Time to think critically – community centered design
As we grow as an organisation we are constantly reflecting, learning and adapting, and our monitoring and evaluation (M&E) approaches consistently evolve over time. It's critical that we are open to adaptation with community experience at the centre of our methodology and practice; that we align with community priorities and that M&E is embedded into our processes so that it can benefit the communities we work with.
Aboriginal Males Healing Centre.
What is our Monitoring and Evaluation approach?
As a First Nations’ organisation that values culturally centred M&E and practices reflection, we have found that adaptive practice requires skill sets that draw from practical, lived life experiences. The vast majority of M&E theoretical models are still western in their frameworks and ideologies, this is a challenge for researchers and evaluators working in this space and it's important to be attentive to whose knowledge is being privileged within the evaluation context. For example, historically in white-dominant culture there has been a strong preference for quantitative approaches, and these have dominated and determined what is true and real. This is problematic as only one cultural lens has been favoured.
However, there are changes happening where conversations are taking place and First Nations’ M&E specialists are creating their own M&E theories and models that are aligned with the First Nations’ people they work with. Recognising and highlighting challenges in evaluation can also provide opportunities for reflection and improvement which requires inter-personal, culturally responsive, and reflective skills.
Our approach as a First Nations’ led organisation is to constantly push the boundaries that can limit people’s understanding of First Nations’ perspectives and culture, to be insightful about our approaches to evaluation, and to have a conscious aim to be inclusive. We welcome the ongoing need for learning and adaptation, whether through evaluative frameworks and models or evaluative methodologies, for the benefit of the communities we work alongside with — this is our core, consistent and unending goal.
Yarning is where it’s at!
The willingness and ability to prioritise and welcome rich story telling is the key factor here, as it adds many perspectives to the evaluation landscape. First Nations’ people call it ‘yarning’; this is fundamental to the M&E process as yarning builds relationships and trust. Relationships are central to understanding the role of evaluation in First Nation communities. Through yarning as the fundamental method, we consider new ways of reflecting, what we are hearing, gathering, and sharing, and our own responsibility and contributions to the yarning experience. Through the yarning, we are accepting that we can and do contribute to the change process. Through yarning we also reflect on what we don’t know or see, as we continue to design our evaluations and engage in and make sense of what we are discovering.
Our Story of Change – an example of yarning in practice
As a First Nation’s led organisation we ensure that our values and approach are community centred and that our practice is one of cultural centredness. We work alongside First Nation communities to enhance community well-being through community development, M&E and action research activities.
We are well placed as an organisation to strive for continuous improvement, through learning, adapting to change and constant reflection on our community approaches and practice.
Our Story of Change model is what guides the M&E process. Through yarning as a team, we unearthed that the traditional program logic and linear models that were initially used, were not capturing the narratives of the community, and were not reflective of the interconnectedness of First Nations’ experiences.
Measuring outcomes is important but what is critical in the Story of Change model is the process – the activities with First Nations’ communities are essential to the process of community development and drive the strong outcomes we achieve. It was through trial, application and iterative development that the circular Story of Change model we use today was found to be more successful as a cultural conduit.
This Story of Change model was one of the earlier, linear iterations.
Today we use the circular model on the right which we have found to be more successful as a cultural conduit.
What changes did we make?
There were fundamental changes made to the model that are worthy of unpacking:
Honouring self-determination was added in the centre, as it is at the heart of all we do and is what we strive for in our community practice. At the community level, self-determination guides community projects, dreams and the impacts of the work communities undertake with us.
Improving connections across cultures (use to be reconciliation in action).
Data sovereignty was included – evolving from the former ‘greater community-owned evidence base to influence social policy’. Apart from it being a bit of a mouthful, it became apparent that as our learning journey progressed, we were discussing data sovereignty, and it has raised many interesting questions on the elevation of First Nations’ voices and the information that is collated during the research processes. These rich and immersive conversations are still underway within our organisation.
The intention of our circular story of change model is to highlight how all these outcome areas are an interconnected ecosystem, centred on self-determination of First Nations’ peoples, and is a more culturally grounded visual representation of the change model.
This is the second blog in a series of three exploring our thoughts and reflections about M&E, and to welcome you along on the journey of M&E we have embarked on!
In our first blog we gave the background story of how our M&E framework was developed, the changes we made at the start of our M&E journey to better reflect community ownership, and some of the questions and insights that were raised. In this blog we discussed thoughts and reflections on our M&E practice and provided an example of how this approach can influence the design of a theory of change, or program logic.
Our third blog of this series will discuss our latest action research project. Why we chose M&E as the subject of the research and how that contributes to ensuring new learnings and success while working alongside First Nations’ communities.