Puuya (meaning ‘life force’)
Puuya Foundation is the only non-profit organisation with dedicated staff on the ground in Lockart River 365 days a year. The majority of its board members are Lockart River ‘locals’, complemented by dedicated non-local professionals and advisors. Since its inception in 2008 the Puuya Foundation has worked with the local community based on authentic mutual respect and collaboration. Puuya’s mission is to empower the Lockart River community to set goals and visions for their future and to develop and nurture the skills, knowledge and confidence needed to realise their vision. Puuya has delivered many successful outcomes achieving their goal, the enhancement of quality of life for the people of Lockart River.
Unfortunately, much of the research in the area of measuring social impact in Indigenous communities indicates that relatively few programs or services have published evaluations of their outcomes and even fewer have done so using methods that can reliably indicate whether a program is having the intended effect.
The Girgensohn Foundation is providing funds to develop an effective Evaluation Strategy to measure the social impact of Puuya’s health and education projects and integrate the learnings from this process into future leadership development and life learning projects for members of the community. Once the research and Evaluation Strategy is compiled and documented other Indigenous communities will be able to access and learn from this work. The Puuya Foundation plans to train others in using their evidence based practices.