultural context, Development, Health, Meta-evaluation, Values-based
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Tagged Africa, cultural context, HIV/AIDS, international development, meta-evaluation
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In reading the comments in response to my earlier post, The Importance of Values for Substantiating Evaluative Conclusions , three questions strike me as powerful and authentic in addressing evaluation theory and practice within the context of culture What ‘really’ … Continue reading →
The comments shared in response to the earlier post, Culturally Competent Needs Assessment By An “Outsider” raise issues that are critical to the discipline of evaluation. Two things come to mind; a) reflections on how we define evaluation theory, and … Continue reading →
What does it take for an outsider to do a community needs assessment in cultural contexts that are deeply entrenched in traditions and norms? Continue reading →
Jane at Real Evaluation
Patricia at CIRCLE (RMIT)