NANIKI

Kalinago Barana (Sea) Stories & Conservation Project

Monitoring and Evaluation

Individual M&E forms were completed by all facilitators and this assessment from the Karina Cultural Group, Oonya Kempadoo and workshop facilitator, Mr Dangleben, provided the following:

Best results:

• Opportunity was provided for inclusiveness
• Mobilized Key resource persons, sponsors & participants
• Enthusiasm for the objectives: documentation, research, youth and community participation
• Recording elders in action
• Raised the awareness & appreciation for Kalinago culture especially sea practices
• Helpful to building the capacity of the Karina Cultural Group for future socio-cultural work
• Timely, relevant, participants were very interested in the project.
• Outputs: recordings, notes, literature, project planning, overview documents
  and creative works.
• People’s togetherness, people wanting more
• Generated a lot of ideas
• Togetherness in decision making
• Flexibility and a high level of creativity (of the team and participants)

Challenges:

• Technical issues
• Roles and responsibilities need to be clearly communicated. Too much was left to the coordinator.
• Lukewarm support given to the project from community leaders
• Transportation and camera/recording support
• Time and program management: Varied expectations - what could be done within the budget and timeframe - changing plans, overstretched budget and human resources. Time lapsed (during the workshop) due to participants lateness and absence
• ‘Teaching’ methods employed rather than youth-led creative focus, youth expression ‘corrected’ by adults and few results showing consideration of the future.
• Communications (and virtual collaboration) between the team
• Documentation - a reluctance to write, digitize, sort and store

Lessons learnt:

• A more mature (participant) age group could have resulted in better/stronger output and processing of the research.
• More community sensitization could have been done
• Technical support underestimated
• Selection of project facilitators based on skills is critical
• Training (for research methods and workshop skills) should be increased
• Equipment needs underestimated
• Good contribution to the preservation of the Kalinago cultural patrimony and the tourism product which will be used by Kalinago Tours in tours to the community.
• Development/publication of booklet for children being actively considered.
• Skills and knowledge to pursue career

Financial considerations:

• Local community support responded generously, even if last minute.
• The constraints for delivering a 10 day project with very modest budget on short notice.
• Expectations and the desire to expand the project beyond the actual budget was real due to the demand for such a project and this called for much voluntary input from all the facilitators, especially the Project Coordinator, while all involved are already overstretched by doing unpaid community work.
• Community ideas of what a ‘project’ means - big money - added further expectations and costs to the project (e.g awarding plaques to interviewees to reverse past experiences of exploitation).
• The cost of administration and budget revision to accommodate changes to the project due to Covid-19 were absorbed by the facilitators.

Recommendations:

• More like this needed - bigger budget, more facilitators and participants
• Capacity needs building within the Karina Cultural Group and community members in order for them to create their own projects, proposals and secure funding.
• Technical capacity (for recording, virtual and technical equipment) within the community needs building or should be established, along with other community human resources such as social media experts.
• Budgets for projects like this should include expenses for Cultural Leader/elders input (who support facilitators) and factor in the role of formal events, ceremony and performance production.
• Professional development in areas like project and time management, communications, documentation & research techniques, youth-friendly workshop approaches - will help tremendously.
• Finding these resources from Indigenous organizations and associations who are training Indigenous people how to preserve and protect their own intellectual property and culture - is recommended.
• Follow up project development for editing and compiling these project results into a book that can serve the community and schools.