BENEFITS AND USES OF RIPPLE EFFECTS MAPPING

Much of what we do in Extension is educational in nature. Our evaluation methods have thus historically focused on individual-level impacts, such as what our participants have learned or are doing differently because of our programming (Chazdon, 2022). But what about the broad community-level impacts of our work? Extension invests deeply in leadership development and creating connections among people. How do we track what happens in our communities because of this connecting work? How do we tell the story of Extension and how it leads to community change?

Ripple Effects Mapping (REM) is a story-based evaluation tool that captures the intended and unintended impacts of a complex program or network. It is a qualitative evaluation tool developed by Extension professionals and community developers... 

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