aes19 International Evaluation Conference

Samantha Togni (S2 Consulting), Rene Kulitja (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women Council), Margaret Smith (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council), Nyunmiti Burton (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council), Maimie Butler (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council), Anawari Mitchell (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council), Ilawanti Ken (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council), Pantjiti McKenzie (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council), Angela Lynch (Ngaanyatjarra Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Women's Council)

Evaluation conducted in Indigenous Australian contexts rarely incorporates Indigenous ways of knowing and valuing; Western worldviews predominate. To be grounded in and guided by different worldviews requires the disruption of power and privilege inherent in evaluation. Developmental evaluation is an approach that offers this potential and its practice continues to evolve.

Developmental evaluation relies on social innovators' knowledge and skills to effectively evaluate and support innovation development. It de-centres the evaluator 'expert'; instead, situating the evaluator within the development team which co-creates the innovation and the evaluation. Understanding how developmental evaluation operates in practice at the interface of different knowledge systems is important. Senior Indigenous people, who are leading an innovation to strengthen wellbeing in their communities, and the evaluator will share our story of using developmental evaluation over several years to support our Indigenous-led social innovation in remote Australia.

Our evaluation design draws on local Indigenous ways of knowing and learning incorporating drawing and storytelling from a range of perspectives to understand the innovation's nature and its effectiveness over time. This design facilitates a meaningful and integrated evaluation process that privileges all team members' knowledge. The Indigenous leaders' visual stories enable us to follow the tracks of the innovation across communities. We are tracking stories at multiple levels within multiple systems and for individuals over time, revealing changes and connections that inform the innovation development. Recently the team presented the evaluation findings to the funders, demonstrating the harnessing of an evaluation approach that supported Indigenous people to lead the telling of their own innovation story.

Developmental evaluation can build on the strengths of Indigenous culture and knowledge to support Indigenous voices, values and aspirations. In our experience, developmental evaluation opened up the value of evaluation to whole team, effectively addressing issues of power and privilege and promoting cultural validity.