NLC Community Planning and Development Program: Monitoring and Evaluation Stages 1-3
In 2019, the Northern Land Council initiated a Community Planning and Development (CP&D) project. A monitoring and evaluation (M&E) component has paralleled the life of the project, with a number of different threads of M&E work being developed across a number of communities in the Northern Territory.
Ground Up Researchers from CDU were engaged to develop practices for monitoring and evaluating NLC CP&D projects in three communities: Galiwin’ku, Gapuwiyak and with Malak Malak. In each of these places, the M&E research followed a Ground Up approach, working collaboratively with local co-researchers, collecting stories and articulating M&E practices which are already alive and well in the work of local groups as they engage the NLC and as they generate projects strenthening networks of kin and producing vibrant futures for new generations.
GroundUp research and evaluation methods take seriously at the outset, the authority and sovereignty of Aboriginal knowledge authorities and elders and their various places, and work collaboratively with them to design, undertake and evaluate research and service delivery from the ground up. Interpretive work – where possible – engages both traditional Aboriginal knowledge and agreement making practices, and those of government and non-government organisations, and universities.
