International AIDS Candlelight Memorial

The Global Health Council is the world's largest membership alliance dedicated to saving lives by improving health throughout the world.

The Council works to ensure that all who strive for improvement and equity in global health have the information and resources they need to succeed.

Strategies

Evaluating Results

Evaluation is one of the most important parts of the Candlelight Memorial and it is also one of the most forgotten. To evaluate your memorial is to critically review what happened, and an opportunity to study and use the results to learn for the future. At the end of your memorial, have a discussion with your planning team about the event – what was most effective, what could have been better, and what could be done differently next time.

The Global Health Council evaluates the entire International AIDS Candlelight Memorial every year to learn the true impact of the event on communities worldwide. Your final meeting could also be an opportunity to complete the coordinator’s final report form and submit it to the Council. You can use the Council’s final report form as a basis for discussion with your planning team. You may also want to survey the community following the event to get a sense of how the memorial affected them and changed their perspectives on HIV/AIDS. Below are some tips for evaluating your Candlelight Memorial.

Evaluating Results

Questions to ask your planning team:

Did we accomplish our goals? Why or why not?
Did we plan early enough and did we need more resources? How could we get more?
Did the memorial change how community members think about HIV/AIDS? In what ways?
What major challenges prevented success? How could we overcome them?
Did we successfully convey our advocacy messages? If not, how could they be improved?
How specifically did our activities support our goals?
Will participants take future action against AIDS as a result? Why or why not?

Questions to ask yourself as a coordinator:

Did I accomplish my goals as a coordinator? Why or why not?
Did I learn new skills for community mobilization and AIDS awareness?
Do I have a better understanding of how AIDS affects my community?
What major challenges prevented my success? What could I have done differently?
Did this event motivate me to continue fighting AIDS in the future?

Other considerations:

Record what happened at your memorial and save any media clippings, such as newspaper articles or pictures.
Record and study the number of men, women and children who attended. Are there any groups of people that were less represented than others and why?
Write or publish the results of your evaluation and use them to show potential sponsors, partners and future participants to gain interest for the following year.

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