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Mr. Ing: At this time I'll pass it off to the host of today's webinar, the Pacific Region
Training Specialist Napua Harbottle; Napua. Ms. Harbottle: Aloha everyone, and thank you
Matt for all of those very useful and relevant updates. I want to welcome all of you to today's
national ANA webinar which is entitled 'Three Examples of Excellent Project Planning: ANA
Grantee Success Stories.' Uh, today's goals will be to highlight the stories of exceptional
ANA grantees who exemplify excellent project planning and then to share their best practices
with all of you out there to help in your success of building and implementing your
ANA projects. I am very excited to introduce our first guest. Her name is Mei-ling Isaac.
Mei-ling is a native Hawaiian born on the island of Hawaii where her maternal ancestors
thrived for two millennia. Mei-ling is able to trace her genealogy back to ancient times,
tracing her roots back to South Kona. Mei-ling comes from a line of traditional fishermen,
canoe builders, weavers, and farmers among whom are also warriors and chiefs. Her family
in Kona still practice traditional fishing and farming practices today. Mei-ling holds
a Master's degree in public health and currently directs the institutional review board for
Native Hawaiian Health at Papa Ola Lokahi. She is also a consultant in administration
and planning for the health industry here in Hawaii. Ms. Isaac's joins us here today
from the island of Oahu. Welcome Mei-ling. Ms. Isaac: Aloha. Can you hear me?
Ms. Harbottle: Yes we can. Go ahead. Ms. Isaac: Okay, fabulous. Thank you so much
for inviting me and Kaliʻi to participate in this webinar. It's really, really a wonderful
opportunity to share with all of you lessons where - and believe me there are quite a few
and since this is about planning and the importance of planning, I'm going to talk about that
as a...as why we are here today, but first a little bit about our project. It's about
mentoring youth at-risk on Maui and it's about really rising up to the fore, uh, cultural
practices that were used, ancient cultural practices that were used, but lost over the
last 200 years due to, you know the degradation of our culture, the introduction of western
values and beliefs and the persecution of our people and our culture. So this is really
about mentoring young boys at risk by older Hawaiian men and here we are. So these are
the kids that we're working with... I call them kids, but they're really young man. And
that's why we exist and we exist because we are in a struggle to survive with our culture.
It's to collect all that knowledge that has been passed on through the ages so that we
can again have our youngsters become part of this society in a real way and they don't
get lost, get lost in drug use, imprisonment, violence, whatever it is and these kids were
all at risk for it. So taking that and the need for us to survive as a culture, we're
talking about very, very high stakes here. We're talking about the culture struggling.
We're talking about being prepared to see those things through so that we minimize our
mistakes. And the planning I am talking about is that thing we call the OWP, the Objective
Work Plan and initially when we looked at that and started writing for it, we said,
'Okay, let's just... Here were these guys and get everything on there that we're going
to do, who's going to do it, when it's going to be done, et cetera.' And let me tell you,
after a year and a half of running this project and all the variables that come into play,
having that OWP was like having a lifesaver, because things happen. As things happen that
usually you wouldn't know could happen, but they happen and you really have to be able
to check in there and make sure that you're on track with what it was that you said you
were going to do. So in order to do that we say, 'This is about the survivalship of a
culture. In the balance, more than just us or these kids, these youth that you see before
you. It involves the whole community, because it's a culture. It's the community. It's the
parents, the teachers; everybody who touches the lives of these kids is our community.
It's people that we don't even know, that's our community and getting into it early on
we discovered that unless we listen to you then we would not really know what is happening
to these kids. We could teach them anything we wanted to, but it wouldn't stick unless
they had the support back home. So we have in our OWP, frequent community meetings and
evaluations just to know if we're on track and we also have something very, very important
that again we sort of just, 'Oh we'll, getting rid of them and put it in.' This is called
contingency planning and you know three months into this grant, our office manager had to
take administrative leave, and that put a damper on everything. I said, 'Oh my God.
You're going to have to go on this administrative leave.' In fact, he's still on administrative
leave. We have to go back to the community and back to our leaders and say, 'Hey listen,
do you remember this office manager that we all agreed would be the perfect person, well
he has to go on leave and now we have to search to find somebody who can fill that,' and when
we designed this project, we said, 'Okay, here's the list of people that we can call
upon if things really go south,' and I'll be darned if within two days we didn't find
two people. We found two people who could step in. It took two people to do the work
of this one guy, but they're still there and the regional office manager will be returning
very, very soon and so here's the other part of the contingency planning; what happened
is that person returned. Well, we've been able to create roles for these people who
took his place this last year and a half and it took more community support in doing that.
