"Measuring Development. Holding Infinity. A Writing from the CDRA’s Annual Report 2000/2001." Community Development Resource Association (CDRA)

This article focuses on the difficulties associated with measurement and highlights the inability of most of our evaluation approaches and tools to capture a central aspect of changes in social development: changing relationships. CDRA identifies the importance of this dimension, as at its heart, changed behaviors, actions, or beliefs, often filters through a change in understanding of the self in relation to others: “Social development is about human development. This is not the realm of the purely internal, not in the field of individual self-development. It is social relationship, that invisible but richly alive space between people that constitutes so much of what it is to be human at all. Development happens not between things, but between people.” CDRA underscores the importance of inserting oneself into the process of change work, since as fieldworkers one supports, offer one’s own perspective, and provides the context within which change can be stimulated. Thus, the role of the program provider as well as the recipient must be considered and explored in program assessment.