Evaluating the Effectiveness of Community Climate Adaptation Workshops

Jessi Kershner
Summary
Community climate change adaptation workshops are collaborative efforts designed to make climate adaptation locally relevant and to empower people to learn and take action. Many different formats, activities, and structures are currently used in these workshops, with little understanding of what methods work best for generating learning and collective action. EcoAdapt and Virginia Tech received funding from the National Science Foundation to identify consensus-based effective practices for promoting learning and action in adaptation workshops and to test those practices in eight communities across the United States.
EcoAdapt and Virginia Tech received funding from the National Science Foundation to improve understanding of what methods work best for generating learning and collective action in community climate adaptation workshops. This project is divided into two phases:
- Phase One is designed to identify consensus-based effective practices for promoting learning and action in adaptation workshops, and includes a Delphi study to synthesize beliefs about effective practices held by prominent workshop facilitators across the United States and a retrospective survey of adaptation workshop participants to evaluate learning and post-workshop action.
- Phase Two is designed to understand how learning occurs in community climate adaptation workshops and how that learning does or does not contribute to collective action, and includes conducting eight adaptation workshops with communities across the United States.
The final Delphi report has been published and the retrospective survey underway. Community climate adaptation workshops are planned for 2020-2022.
Citation
Kershner, J. 2020. Evaluating the Effectiveness of Community Climate Adaptation Workshops [Summary of a project of EcoAdapt and Virginia Tech]. Retrieved from CAKE: https://www.cakex.org/case-studies/evaluating-effectiveness-community-climate-adaptation-workshops (Last updated September 2020)