And we had to search and have conversations with community supporters and say, 'Hey listen,
we don't want to lose these two guys who've been there for a year and a half. What can
we do to keep them employed and part of this project?' So we decided to do a survey of
the community and the kids and say, 'What it is... What is it that you want them here
to keep this thing running?' And the kids said, 'Well, easy. We want to develop careers
for ourselves. Let's do something like that and they could help out in that role.' And
so that's exactly what we did. We developed a career component and the stakes that will
help you fund this and it will be called, 'Kaliʻi ʻOhana.' So here we are today. We
are community meetings, engaging them, talking to partners, giving them a role and being
able to move as a group - we call it lāhui. Being able to move as a group so that we can
continue with our work and you know as things happen, you want to make sure you're on track.
You want to make sure you're still hitting those objectives, you're still fulfilling
those goals, you're still doing the things that you said you're going to do; and you
get that by looking at every single opportunity with your staff, at community gatherings,
and you say to yourself, 'What can we do to make things better? And what are we doing
that's right?' And it's called listening. You've really, really got to listen and stay
ahead of the curve. It's not enough to be on top of the OWP, you've got to be ahead
of it and you've got to take care of problems that happen. You take care of it right away.
Another part, and this is part of the community planning, it's all part of the project growth,
is every year you have to look for that continuation of project grants submittal. Well, that's
where you pull in the changes that you need; the changes that the community and your staff
and partners have identified. So it's a really perfect way of moving with the changes and
perfecting what you're doing here. But if, you know if I were to say, 'What would be
the most important thing involved with planning, I would really have to admit that that OWP
is the key to the kingdom. It is your plan that will get you there. It's a living document.
It can change, and you know as you need things to change, you call up people like the ANA
office here with Matt and Dennis and Keone and Napua - you call them and you say, 'Hey
listen, we're running into some problems here.' We also work with Mark Ellinger in D.C. and
we tell him, you know... I'd probably tell him, 'Listen, we've got a little curveball
here. What can you do to help us think this problem through and so we can plan to finish
off this project in, you know, a really good way?' And that's how we're playing this thing
and it moves. This is not something that is static. It moves all the time and you've really
got to be on your toes that fill the gasoline that keeps this car going is the survival
of our culture. The survival and the meaning to create opportunity and some support, especially
around men who are going through a really, really hard time with it, uh, faced with cultural
values that are so different from what we know and I think that pretty much sums it
up. I know it was really simplistic to say this, but it's the truth. So, I don't know
where we go from here Matt. Do we go into questions or what?
Ms. Harbottle: Not yet, but our participants will have an opportunity to ask questions
at the end of this webinar during our 'question and answer segment' and so Mei-ling, if you
could just stay on the line until we get to that portion to see if anybody has questions
for you in particular; but I want to thank you for sharing those challenges that I'm
sure a lot of our grantees experience, especially when it comes to staff turnover and then how
you can turn that around to lead to a successful project. And of course, for pointing out that
very important document we call the OWP. So if any of you have questions about those things
that Mei-ling mentioned, please hold your questions until the question and answer segment.
I want to move on to our next guest presenter. Her name is Melanie Mendiola from Guam. She's
a native of Guam and she has been a consultant for Farm to Table since its inception in 2010
and took on the role of project director upon the passing of Jennifer Mendiola, the prior
project director. For Farm to Table Guam, her focus has been not only on the overall
operations of the organization, but also on the sustainability of the organization. Mel's
background is in finance and banking and she holds a degree in economics from the New York
University and an MBA from the University of Guam and she is currently enrolled in a
PhD program at Kansas State University - very, very busy woman here, but I also want to mention
that Melanie joins us here on our webinar at 5 a.m. Guam time, so we really appreciate
your participation Melanie. Could you just go ahead and tell us about your project and
the successes that you've had because of good project planning.
Ms. Mendiola: Thank you Napua. Can you hear me okay?
Ms. Harbottle: Yes, you're coming in fine. Ms. Mendiola: Okay, wonderful. Hafa Adai everyone;
again my name is Melanie Mendiola. Most of my friends and family call me Mel and as it
was mentioned before I'm a native of Guam, born and raised native Chamorro and I have
a lot of family in the outer islands of Micronesia, Rota, and Pohnpei and so on and so forth.
