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New guide: Right Way Evaluation with First Nations’ communities
Community First Development has announced the release of its new guide, Right Way Evaluation: Telling Our Own Stories of Change, designed to support practitioners, researchers, and governments working in partnership with First Nations' peoples. This guide offers a culturally responsive approach to monitoring, evaluation and learning, centered on self-determination, community leadership and strengths-based practice.
- support for community decision making and co-designing with communities
- using storytelling, yarning and relational approaches to capture impact
- knowing when to step up and when to step back.
Right Way Evaluation
- Evaluation is community-led from day one: Communities define what success looks like, what project indicators matter, and how information is gathered and shared.
- Evaluation is culturally respectful: It honours local knowledge, storytelling traditions, and ways of working.
- Data is owned and controlled by mob: Communities own their data. Full stop. They decide who sees it, how it's used, and where it goes.
Ashift from deficit to strengths: Instead of focusing on what's "wrong" in the community, the evaluation focuses on resilience, leadership, culture, and connection.- Genuine relationships are prioritised: Evaluators create genuine relationships with community, and do not just collect data and leave.
Through these stages, we are contributing to the community's growth and story of change.
Truth-telling and healing
Evaluation is also a chance for truth-telling. From the start, communities share honest stories about their needs, lived experiences, and the impact of colonisation. These stories may speak to intergenerational trauma, systemic barriers, and the importance of culture and connection. For many First Nations' people, evaluation is a chance to "tell it like it is", how colonisation and past policies have affected their lives, and how they plan to move forward to strengthen community. Truth-telling through evaluation creates space for healing and change.
Honouring First Nations' ways
The guide upholds First Nations' ways – the ways that have always existed within communities. First Nations' communities have always had their own ways of making decisions. These processes are often oral, relational, and guided by values like respect, reciprocity, and a collective responsibility within a family or community. Right Way Evaluation honours and supports these traditions.
Lifting the bar
Community First Development is calling on practitioners to reflect on how they engage with First Nations' communities and to raise the bar when it comes to how success is measured, who defines it, and how partnerships are built.
About Community First Development
Community First Development partners with First Nations' communities to support community-led development and business advisory support, culturally grounded evaluation, and systems change. We are committed to approaches that uphold self-determination and respect First Nations' knowledges and strengthen their voices.
We acknowledge the Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples of this nation. We acknowledge the Traditional Custodians of the lands in which we conduct our business. We pay our respects to ancestors and Elders, past and present. We are committed to honouring Australian Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ unique cultural and spiritual relationships to the land, waters and seas and their rich contribution to society.