Where should your Indigenous Guardian program live?

Finding a physical home for your Indigenous Guardian program and staff is an important consideration.

Some communities report that locating their program and staff within the same physical office space as other stewardship programs or natural resource departments delivers real programmatic benefits. The day-to-day interaction and overlap encourages collaboration, information sharing, field data utilization, and resource and staffing efficiencies.

On the other hand, some programs that are physically located in separate or removed work spaces, report feeling undervalued, poorly understood, and without adequate support or influence.

Programs often start out in whatever space they can find. But over time, it is important to actively plan how to maximize the integration of the program both physically and organizationally.