Values and public space: frameworks and tools for evaluation of social projects

Abstract

The achievements of social organizations have a double nature as projections of values that they intend to disseminate, and as its outcomes, which should produce impact, as benefits. This conception of social management – to render values and to produce public goods for mission accomplishment – suggests that the evaluation must consider the bonds among the reproduction of values and the impact of benefits to infer evaluative metrics. This entanglement and the concept of public space allow us to face questions as the intangibility of benefits, the scale of local organizations, and the limitation of adapted methods to capture social values. We emphasize the concept of public space and the theoretical works of H. Putnam and A. Sen to suggest an evaluative framework, as an ensemble of concepts and some related instruments, as a mapping of public goods and values of social initiatives. As an example, we present an evaluative experience with a project evaluated in Belo Horizonte, MG, Brazil.