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.

The guide is designed to be practical and accessible, helping others embed culturally safe practices and shift away from extractive or top-down approaches to evaluation.

Evaluation must be led by First Nations' people, reflect their values, not the priorities of others. Evaluation isn't a separate or external process. It's woven into our Community Development Framework, embedded in our partnerships from the first conversation through to project completion and beyond.

The guide addresses:

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

In Right Way Evaluation, First Peoples and communities define what success means, and their right to self-determination is honoured. It is built on yarning, strong relationships, authenticity, and focuses on strengths.

In practice, this means:

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.
A shift 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.

Our team came together to explore what evaluation means in First Nations' communities. Together, they designed the graphic below to visually represent Right Way Evaluation. The graphic shows how community and Community First Development walk the journey together. It starts with Community First Development being invited to work alongside the community, to support them to achieve their dreams. The community's dream is held by Elders, community members, and young people. And it's supported by community strengths, such as knowledge, culture, land-based practices, and lived experience.

The journey with Community First Development starts by listening and understanding the community's dream. Together, we identify the steps (or "dream indicators") that help bring that dream to life through community-led projects and activities. Communities define what success looks like. We track progress, reflect, celebrate achievements, and work through any challenges along the way.

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

"This guide challenges mainstream models that may overlook the realities and strengths of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people," Community First Development CEO Stephanie Harvey explains. "It's about doing better, not just in what we deliver, but in how we listen, how we learn, and how we show up in community."

It's a chance for practitioners to reconsider how they evaluate community projects with First Nations' peoples. It's an opportunity to rethink what success really looks like because mainstream approaches often miss what's most important – the cultural and historical context.
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.

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