for client participation. Since evaluation was included as part of the original design
of the SISTERS program, sufficient funding was budgeted to support necessary
staff and equipment.

As demonstrated here, a culturally competent evaluation is one designed with
respect for and in collaboration with the culture in which it operates. It is an
evaluation that incorporates ideas and input from evaluators, program staff, and
participants. Instruments used in such an evaluation are also designed and tested in
conjunction with local staff and participants. A culturally competent evaluation is
integrated within the project so that staff members fully accept it and are involved
with the entire evaluation process.

Key to a culturally competent evaluation is the willingness of researchers to
connect with the culture or community under study. The value of this kind of
engagement became apparent over the five years we conducted SISTERS, but we
truly realized its importance at a conference attended by grantees from across the
United States. In an afternoon free of workshops and presentations, evaluators and
program staff from three different New York-area projects visited Acoma, a pueblo
just outside of Albuquerque, New Mexico--one of the oldest pueblos inhabited by
Native Americans still in existence. As we toured the village, chatted with residents,
and purchased their wares, we began talking with each other about the various
aspects of culture that cut across races, religions, and nationalities. Each of us had
a story to tell about how a particular tradition we observed in Acoma was opera-
tionalized in our own culture and how similar many of these traditions were.
Thinking back to a time when some of the projects had weathered tense racial and
ethnic divisions among staff members and evaluators, we concluded that there was
no better cultural competence training than this time spent in close quarters with
members of another culture talking about and exploring the ways in which culture
affects our behaviors, our lives, and our beliefs. For most of us, that process of
understanding had taken many years of growing pains with our developing projects.
It was ironic that our experiences all fell into place and culminated in only one day
when we visited another culture foreign to all of us. It was by talking about ways
that each of us could relate to this new culture that we finally defined what cultural
competence truly means.

No training session, textbook, or workshop could have created the understanding
that was shared that day. Had we been able to begin again to plan our programs and
evaluation strategies we would have been starting from a better understanding of
culture and of each other. Building culturally competent programs and evaluations
takes time, patience, openness, and sometimes discomfort, but the results are much
better able to capture the unique nature of our interventions: to understand why and
how they work, and how they can best meet the needs of the very special women
we serve.

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