Through the lens: Australian Evaluation Society Conference 2023
Monitoring and evaluation is an important part of our community development work with First Nations’ communities. Our culturally responsive approach to evaluation is reflective, reflexive and allows us to learn and improve as we go.
This year we were delighted to be part of the Australian Evaluation Society’s 2023 international conference, exploring the theme ‘Through the lens’. The conference was held in Brisbane on the lands of the Turrbal and Yuggera peoples and was jam-packed with many exciting speakers exploring the way our lenses influence our different ways of knowing to inform our theory and practice.
Senior Community Development Advisor, Doyen, and one of our Volunteer Coordinators, Aimee, presented on our participatory monitoring and evaluation tool, Seed to Tree; Doyen also appeared in the closing plenary panel alongside the Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury; and Deb, one of our Queensland Senior Community Development Officers, won a scholarship to attend the conference.
The Seed to Tree tool is a participatory monitoring and evaluation tool that amplifies community voices, First Nations' ways of knowing, being, doing and self-determination. Doyen, a proud Yamatji Naaguja Wajarri man, has tailored the Seed to Tree tool so it can be used for multiple contexts and purposes when working with diverse First Nations' communities across Australia. Read more here about the Seed to Tree tool here.
The scholarship provided support for Senior Community Development Officer Deb to fly to Brisbane, for accommodation, and tickets to attend the full conference. Deb was extremely appreciative of the opportunity to be involved and to learn different tools, evaluation frameworks and ways of working from different perspectives. She is looking forward to using the new information and tools gained from the conference in her work.
“I attended two days of full sessions, and they covered things like reflections and embedding culture and evaluation… I felt so blessed and I made a lot of friends from overseas, which, you know, really opened my eyes… I have taken away key learnings on diverse evaluation strategies, how to make the evaluation resonate through story telling, acknowledging the purpose, whose logic, whose reality. Most importantly about adapting the learned information on principles and practices and reflecting on challenges and norms when monitoring and evaluating my Far North Queensland projects.”
- Deb, Senior Community Development Officer
Australian Evaluation Society (AES) Scholarship awardees for emerging First Nations’ evaluators, with some of the First Nations’ members of the AES. Deb pictured fourth on the right, Doyen on the far right.
Deb, Senior Community Development Officer, based in Cairns who won a scholarship to attend the conference.
To learn more about our culturally responsive approach to monitoring and evaluation with First Nations’ people and communities please click on the button below.