Video 2: Community Led Planning

This section will provide information on the importance ofcommunity-based projects, The project cycle and how it relates to projectdesign along with the project components and their interconnection.

Community development is broadly defined as a process whichallows community members to come together to create solutions to commonproblems/conditions. Remember the term “community” can also mean a specificdemographic within the community as well as communities of interest andorganizations.

ANA believes that involving community members in communitydevelopment leads to lasting and positive change and is a key factor indesigning and implementing a successful project. ANA’s mission and historysupports community development as the path towards Native American communitiesachieving self-sufficiency, cultural preservation, and self-determination.

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Welcome to the ANA Project Planning and Development on Demand Training series.
This is Video Two: Community-led Projects and Engagement.
Here's a look at the project cycle. This graphic illustrates important steps you should consider when creating a budget. The steps to creating a good project are evaluating needs, identifying solutions, designing a responsible project, and implementing. Throughout this process, you're also going to be monitoring and adjusting as necessary.
Community-led planning is important for any project. Community members and various stakeholders are involved throughout the planning process. Doing this creates buy-in and support by thoughtfully engaging your community. Having the community involved will also lead to a genuine approach to identify the conditions or barriers you're wanting to overcome with your project. They may also give good insight into solutions for overcoming your conditions. By working through the planning process with your community and developing a comprehensive project idea, you will be prepared to put together a project that will have meaningful impact. It'll also be important to begin the planning process as early as possible. This will take time and should not be rushed. When preparing a project for funding, 80% of your time will take place in this planning phase. Lastly, I wanna mention sustainability. It's important to consider how you're going to sustain your outcomes and your activities once the project has completed. Remember, a project is a pilot. It's a short amount of time and a small amount of money. From the beginning of this process, you should think about how you can continue this work after the grant has completed.
We've created a short video highlighting the importance of sustainability. You can view this under the Resources tab on anaalaskatraining.com for Video Two or by following this YouTube link.
For Activity 1, I'd like you to grab a piece of paper and draw your community as it is today. This can include assets in your community, such as a tribal center, school, city office, et cetera. Each community will be unique. Also, consider the geography of your community. If you're off the road system or if you're spread out or have physical barriers such as rivers, it will be good to include this as well. By looking at your community as a whole, you'll begin to look at potential partnerships, available resources, and challenges. This is a helpful way to begin the project development process.
Community input is very important in the planning process. Collecting good data through community engagement will help you affect, plan, and design a successful project. Good planning will lead to relevant project plans and well-written proposals. Once funded, these projects lead to community-wide change. By working through the planning process with your community and developing a comprehensive project idea, you will be prepared to put together a project that will have meaningful impact.
It'll also be important for you to identify who your community is when you're starting the project development process. Communities can be broad or inclusive or specific and small. Tribes, geographic areas, or even organizations could be defined as a community. It could also be a subset of a population, such as elders, veterans, or youth. Remember, your community and the populations you are wanting to engage with through your project will be unique to you.
We're now going to talk about community engagement.
So how do you currently work with and engage your community?
There are many ways that you can do this, but we're gonna cover a few examples for you. Community meetings are an effective way to gather community input quickly. These can be formal, such as annual meetings, or informal gatherings like potlucks or celebrations. During these gatherings, you can collect information such as overall challenges faced by the community. This is a great start in the project design process with getting the community involved. Please keep all of your records at these meetings through sign-in sheets, polling questions, and results or meeting minutes. You'll need these later. Surveying the community is a great way to collect specific information regarding community member priorities and concerns. Before conducting surveys, you'll need to design your questionnaire in a way that will get the information that you need. There are many types of questions that can be used in your survey. Might help to do some research on different survey types, research best practices, but ultimately, your questions will be specific to your project and your community. Focus groups are opportunities to get information from small groups of community members. It's recommended to have groups smaller than eight, which will give everyone in that group an opportunity to share. When you have focus groups, remember to collect and keep things, such as attendee lists, notes, recordings, or transcripts. One of the best things that I can recommend for these groups are to make them comfortable, fun, and engaging. Food's also a good idea. Another strategy you can use are interviews. Interviews are one-on-one that take place in person, virtually, or by phone. This is your opportunity to get some thoughtful insight. Your planning committee will help identify which people you should connect with for your interviews. Remember, these take time and should not be rushed. Social media is another option for engaging your community. This can be tricky to navigate as there are different platforms available. Knowing which subset you engage with can help you select the platform that you use. For example, Facebook may be more popular with an older demographic, but if you want to target youth or young adults, you may want to look and explore different platforms such as Twitter, Instagram, or even TikTok. You can monitor site visits, pull results, et cetera for your records when doing this. Radio or VHF announcements can be helpful but are only directed to the audience and not designed to collect information. If you're holding meetings or gatherings, this can be a great tool to share this information with others.
This illustration is a helpful guide on the major steps to creating a project. Your long-term community goal is the ideal vision for your community. This is that perfect world scenario of what you would like it to look like. Your condition or barrier will be the single most thing getting in your way of achieving that long-term community goal. Here, the goal of your project is what you're hoping to achieve to lessen or remove the barrier. This is your solution to that condition and will help you get closer to achieving the long-term community goal. The objectives are the major stepping stones you will complete to ensure successful implementation of the project and achieve your project goal. The activities are the smaller steps needed to complete your objectives. The data you track will allow you to monitor how you're doing so that you can either stay on track or make adjustments as needed. Lastly, your budget outlines the financial resources needed for implementation that ties everything together. These steps will be discussed in length throughout this training.
Thank you for viewing Video Two of the Project Planning and Development on Demand training series. If you have any questions regarding project development or the Administration for Native Americans, please feel free to contact us at aanaalaska.org.

Up next

Video 3: Long Term Community Goal

Training episodes

Video 1: ANA Funding Opportunities

Video 2: Community Led Planning

Video 3: Long Term Community Goal

Video 4: Identify the Condition

Video 5: Project Goal

Video 6: Objectives

Video 7: Data Metrics of Success

Video 8: Resources and Partnerships

Video 9: Approach and Workplan

Video 10: Contingency Planning

Video 11: Sustainability

Video 12: Developing a Project Budget

Video 13: Organizational Capacity

Video 14: Next Steps

Video 2: Community Led Planning