Um, so I've been involved with Farm to Table since its inception and the original, um,
the original project director was actually my sister. Her name was Jennifer Mendiola
and she passed away last year and hence my taking on the role. Originally, I was the
community awareness consultant. I worked a lot in the area of grant writing and sustainability,
community outreach, that type of thing, and my sister was very much involved in the project
operation and then after her passing than we kind of reconfigured. But I'll talk about
that a little bit as we're talking about some of the hurdles and challenges that our organization
has met and how proper planning has enabled us to get past it properly. So Farm to Table
Guam exists to expand the agricultural industry through promoting sustainable farm practices,
expanding business opportunities, and encouraging farm to table eating. Basically we are...
We are very, very interested in getting the people of Guam, both the native Chamorro people,
as well as all of the residents of the island, to be...to support local farmers, to eat the
food of their ancestors, and the food that made their people strong through the years.
And some of the ways we do that, we do that through a three-part project which I'll talk
about in just a moment. Um, our team - I just wanted to put up a slide really quickly of
our team. These are... I am of course the project director. We have a fiscal officer,
community awareness and support officer, project administrative assistants, or three assistants
and we have a team of farmers. We have a farm manager named David John Stacey and a couple
of farm apprentices, Joey, Peter, and Chris. One of the... I guess for us, planning from
the inception of our project, it was really... I guess this is partially coming from my sister
as well as Thalia Gange, who's our fiscal officer, but planning was extremely important
from the get go as far as identifying the problem and then designing the plan around...designing
our project around it. We had a notion, because we... I think we... Guam is a small island
and we know our community fairly well. A lot of times you have the anecdotal evidence of
the things that you... You have the stories of the problems and the hurdles that everyone
is facing, but a lot of times you don't have data and when you don't have data, I don't
think you can really create a very...a solid plan to be able to move forward with a solution,
because you know you might be addressing one person's issue, but not another person's issue.
So when you collect data I think it's important, because you really get a sense of your community's
priority list and what's most important - what is the most urgent need? During our planning
year or our planning project which preceded this current project, we were able to survey...
We were able to survey native farmers and what we found were that 74% of farmers actually
reported to... Even though they farmed for a living, quote unquote, they're actually
making their income elsewhere. They're making their income from, you know, from another
job that they were collecting retirement on. The average age of a farmer was also up in
the 50's. So our native farm population was aging. Twenty five percent of farmers who
would actually farm full-time is they made between 20,000 and 40,000 per year which we
didn't think was... We didn't think that was an unreasonable amount of money. They weren't
saying, 'Oh, I'm only going to farm if I make a million dollars.' And 32% of farmers would
farm full-time if they made between 40 and 60,000. So, again it wasn't... What we found
when we were collecting the data and in the planning stages was that farmers weren't asking
for unreasonable things and so in designing our program... Well, you know we... How we
moved forward is we took on the kind of... We looked... We did kind of a back of the
napkin analysis, if you will, and we said, 'Based on what our farmers have told us these
are the...this is the amount of waste that the farm community is producing in Guam.'
Farmers are not selling for various reasons a ton of tomatoes. They're not selling a lot
of bananas. They're not selling mango. They're not selling... Or they're not selling enough
to get them to that level of sustainability. So that is what inspired our next...our project
which was Tanom, Fatinas, Yan Sustansia which basically means, in Chamorro, it means plant,
prepare, and sustain. This three-part project is... It's an organic model farm. Um, it's
an organic model community sustained farm. Basically, what we have is our farm manager
showing our farm apprentices how to set up an organic method farm. Not organic in the
way that you know it's a USDA Certified Organic Farm, but utilizing organic practices so that
you can then educate your community about what you're doing and things. You know we
embrace this model of organic practices and people aren't going to buy... People aren't
going to buy our stuff because we have an organic label, they're going to buy our stuff
because they know us and they know who we are. We know our community and they know us.
Another part of our project is a farmers market, similar to one of our models is the Kapiolani
Community College Farmers Market; so I'm sure a lot of you are familiar with that. But we're...
The goods need to be grown within this geography, so the farm... Not a swap meet and not a flea
market, but a really honest and true farmers market where farmed goods as well as value-added
goods made from local farmed products. And our Kitchen Partners Program which I... One
time I described it to somebody as a matchmaking service for folks involved in the agricultural
industry. So if any of you are familiar with matchmaking services like Match.com or eHarmony,
this is like that version for... This is that version for the agricultural industry. So
for example, if you're a restaurant or you're interested in opening up a restaurant with
a focus in local agriculture, a focus in local cuisine, um, or local ingredients, then we
would make those introductions to you, to the farmers who might be able to meet your
mission as a businessperson effectively. I put some pictures up of our different projects.
