Our Work
Advancing Indigenous self-determination, community capacity and well-being.
Supporting Goals & Priorities of Indigenous Peoples
In recent decades, Indigenous peoples have begun to recapture control of territories and develop processes to restore or enhance Indigenous economic, social, and cultural well-being.
Balance Co-Lab aligns with Indigenous governments and community-based organizations in their pursuit of self-determined development. We support evaluation of projects for providing energy, food, social services, ecosystem protection and restoration, and business opportunities in ways that align with, and are restorative of, Indigenous cultures, values, knowledge systems, traditions and ecological systems.
What We Do
Project Teams alongside community-based team members and partners, especially Knowledge Keepers and Elders, strive to combine the most relevant Indigenous and Western knowledges and technology in decision-making and impact evaluation processes to build capacities in Indigenous communities and organizations; to strengthen the assertion of Indigenous authority on Indigenous territories.
Our Areas of Focus
Collaboration
Deep community participation is fundamental, our work brings together community- and university-based partners together to collaborate and co-create knowledge and resources for developing decision support and impact assessment systems informed by Indigenous knowledge and values.
Support
We support by identifying community goals and needs through culturally and gender-responsive community engagement, co-designing an action plan, reviewing outcomes, and specifying what we have learned through co-development of knowledge mobilization resources.
Systems
We co-develop decision-support and impact assessment systems that are infused and aligned with Indigenous worldviews, knowledge, and values that build capacity in Indigenous organizations and communities using their own indicators of well-being.
Training
We offer accredited courses to understand how to develop decision-support and cumulative impact assessments for sustainable development opportunities that Indigenous communities and organizations can use.
Participatory Action Research (PAR)
Deep community participation and knowledge exchange is fundamental to this work. Through methods grounded in co-creation, social transformation and community development, we employ and measure project progress by using a five-phase cyclical PAR process resulting in community-based analysis, ownership of research projects and community action.
Sustainability Assessment as a Tool
The Sustainability Assessment System (SAS) supports self-determination by integrating Indigenous values, knowledge, legal orders and indicators of cultural, community, environmental and economic well-being into evaluation of community development opportunities and the assessment of cumulative impacts.
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Contact Us
Provide as much detail as you can, and a Balance Co-Lab team member will contact you to find out more about how we can support your community’s goals.
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