Progress so far has been slow with Yuwi, who are in an important and very busy transitional phase in their operations and governance. This has impeded but certainly not stopped progress towards developing their MER framework. A significant development has recently occurred, which was a healthy country planning workshop to establish Yuwi values for country, culture and community.
This workshop has provided some important input for the structural development of an initial MER program. Without going into specifics (because the plan is yet to be finalised and ratified), even the tentative establishment of values and strategies has enabled us to identify some indicators towards which data may be collected and assessments made. This will direct the next phase of the project for Yuwi, who may not at least begin the collection of meaningful data, which will contribute towards evaluations that will provide insight about the health of their values.
Learning note:
This emphasises the importance of having a some sort of plan that sets out a group's values and strategies. Without this, there can be no useful structure to a MER program. A plan articulates values, which dictate indicators, which in turn dictate monitoring methods. Therefore, without a plan, or at least a set of values, monitoring becomes the directionless collection of data.
Next Steps:
This is where the fun starts for us. We'll work with Yuwi to develop indicators that are related to each of the values identified by planning workshop. These indicators will be developed with monitoring and evaluation methods in mind, with consideration given to
We envision that this will enable Yuwi to undertake monitoring immediately and be making some evaluations within 6-12 months.