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Authors and speakers: Peter Johnson (Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa), Liz Mullen (World Vision Australia), Ann Ingamells (Griffith University), Billy Landy (Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa), Lewis Williams (Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa), Slim Williams (Kanyirninpa Jukurrpa)

This presentation discusses a developmental model of evaluation applied to a successful leadership program for remote Indigenous communities.  The discussion will highlight how the evaluation process has facilitated learning from several different perspectives:

The perspectives of the funding partner and a professional, academic evaluator, who will jointly describe the continuous process of reflection and learning.  This process has facilitated the emergence of program content and methods.  This process has also identified outcomes and benefits that initially would not have been expected and has allowed these outcomes to be included in an impact evaluation framework.

The perspective of participants - Three Indigenous participants will describe the program from their perspective, notably including the definition of program benefits that they value, and their role in the process of continuous reflection  and learning and in the development of an evaluation framework.  Their presentation will illustrate their commitment to culturally-framed evaluation and its implications for overall program evaluation.

The perspective of the program manager, who will discuss several key challenges for funders, program designers and evaluators in a cross-cultural environment.   This segment will discuss and illustrate with examples the need for context driven, innovative approaches to program design and implementation and for evaluation that encourages examination of program benefits from multiple perspectives.  

These complementary perspectives illustrate the way in which embedding evaluation in a process of continuous program design and execution can achieve strong outcomes.  The presenters believe that such an approach is required to tackle some of the endemic challenges of working in remote locations and in cross cultural contexts.   We argue for a process of continuous, reflective evaluation rather than detailed program planning, the effective inclusion of participants in that process and an understanding and adoption of those participants' values and priorities.