So this is the beginnings of our... This project began in October, so this is the beginnings
of our model organic CSA which is done at the site of one of our project partners, the
Department of Agriculture. Um, prepare value-added products and these are value-added products
made from kind of a hot sauce with local hot peppers and eggplant and coconut milk. So
that's on the left. It's a picture of mussels and on the right it's like a Guam's version
of poke. And sustain which is really the farmers market, but also its ongoing education of
those involved in the agricultural community of the island. A case study or a case example
that I...that we pulled from what we've been doing is we had an individual. His name was
Mark and he wanted to do... He actually changed his name. It's now called Ninth Street Kitchen.
But Mark had a vision, but he didn't have a plan, but he wanted to open up a restaurant
with a focus on local ingredients. Um, he wanted to kind of have a little bit of an
Asian influence to it. So we helped him do a business plan to meet with banks, to discuss
financing options, negotiate his financing options and then the last photo is him. Right
now he's in the construction phase of his local restaurant; so back to where the planning
comes in. And this is a picture of our former project director, my sister, Jennifer Mendiola.
The major challenges we encountered in the course of this grant was a project director
transition. Now my sister was... She was in a lot of ways the brainchild of Farm to Table
organization and her able... The vision was hers and I think a lot of times I think, um...
The prior speaker really hit on this very... She couldn't have been more true in this.
When you're going after the grant and you're doing the OWP's, you're writing it, because
you say, 'Okay, let's do this. Let's get it out of the way. You need to do it.' But what
became this active drudgery became really the roadmap for us, especially when, um, when
having to deal with this difficult transition in our office. Another was a worksite challenge.
The space... One of the spaces that our project partners had provided to us kind of changed
in the way that it really wasn't as useful for what we thought it was useful for. So
like the previous project that was discussed, we felt that some of the best practices throughout
the project has been or some of the things that we've found that have been more effective
is to have manager...to have meetings and effective meetings - not just meetings for
the sake of having meetings. But one of them was to have manager meetings to precede staff
meetings. So rather than have a staff meeting that's an open forum for all of us to hash
it out, to have managers come and discuss what their challenges are and to be able to
then set the tone so that...to really inspire confidence in our staff. As you have probably
realized, we have a good-sized staff, but we are a new staff and so... And being able
to inspire confidence in our younger staff members or our junior staff members is extremely
important and that's why it's really important, I think for managers to all be on the same
page. During the transition between project directors, having competent managers was absolutely
a lifesaver for me and having my fiscal officer, Thalia, who had been there with Jennifer when
she was the project director, was absolutely critical. We set up a shared drive, a Google
drive which is very, very simple and easy to do and that really helps, because some
of our work sites are in different locations. We have our farmers at the farm. We have our
office folks in one place and we have me whose... I'm a lot of times veering... You know I'm
kind of roving, going to meetings and things like that, but you always kind of know what's
going on because of the items on our Google drive, which include a contact management
database, an event database that shows all of the events that we've done and that also
really, really helps in the completion of the OWP's during the reporting process and
the OPR's. Cross training, not to be confused with cross fit, right. Cross training is of
course training individuals in the team to do tasks that other individuals do and that
has been actually very effective for us, particularly with regard to project director transition.
Um and that was also a part of our contingency plan. So in the planning stages we had kind
of... We obviously didn't foresee losing a member of our team in such a manner, but we
did foresee... You know, you always want to plan in the event of staff turnover and so
that was something that we really, really talked through and that actually goes back
to manager meetings which is, even though one person is in charge, that one person isn't
making all the decisions. It really... I think it's really a matter of working this through,
um, working through these exercises through these scenarios with your different managers
and I think its sustainability talk from day one. So always keeping your sustainability
in mind when you're planning. I don't think we have as much community support if we hadn't,
from the planning stage, taken it on from the perspective of wanting to listen to build
relationships with the farmers to hear what the farmers had to say and to be able to articulate
that in organized ways to go after not only the grant, but also to go after other areas
or to go after other means of sustainability; whether it's speaking in public about the
needs of the farmers, the hurdles that farmers have, as well as value-added producers and
so on and so forth. And one thing that was very, very easy for us that we implemented
this project here was an intake form, a centralized intake form. So as you saw from our...from
my previous discussion about our project, our project is three parts and one of the
things that gets confusing is you have people coming in and turning in different parts from
different... You know or people being involved in different parts with different projects.
