Welcome to the EIRP Community!
EI Research Partners Community
Hello, everyone and welcome to the EI Research Partners Community, a Google Group for democracy, rights and governance (DRG) monitoring, evaluation, research and learning (MERL) professionals who want to maintain a sense of community and professional engagement during this challenging time.
This community of practice is born from ideas about sustaining the legacies of USAID/DRG’s Learning Community of Practice (RIP!) and about expanding the American Evaluation Association (AEA) DRG group, which has been trying to go beyond the limitations imposed on it by the AEA. Accordingly, this community places an emphasis on sharing research and learning with each other, but with added dimensions of professional networking and collegial support.
Please invite your DRG MEL colleagues to join this group! https://groups.google.com/a/eiresearchpartners.com/g/EIRPcommunity/about
While all members can post to the whole group, for now the posts will be moderated until we establish some group norms and further define the purpose of the group together.
FAQs
Who can join this community? The Google group is open to the public but given the focus on DRG and MERL, we expect that the main contributors will be MEL professionals who have worked in the DRG space.
What kinds of posts are welcome? Google groups are good for generating discussion, but please focus on respectful and constructive engagement on topics related to research on democracy and human rights; career paths related to DRG and MEL; and events of interest to this community. We certainly don’t discourage political discussion and debate, but please consider whether this audience is the right one for information you may be trying to get out to a broader network.
What if there is too much email traffic coming from this group? Google groups let you tailor whether you get the content as individual emails or as daily or weekly digests. Please select the settings that suit your needs.
What is EI Research Partners (EIRP)? EIRP is a collective for individual consultants formed by Laura Adams, Bret Barrowman, Kate Krueger, Daniel Sabet, and others. It currently exists mainly in the form of a website (eiresearchpartners.com) and this Google Group.
If you have further questions or ideas for other ways EIRP could serve this community, please let us know at in...@eiresearchpartners.com. Some ideas we have been discussing include a community blog, Substack, or Discord where individuals can contribute anonymously or with a byline, and a public repository for documents and other products we were working on prior to February, 2025.