Hunter/Harvester/Guardian programs are inherently valuable to Northern and Indigenous communities, providing a suite of social, health, economic, and environmental benefits. These benefits are well known within Indigenous communities, but formal evaluations can be useful to improve program delivery and showcase benefits to external audiences.
MakeWay, in collaboration with the Social Research and Demonstration Corporation (SRDC) and Shari Fox, Ph.D., has released a Hunter/Harvester/Guardian Evaluation Toolkit. The Toolkit will support Indigenous organizations and communities to plan, design and implement evaluations to assess the impacts of their Hunter/Harvester/Guardian programs. The Toolkit provides a common approach to evaluating these benefits, and can hopefully contribute to shared learning among Hunter/ Harvester/Guardian programs across Indigenous communities.
This Toolkit was created in direct engagement with Northern and Indigenous organizations and communities, with the aim to co-create a set of processes and tools that can help capture the impacts and share the stories of Hunter/Harvester/Guardian programs that are currently running or are in development.
Key positive outcomes stemming from these programs include food sovereignty, improved health and well-being, Indigenous-centered economic development, and strengthened ecological conservation. The Toolkit provides guidance on how to capture these outcomes in both a qualitative and quantitative manner, as well as communicate benefits effectively to various audiences.
The Toolkit leads users through Orientation, Planning, Doing, and Sharing stages, and includes a “Deeper Dive” section which includes sample metrics, supporting literature and further reading, a Theory of Change, a Glossary of Terms to build a common language among Hunter/Harvester/Guardian programs.
The Toolkit is available for any to use and adapt as they choose. MakeWay, SRDC, and Shari Fox will be hosting a webinar on Wednesday, September 15th at 9:30 am PST/12:30 pm EST to walk through the Toolkit and its applications for Indigenous organizations and communities.