So this person wants to be involved in the CSA. They have some land in this village and
they would like to help us. Or this person has a commercial kitchen, because they used
to run a catering operation. Now those are two different things that are meant for two
different areas of the project, but we have everyone fill out a Kitchen Partners intake
form so that we know from there which database to put them under, when to reach out to them,
and also just a source document for me to look at, as the project director, every now
and then just to kind of see, 'Are we meeting... Is anyone falling between the cracks? Are
we able to meet the needs of our community properly?' And that's pretty much what I have.
Ms. Harbottle: Thank you so much Melanie. Ms. Mendiola: And so I look forward to any
questions at the end of this webinar. Ms. Harbottle: We need to move on to our next
speaker and we'll have a chance to touch base on a lot of the things that you mentioned.
But let's move on to Latisha Coffin. She's a member of the Bad River Band of Lake Superior
Chippewa and has been the ANA SEDS Project Coordinator with Great Lakes Indian Fish and
Wildlife Commission for the past three years. Currently, Latisha is coordinating the Mino-Wiisinidaa
- I hope I said that right -- 'Let's Eat Good Traditional Foods for Healthy Living' grant.
Latisha joins us from Odanah, Wisconsin. Latisha, let's hear about your projects success.
Ms. Coffin: Thank you Napua. Can you hear me all right?
(Silence.) Ms. Coffin: Hello, Napua?
Mr. Ing: Yeah, we can hear you loud and clear. Thanks.
Ms. Coffin: Okay, yeah. You were really close. It's Mino-Wiisinidaa. Thank you for inviting
me to be a part of this webinar. (Native language introduction, 31:10) My name is Latisha Coffin
and I'm from the Bad River Band of Lake Superior Ojibwe in northern Wisconsin. I work with
Great Lakes Indians Fish and Wildlife Commission. I'm our ANA SEDS Mino-Wiisinidaa: Let's Eat
Good Traditional Foods for a Healthy Living grant which is a three-year grant under ANA.
Just a little bit about Great Lakes Indian Fish and Wildlife Commission, also known as
GLIFWC. We work with 11 member Ojibwe tribes throughout Minnesota, Wisconsin, and Michigan
who are a part of the 1836, 1837, 1842, and 1854 treaties. You can see them highlighted
there on that little map. GLIFWC provides natural resource management for our member
tribes in support of the exercise of treaty rights throughout the treaty ceded territories.
We also aid in the co-management of those treaty rights with different agencies and
states. We have many divisions here at GLIFWC including a very large biology section, conservation
enforcement, legal and policy analysis and public information services. Our grant Mino-Wiisinidaa
addresses the following needs... This is a statement of needs from our grant that we
submitted. Tribal elders and representatives came up to us and showed a large concern for
increased rate of obesity, diabetes, and other chronic diseases within our tribal communities
and they attributed this increase due to a drastic change in diet from our traditional
Anishinaabe foods to a highly processed diet. Our project fills that need by showing tribal
members the health benefits of traditional Anishinaabe foods and how easy it is to incorporate
these foods into an everyday lifestyle in a good and healthy way. Over the course of
our project, we have collected recipes from our tribal elders and then created healthier
versions of them with different food alternatives; for instance taking out salt pork, which does
taste great, and then switching it out for like a Lake Superior whitefish which is a
better meat alternative. We then hosted a minimum of 33 cooking demonstrations with
our 11 member tribes and actually it's getting close to 50 that we've hosted with our member
tribes and project partners. This fall we will be creating a cookbook with all of the
recipes as well as an instructional DVD to distribute to our membered tribes. Some of
the challenges that we have encountered during our project would be staff turnover, difficulty
scheduling cooking demonstrations with certain tribal projects, and seasonal weather changes.
When we have problems with finding appropriate tribal programs to work with - which we aim
for Boys and Girls Club, youth groups, elder groups, and diabetic groups - we rely on our
network of tribal elders and representatives to guide us. GLIFWC has a governing board
as well as two standing committees, also we have an elder advisory board - which you can
see me speaking to in the top right-hand corner - um, and they all are comprised of tribal
council representatives and elders. These representatives and elders give us insight
on tribal programs to work with or might benefit most from one of our cooking demonstrations.
