Why Site Visits Matter: From Strategic Planning to Action in Rural Alaska

"This feels like our document now." - When a staff member at the women's shelter in Emmonak, Alaska said those words, we knew we'd achieved something that multiple calls and email exchanges would have taken some time to accomplish. It took a journey to rural Alaska to understand why some strategic plans come alive while others sometimes get trapped on paper and pushed to the side due to the day-to-day of competing priorities.

This past month, SPS had the privilege of traveling to Emmonak, Alaska to visit the Emmonak Women's Shelter. As a regional hub serving communities across the rural southeastern part of Alaska, this domestic and sexual assault shelter plays a crucial role in supporting women throughout the region. Our mission? To transform their strategic plan from a document into actionable steps that would truly serve their community.

When Remote Support Isn't Enough

For a few years, we have been providing remote support to organizations like Emmonak Women's Shelter. While technology allows us to connect across distances, we continually learn something important during our site visits: there's no substitute for being there in person.

This principle is at the heart of our participatory evaluation approach. We believe that communities are the experts on their own needs, challenges, and solutions. Our role as evaluators isn't to prescribe what should happen from the outside, but to lift up the voices of those who know their communities best. Especially with organizations that have a long-standing history of serving their communities like the Emmonak Women’s Shelter.

When we stepped off the plane in Emmonak, we weren't just evaluators with an agenda—we were partners ready to listen, learn, and work alongside the shelter's staff to create something that would truly work for them.

What We Accomplished Together

Working side by side with the shelter's team, we were able to hear their community's voice in ways that at times becomes lost during video calls and email exchanges. They shared insights about their assets and resources, their competing priorities, and the unique challenges they face as a local organization with a regional reach.

Together, we were able to complete an action plan that made sense for their organization, a plan that broke down each of the goals in the strategic plan by several steps. Then for each step, asking who was responsible for completing and what resources were needed.  We identified gaps in the original strategic plan and found collaborative solutions in real time through our many discussions. Most importantly, we watched as the staff took ownership of the document.

By the end of our trip, we came up with a more comprehensive strategic plan and action plan than we could have ever accomplished with multiple meetings and email exchanges.  

When to Consider Site Visits in Your Own Work

Not every project requires a site visit, but certain contexts signal that in-person collaboration could add significant value to your evaluation work:

• Complex Community Dynamics: When you're working with communities that have intricate relationships, competing priorities, or sensitive cultural considerations that are difficult to navigate remotely.

• Cultural Responsiveness Needs: When understanding the local culture, traditions, and ways of working is important to creating relevant and respectful evaluation approaches.

• Implementation Challenges: When you have a strong plan on paper but need to bridge the gap between planning and action through real-time collaborative problem-solving.

• Trust-Building Requirements: When the success of your work depends on deep, authentic relationships that benefit from face-to-face interaction.

Ready to Make Your Strategic Plan Work For You?

Our Emmonak experience reminded us why we're committed to participatory evaluation methods. When we position communities as the experts and ourselves as facilitators and supporters, we create plans that don't just look good on paper—they are actually meaningful and useful to the community.

Does your organization have a strategic plan that needs to move from the shelf to real-world action? Are you struggling to bridge the gap between your big-picture goals and day-to-day implementation? At Strategic Prevention Solutions, we specialize in participatory evaluation approaches that center your community's expertise while providing the structure and support you need to achieve your goals. Whether through remote collaboration or on-site partnership, we're here to help you create plans that actually work.

Take the next step: Start turning your vision into actionable steps! Reach out to learn how our participatory evaluation approach can support your organization's unique needs. Because the best plans are the ones that communities create for themselves—with the right support to make them happen.