Yarrabah Counts – Policy, planning, population, measures & monitoring.

Community development is an approach commonly used amongst Aboriginal communities in Australia to identify priorities for advancement (Snijder et al. 2015). However, there is some evidence that over the last two decades Indigenous community development has become increasingly dislocated from the local context (Hollinsworth, 1996). This proposal, ‘Yarrabah Counts’ utilises community development to create a data toolbox.

The Yarrabah Leadership forum (YLF) has been progressing this approach over the last seven years. The YLF and the ANU are moving the next stage of a community development agenda – defining community development indicators, designing a data collection instrument, administering the data collection tool, realising statistical capability, establishing a baseline for each community development indicator and designing a monitoring and assessment framework.

The data toolbox will be shared with other communities to assist with advancement of opportunity more broadly across other communities. This data toolbox approach aligns with the recently revised (closing the gap refresh and the new national partnership agreement), priority 4 data specifically under section 71. d where Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and organisations are supported by governments to build capability and expertise in collecting, using and interpreting data in a meaningful way (NIAA, 2020 pp14).

Our aim in this project is to develop and test a data toolbox that assists us to govern our affairs. The YLF consists of 11 community organisations and was informed in 2013.

In 2015, the process of setting a community agenda to create positive opportunities for local people was endorsed by the community and the YLF was tasked to implement the agenda of developing cultural, community and spiritual values for people in Yarrabah under the banner ‘one mob, one fire, one journey’. The opportunity this project seeks to address is implementing our community priorities with robust data to inform governance.

Since 2017 the YLF and the Yarrabah community have been developing the 6 pillar model (Yarrabah priorities). The priorities for the community have been refined over the last 2 years into the YLF’s Six Pillar priorities of; safe community, employed community, smart community, sustainable community, healthy community, and supportive foundations for our community development agenda (Figure 1).

In the last year the YLF has developed monitoring indicators for each priority. The first priority is for Yarrabah to establish our ‘baseline’. To do that the community have partnered with the Mayi Kuwayu Study at the Australian National University (ANU) to conduct a community census and have called the project “Yarrabah Counts”.

The census will be conducted annually. The YLF and the ANU (Mayi Kuwayu Study) will develop the data toolbox together. There is an increasing recognition that data are a strategic asset and the YLF recognises this. Like other assets, Aboriginal communities must be at the forefront of creating, managing and improving their assets for self-determining purposes. This project proposes a new way forward building a process that can be run and managed locally. In addition, it builds a community developed resource that can be shared with others.