Our other problem that we have come into with our weather-related program or problem; for
example we harvest fiddlehead ferns which I'm holding in the middle picture there. Those
are Bracken ferns and those are usually harvested in mid-May, but last year we weren't able
to harvest them until late June and we had scheduled a cooking demonstration based upon
this traditional food in mid-May when we thought we could go out and harvest them during the
demonstration and then cook a meal of them for our participants; but because there were
no ferns yet, we had to reach out to different food co-op stores and different tribal harvesters
to try and get some other sort of spring harvestables that we could feature in a menu and so we
were able to come up with a lot of cress soup and dandelion salad which is some of our traditional
food that we feature in our recipes as well as create a PowerPoint to show people how
to harvest these traditional foods in a very culturally sensitive way and so that they
would grow back for next year. GLIFWC has attributed successful implementation of all
of its ANA grants to a number of different things which I've highlighted here. First
and foremost we have a new strategic plan which is in the lower left-hand corner which
was developed in 2010. This document is actually ever evolving and we change it as need be,
based on our tribal community needs. This was created and refined by tribal representatives
and elders and GLIFWC staff members. We developed our future plans and outlook based on the
needs that are outlined in this document from our tribal communities. We also create a large
amount of community investment within our projects. We include tribal communities in
every stage of our grants from project development, involvement during the project, and creating
materials that then stay within the community for them to use. We have our Facebook page
in the top right-hand corner. You can see that featured and we get featured on it, which
is right next to that. That's us doing a cooking demonstration for some of our elders down
in Mole Lake and then we have our GLIFWC publication which is in the lower right-hand corner called
the Mazinàigan and it comes out three times a year and we try to do an update of our project
in each edition, as well as a recipe for people to sample, so that it's like a teaser for
the cookbook to come out. We also make sure to be conscious of our Anishinaabe traditions.
We give our tobacco, our sacred medicine to everyone who helps us in our grant and if
they're giving us recipes for us to change or if they're speaking during one of our demonstrations,
we make sure to do things according to what our elders share with us. We also try to make
credit or make sure we give credit to whoever helps us. In our materials, we credit who
the recipe is from or if it's a traditional story in our language, we make sure that they're
credited and once those materials come out and we give it to them, they take such pride
in that and that only helps them connect with the project even more and they're able to
kind of hype it up within their own community and within their family of that material that
comes out. Overall, GLIFWC applies for grants that help fill the needs of our tribal community,
keeps our communities continuously involved in our grants and make sure that our tribes
are able to use project materials to keep filling that need once the project is done
and to follow our traditions and ways as our elders have taught us. From our staff, Miigwetch,
or 'thank you' in Ojibwe for allowing us to feature our project during this webinar. This
is a picture of my staff, um, our community dietitian, Owen Hali Maroney, our cooking
assistant, Steven Garske and our administrative assistant, Zoongee Leith. I'm down there too.
So just a summary of our best practices: keep your community updated, involved, and engaged.
We've gotten so much good feedback from our tribes because we're out there with them every
day doing all of those cooking demonstrations and we know so many elders and that really
strengthens all of our projects. Have regular staff meetings to discuss the progress of
our project to ensure activities, timeliness, and objectives are met in a timely manner.
Updating our contingency plans, partnerships, and resources as needed. We're really trying
to create contingency plans that were based upon a whole number of different things like
the loss of project staff, um, and one thing that was really important was redundancy.
We have a lot of photos and videos that we've collected from our different demonstrations
that are going to be used in the DVD and so redundancy is very important and we back up
all of our materials onto a different computer or a different hard drive to make sure...just
in case something happens we still have those materials afterwards and incorporate sustainability
from day one. So *** (native language - 40:05.) Ms. Harbottle: Thank you very much Latisha.
In fact, your summary of the best practices kind of summarizes the best practices that
all of you have presented. There are definitely common threads within the three projects that
were presented and also a lot of...lots of helpful information; especially for those
conflicts large projects that some of you may have under SEDS and SEEDS. Um, so yeah,
definitely community involvement, making sure your community is not only engaged and updated
but that you have outreach programs going on as well so everybody knows what's happening
with the ANA project. Uh, making sure you staff your project properly and making sure
that your staff is always following that famous OWP blueprint and that you're making adjustments
accordingly and also making adjustments and updating your contingency plans, your partnerships,
your resources that contribute to the success of your project, and incorporating sustainability
from day one, very important. Making sure that your project has a long life span and
is successful not only during your project period, but also into the future. Okay, we'd
like to get to our question-and-answer segment. So now I'm going to hand it over to Matt.
Mr. Ing: Thanks Napua. Um, at this time we'll be entering our Q&A section. Um, so you can
see the instructions there on the screen. There are two ways that you can ask a question.
