Community participation is a complex process and its propensity to having unintended negative effects plays a vital role in its outcome. This paper attempts to reconstruct and critique the outcomes of a participatory process that seeks to address housing shortages by using the narratives of local residents in Diepkloof. Heterogeneity of identities tied to "spatiality of power relations" and history have influenced the trajectory of community participation, which were underestimated by drivers of the process. This paper shows that community participation has far-reaching negative effects if not undertaken in the correct manner and, if discontinued, results in sensitive issues concerning housing to be unresolved. It concludes that community participation provides unintended outcomes like social tension, disillusionment, conflict and societal fragmentation. Drivers of a participation process therefore need to acquire adequate socio-cultural and historical knowledge of a community so as to limit unintended negative outcomes.

In the face of unprecedented and ever‐changing challenges at the local, national, and global levels, evaluation must change too. Our old ways no longer serve us or the field's social, economic, political, and humanitarian betterment aims. Taking these aims seriously means much must change, including how we educate and train. In this article, we lay out a vision for what must happen within evaluator education and training and examples of how a transformative frame can be successfully integrated. With the great challenges our countries and societies face, we revisit three fundamental questions: what do evaluator education and training ‘done well’ mean? What should such education and training look like? Who should lead it?