The May 13 Group PODCAST

We're on a small hiatus at the moment, but we wanted to hop into your stream to celebrate our anniversary and reflect on the work we're doing. Take a short break with us and let us know how you're celebrating May 13th! “Inspired” Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) ⁠⁠Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0⁠⁠ Sound Effect by  Universfield  from  Pixabay

In this conversation, Carolina and The May 13 Group’s producer delve into the ecosystem metaphor again, discussing its implications in the nonprofit sector, the importance of holistic understanding, and the interconnectedness of various players within the ecosystem. They explore the nonprofit industrial complex as an ecosystem, the role of intention, and the potential for destruction and nourishme...

In this episode, host Vidya Shanker welcomes The May 13 Group Podcast producer, Nayantara Premakumar, to explore the metaphor of ecosystems in relation to their work and personal experiences. They discuss the importance of understanding ecosystems holistically , the impact of colonialism and capitalism on land relationships, and the misappropriation of ecosystem language in various fields. The con...

In this episode, Ramya Kumaran—a scholar and practitioner around imagination, play, and futures—joins host Vidhya Shanker to explore the transformative power of collective imagination for building new worlds beyond the ones we inherited. We challenge listeners to question whose imagination shapes our current realities and discuss The May 13 Group not as a single utopia but rather as a potential po...

The May 13 Group will be closed from mid-July to mid-August. Our team will be tending to our other gardens, which means time away from email and limited engagement with social media. In the meantime, you can stay connected with us through ⁠our website . If you would like to reach us, you can do so at team@themay13group.net and we will respond when we can after we return in August.

In this episode, hosts Carolina and Vidhya dive deep into collectivism in relation to the (neo)liberal ideology of individualism that underpins the nonprofit/nongovernmental industrial complex and evaluation. We invite Naaima Khan, a strategist and evaluator, to discuss the implications of collectivism in the context of structurally-focused analysis and action. The conversation weaves personal ref...

In this episode, hosts Carolina and Vidhya reflect on our first year building a solidarity economy through this podcast. We connect recent topics—collective knowledge-making, individualism, and the idea of an economy—to each other, evaluation, accountability, and resource distribution. We note the years of work ahead, as today's socio-political situation results from decades of deliberate effo...

In this episode, Carolina and Vidhya engage in dialogue with ⁠Justin Laing⁠ of ⁠Hillombo Consulting⁠ to understand the idea of an economy, which is foundational to building a solidarity economy. We delve into the way knowledge—or perhaps narrative—is produced within racial and gendered capitalism and the role evaluation plays for the owning and ruling class. We close with an invitation to imagine...

Carolina and Vidhya reflect on individualism and interrogate how it shows up in our personal lives and is built into our work—including NPIC and evaluation’s training, practice, and literature as well as existing field-building and change efforts. ⁠⁠Episode 1.7 TRANSCRIPT Notes 02:17 “Utopia” as perceived or portrayed by dominating forces 11:55 Concentric circles still center the individual and nu...

In this episode, we discuss “The Power of Perspective: Generations of Evaluators Generating Change,” an interactive journey map featured at the 2022 American Evaluation Association conference. Rooted in popular education and critical pedagogy, it highlighted the suppression of critical voices in evaluation and connected participants’ lives to a lineage of resistance within the field. We discuss it...

In this episode, thought partner and podcast producer Nayantara Premakumar joins hosts Carolina and Vidhya to reflect and update listeners on our retreat and recent milestones. We share our struggles resisting racial/gendered capitalism through cooperative, decentralized, and transparent governance and ownership structures. This includes a discussion of fiscal sponsorship and technocratic tools fo...

We're going to be taking a break this month, but we'll be back in October. In the meantime, you can stay connected with us on our website themay13group.net.

In this episode, Sarah Stachowiak joins Carolina and Vidhya in reflecting transparently on our financial relationship. How does the owning class’s control over manufacturing processes and products show up in the knowledge economy and the evaluation of public and nonprofit/ nongovernmental programs? What does it mean for the “raw material” (data about/ from program participants)? For the “independe...

In this episode, Carolina and Vidhya reflect on the tension among learning from the past, meeting immediate needs in the present, and both imagining and building a better future. We discuss evaluation’s origins as a tool for capital and grapple with our status as members of the professional/ managerial class. Folx with our training and current positionality find uncertainty “risky.” Whose interest...

In this episode, hosts Carolina De La Rosa Mateo and Vidhya Shanker ask, “why evaluation?” We wonder if evaluation can be a site of resistance against racial/gendered capitalism, when capital developed evaluation to support its interests and continues to control the means and ends of knowledge production. Can evaluators renounce capitalism and positivism to organize against exploitation alongside...

In this episode, we (hosts Vidhya Shanker and Carolina De La Rosa Mateo) introduce ourselves, share how our worlds came together, and discuss The May 13 Group . We talk about our personal histories inside and outside evaluation, the Minnesota IBPOC in Evaluation Community of Praxis , how The May 13 Group came to be, and what it could possibly become. We invite anyone who works in and around evalua...

The May 13 Group is an emerging ecosystem oriented toward—and energized by—epistemic healing and wholeness in, through, and around evaluation. Join hosts Carolina De La Rosa Mateo and Vidhya Shanker as they dive into ideas and stories that deepen our understanding of how structurally-focused collective action, including direct action organizing, can challenge capitalist relations of knowledge prod...