The first and best way would be to press the talk button on your computer - on the left
side in the audio and video box and that would allow you to use your microphone. The other
way would be to type into the chat box. If you have a question, please click on the raised
hand button. It looks like a little open hand in the participant's box which is probably
on the bottom left side of your webinar window. We'll answer questions in the order that they
were asked based on the raised hand symbol which you can see next to the Pacific region
name there in the box now. So if any of you have questions, please feel free to ask them
at this time. You can direct them to any of the guests speakers or attempt to answer them
ourselves or even pass it off to a representative in ANA if you have a question there. So at
this time please ask away. Ms. Harbottle: You know, while waiting for
folks to come up with questions, I just wanted to touch base a little bit more on Melanie's
presentation for Farm to Table and point out, you know, that they have a very complex SEEDS
project going on currently, but how their previous one-year grant for planning this
project was very important for the implementation of their current project. So I noticed you
have a large staff and I thought that, you know, that is key to making sure when you
have a complex large project like that, that it's important to make sure that you're staffed
properly. Also, the point that you brought up about the data collection that was important
for planning your project, um, how you know we really need to make sure we get current
data so that we can make sure we're addressing a current situation. And then I love that
whole matchmaking little component you have there. You know that's a good way to make
your project relevant to the trends in the times that you're in when you're running your
project. And then also we didn't have much time to touch on Latisha's project, but you
know again another complex SEDS project that incorporates a lot of diversity, a lot of
things going on and you know she made a real good point of how important contingency planning
is. Okay, we do have a question from Jilla and the question is, 'Melanie, please explain
the components of your planning grant?' Melanie? Ms. Mendiola: Yes, yes. The planning grant
was... Basically it was a one-year grant. We had, um, the project director at the time...
We had the project director, fiscal officer; we had a research assistant and we had the
community outreach person which was myself. As far as community outreach, it was very
much an internal exercise. It was very much an internal exercise as far as going out to
the farmers. Um, the deliverables in our planning grant were a value-added... What we were going
after or what we were interested in specifically was the value-added market and so the things
that we looked at were, um... What we did was we conducted a survey. We conducted a
survey utilizing the resour...our project partners which were some relevant community
partnerships, like the farmer's co-op, as well as the Department of Agriculture. So
they... We solicited their help in creating a very valid survey. We went out to the farmers
and we spoke with them. We interviewed them. That was actually the most time-consuming
portion of it and then we compiled the infor... We went out to the farmers. That was the most
time-consuming portion and then once we did that we compiled and analyzed the data and
presented it in a PowerPoint to the community, as well as in a written report. We have both
available on our website, farmtotableguam.com. Mr. Ing: All right. Thank you, Melanie. We
have another question. This one comes from Bonnie Blankenship. 'We are about to go through
a leadership transition and are thinking of not applying this year because of that. I
would like to convince my team to go ahead. Do the panelists have advice about how to
handle that in the application?' Um, and that question comes from Bonnie Blankenship and
you can read that in the chat box. Um, let's see; for this question... How about I pass
it off to Mei-ling for an answer, Mei-ling? Ms. Isaac: Hi. Um, you know, that's a real
difficult situation and I can see that happening. You know, we lost our office manager, as I
said, three months into the grant and we were able to do it because there was such a broad-based
community support and ability to just jump in and take over. I would be very careful
in structuring this thing so that you have at least some kind of community leadership.
If you have a nonprofit that the exec, ED or the president of your project agrees to
a plan where you set up an interim leader. It may turn out that that person becomes the
project leader, but it would take everybody agreeing that that's your plan and I would
put it in the OWP that you have this plan and you have steps that you're going to be
following that are reasonable and doable before you to take that leap, because the assumption
is you have leadership and you have commitment and you have somebody who is accountable to
all of the activities and believe me, you know hearing everybody talk, what you hear
from us now is only the tip of the iceberg of what actually goes down when the project
rolls out. There are millions of things that have to be done and somebody's got to do it.
I mean somebody needs to keep track of all of that stuff and there's a lot and it's amazing
how much is involved. Also, I want to make a comment about this Google drive that Melanie
talked about. That is a fabulous idea and I never really thought about it. I've used
it in research projects that were involved with another nonprofit. I never really thought
about using it for our project, the Kaliʻi project, but boy that makes a lot of sense
and thank you. Mr. Ing: All right. Thank you for that answer,
Mei-ling. Do you have anything to add to that Mel? I know you've gone through a similar
type of leadership change. Ms. Mendiola: Um, I think it's a lot about
when you have your contingency plan, but kind of making sure... I think it's where the cross
training comes in and just really making sure your management team... Um, that everyone
has their own unique strengths, but also to really all kind of speak the same language
and be able to speak on each other's roles or... You know I'm certainly not the fiscal
officer, but I think that between she and I, if in the event that something like that
happened again either one of us could take the role and I think it was really about filling
our... It was about having those plans in place just in case of people who kind of look
similar to us for the purpose of project transition or leadership transition.
