Right Way Evaluation
In Right Way Evaluation, Community and Community First Development are connected through journey lines moving in both directions. The community and its dream are held by Elders, community members and youth, supported by community knowledge, assets, expertise, culture and land-based practices.
The journey with Community First Development starts with understanding a community and its dream, and the dream indicators that are linked to community-led projects and activities (stepping stones to achieve the dream).
Projects and project indicators are developed, where communities define success. Through monitoring, reflection and celebration all the activities and indicators are tracked and obstacles and red tape are overcome. Through all these stages, Community First Development is contributing to Story of Change outcomes.
We do this work through following the steps of the Community Development Framework.
“...monitoring and evaluation should be different for First Nations, because you can write anything on a piece of paper, but [it doesn’t mean much] without relationships and actually seeing the impacts yourself. And it takes time. Evaluation takes time…”
Right Way Evaluation is valuable as it creates: time and space for reflection; opportunity for generating discussion (yarning, storytelling and sharing, deep listening); and engagement in ‘explicit’ thinking aloud.
TOGETHER, LET'S LIFT THE BAR ON EVALUATION WITH FIRST NATIONS' PEOPLE.
RIGHT WAY EVALUATION:
The monitoring and evaluation (M&E) undertaken with the Littlewell Working Group in 2014-15 was one of the first examples for Community First Development of applying the participatory approach and new monitoring system to co-design short and long term indicators of change with communities, monitor them throughout the project cycle and assess effectiveness at the end.