Stewardship Technicians Training Program
Client: Coastal First Nations Great Bear Initiative
Date: 2019-2020
The Stewardship Technicians Training Program is a pilot project by Coastal First Nations (CFN) in partnership with Vancouver Island University. The program provides technical and leadership training to meet CFN stewardship needs throughout the North Coast, Central Coast and Haida Gwaii. CFN asked EcoPlan to evaluate the program, which was summarized with key findings and considerations. The evaluation that EcoPlan conducted was comprehensive in scope, and the team broke the findings into three areas of analysis: Outcomes, Delivery, and Design.
The team used a Structured Decision Support framework as the evaluation methodology. It is a values-based evaluation that assessed community perspectives of STTP’s success in producing outcomes like labour force readiness, connection to culture, happiness, and job satisfaction. To understand how the training outcomes, delivery and design meet larger ecological monitoring and coastal stewardship needs, interviews were conducted with key individuals, including instructors, students, and stewardship staff.
The evaluation asked whether the program successfully provided the knowledge and skills needed for students to conduct coastal stewardship activities. The evaluation found that the design and delivery of the Program were well-structured and had a positive academic impression on students.
“Wow … this is INCREDIBLE. What a powerful exercise to go through and the report will be such an influential sharing tool. I know this is a culmination of years of effort from many people and it resonates through this evaluation. Congrats to everyone involved in this work!”
Kim Hardy, MakeWay
The evaluation found that STTP is a unique and exemplary Indigenous training program, and it plays an impactful role in coastal stewardship. 100% of stewardship coordinators, managers and graduates agreed that STTP is important in building the necessary technical and leadership skills to perform stewardship work. The graduates of STTP had an improvement in personal wellbeing, were better able to find and maintain employment, were recognized as respected professionals in their field, and became part of a growing network of land and water stewards.