Mr. Ing: All right. Thanks a lot Mel. And Latisha, do you think you could talk a little
bit about how to increase resources after the project has already started? I know you
have a lot of really cool resources that are going into some of the activities in your
project. Ms. Coffin: Sure, I guess I'm a little confused
about the kind of resources that you're talking about, but when we started we originally had
three partners, maybe planned for the project and knew that throughout the course of the
project that we would increase the numbers of partners that we worked with. And so whatever
program that we worked with it came from a whole bunch of resources coming from different
tribal people that we could work with, different tribal youth that we would impact, tribal
harvesters that would be in the area that we could purchase items from. As a project,
we really try to purchase as much tribal food or traditional foods from tribal harvesters
in the region and so we would build upon our partnerships. We would also turn to our tribal
representatives and elders on our board of commissioners, intertribal task force, Great
Lakes Commission, Great Lakes Fisheries Committee and Tribal Elder Advisory Group and through
them we were able to make a lot of different contacts within the community in order to
get foods that we needed, recipes from other tribal elders, and so we really took to those
representatives and those elders to come up with those types of resources. I'm not sure
if that's what you would like, um. I can kind of elaborate if you'd like?
Mr. Ing: Yeah, that was fine. Thank you, Latisha. Yeah, you definitely have a lot of evidence
of good partnerships up there in the Great Lakes area. So with that we're out of time
for our Q&A section. Um, if you have additional questions or want to get in touch with some
of our presenters, their contact information will be posted on the last screen of this
webinar. So sit tight and that's coming up very soon. And just to recap, our webinar
goals today were to highlight the stories of exceptional ANA grantees who exemplify
excellent project planning and I think we've done that. Our three guest presenters today
shared really inspirational stories about how their long-term planning has led to long-term
success and how having a solid OWP and project plan has allowed them to navigate the various
obstacles and unforeseen circumstances that come up during a project with relatively little
stress and come out with a successful, sustainable plan and so thank you to all of our guest
presenters today for those stories. Um, our second goal was to share best practices that
attendees can use to successfully build and implement ANA projects. For those of you who
are...might be wrapping up your grant applications right now and you applied for one of the five
ANA grants that are currently active, um, you might want to take some of these ideas
into mind and for those of you are thinking about applying in the future or just interested
in creating a really good project that serves a community, you know these are all great
practices that you can definitely implement into your organization and your general project
planning strategy. So just to recap some of the webinars that are coming up; once again
we have a national webinar every Thursday and you can find a list of those webinars
and register for them on the events page of the official ANA website. On March 27th we'll
have 'ANA Application Form and Content: Putting the Pieces Together' and you can register
for that now. On April 3rd we'll have a webinar on SAMHSA's Office of Indian Alcohol and Substance
Abuse programs and on April 10th, Building a Cluster Effects for Native Language Projects.
And so that's it for our webinar. I'm going to leave this screen here up and if you guys
want to get in touch with any of our guest presenters today you can e-mail them on...
E-mail them with the address that you see there on the screen and you know I think there's
a lot of really cool partnerships that could happen here. Um and my personal contact information
is also there on the screen on the left. My name is Matt. Again, I am the Outreach and
Technology Specialist for the Pacific region TTA Center. Our company is called Ka'ānani'au
and we operate the Pacific TTA Center contracts for the Administration of Native Americans.
Our phone number is also there and our website is www.ANApacificbasin.org. Once again, this
is a national webinar, a resource of the Administration for Native Americans. At this time I'll be
ending the recording. An archived version of this webinar will be available on the ANA
website in the resources section in about one week. Following this webinar you'll receive
an e-mail asking you to fill out a survey to evaluate how we did today. In that survey
you'll also have an opportunity to suggest topics for future webinars and we really take
those suggestions seriously and usually if we get a suggestion, we'll carry it out. So
please feel free to give your...put your ideas in that survey and fill it out and let us
know how we did. Thanks again for joining us and thank you again to our great guest
presenters. Mahalo everyone.