This community action planning tool supports communities in developing actions to address their priority animal welfare issues and has been adapted from Community conversation on animal welfare: A guide to facilitators [71]. This tool can be informed by outcomes from other tools such as:
- T30 Community Animal Welfare Visioning
- T33 Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis
- T22 Animal Welfare Transect Walk
- T8 Pairwise Ranking and Scoring
- T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring
Once animal welfare issues are prioritised, this tool can be used to facilitate discussions with community members to identify strategies and actions to address priority animal welfare issues, and help them identify knowledge, skills, and/or resource they required to enable them to take action to improve their animals’ welfare.
| Tool purpose: | Time needed: |
| • Support community to reflect on their identified priority animals’ welfare issues and identify actions they can take to address them. • Identify the knowledge, skills and resources communities need to take action to improve their animals’ welfare. | 1.5 hours |
| Materials needed: | |
| Chart paper, note cards, markers, or other locally available resources, pre-printed pictures, or visual aids of priority animal welfare issues (optional), pre-printed pictures or visual aids on improved animal welfare practices relevant to identified animal welfare issues (optional). |
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase:
Planning Phase, Implementation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Engagement Approach; Community Development Approach
Stages of Change: Preparation Stage, Action Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Documentation and Reporting
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services Community Change Agents
Community Animal Welfare Action Plan
Table T34 below shows an example of a community welfare action plan developed to address priority animal welfare issues identified through discussions using T33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis.
| Priority Animal Welfare Issues | Actions to be Taken (Household and / or community level) | Expected Changes / Indicators of Success | Resources / Support Required to implement planned actions | Who Monitors / When? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feed shortage | Community grow fodder for donkeys Owners then feed the donkeys the recommended portions as needed throughout the day (as donkeys do not feed a lot at once) | Improved donkey health indicators: • Increased feed volume available • Feed available in all seasons • Improved body score condition • Happy and productive animals | Fodder production requires seeds. Training on fodder production and storage Improved understanding of donkey feeding best practices e.g. what types of feed, when/frequency of feeding, and how much to feed | Owners do the monitoring monthly Animal welfare team assessing body score condition quarterly |
| No access to veterinary services (for preventative treatment and prevention) | Community mobilization based on scheduled vaccination/ deworming programs. Owners supported by each other to seek veterinary services whenever their donkeys are sick. Owners vaccinate donkeys on recommended schedule | Improved Health Indicators: • Reduced incidence of donkey’s sickness • Reduced time lost by owners due to animals being unable to work | Animal health providers have access to vaccinations. Information on how to identify illness in donkeys and when they should not be worked | Owners assessing how their animal is feeling if it is sick or not daily, while ensuring that the animals are vaccinated yearly |
| Donkeys have access to water | Owners provide their donkeys with water at regular intervals during the day | Improved donkeys’ health indicators: • Improve body score condition/ health • Improve hydration | Access to safe drinking water for donkeys | Daily monitoring of donkeys status, if its thirsty or okay by the owners. |
Figure T34a Wound Care Management
Community Animal Welfare Action Planning | |
| Step 1 | During a household/community meeting, look at the issues identified from T32 Animal Welfare Conversation Tool and or T33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis. Work with the community to rank 2-3 of the most important issues one by one. T8 Pairwise Ranking and Scoring or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring can be used to support identification of priorities, or results from these activities may be used if previously conducted. You can prompt the discussion with prep-prepared outreach materials if you have developed them to discuss possible actions for improvement and benefits of acting. An example is provided in figure T34(a) of how to go about manging wounds that you can refer to develop any other animal welfare issues you need to help the community to plan to address (refer to the steps for cleaning wounds in figure T34a as an example). |
| Step 2 | Hand out the pre-prepared outreach materials (pictures or illustrations), illustrating the selected priority animal welfare issues, and ask community members to discuss them. Ask: what do you think about and what feelings do you have when you think about taking steps to improving these animal welfare issues? If communities struggle to answer this, you can use the steps below to prompt this conversation if helpful: • Step 1 - Observe: Look at the animal shown and identify the welfare issue it is facing. (For example, the image illustrates an animal with wounds.) • Step 2 – Question: Ask yourself, what could an animal in that condition be feeling or experiencing? (E.g. Anxiety, confusion, struggle, pain, distress.) • Step 3 – Reflect: What do you think needs to be done to address the animal welfare issue shown? Do you currently have all the things you need to address the welfare issue? Do you need assistance in sourcing something to help address this animal welfare issue from somewhere else? • Step 4 – Discuss action: What could you try doing to address this animal welfare issue? (Such as cleaning the wounds using the available material within the household, such as salt and water). If these actions turn out to be successful – great. If they don’t – you will reflect and adjust the plan. If you have prepared outreach materials on solutions to the animal welfare issues in advance, hand them out and discuss them for consideration (refer to the example on Figure T34a on wound management). |
| Step 3 | Ask community members to share what they would do to manage the wound issues in step one in their animals. Or you can remind participants of the first prioritised animal welfare issue from the ranking exercise the community previously completed during T33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis . Ask community members to share what they could do to address/respond to this priority animal welfare issue. Probing questions to guide this conversation include: • Is there someone in the community who already responds to this animal welfare issue well? What do they do, to do this well? • What can be done at the household and community level to respond to this animal welfare issue? • What are the challenges that people face to solve this issue? • What are the benefits of acting on this animal welfare issue? • What are the potential costs or constraints to acting on this animal welfare issue? Make notes of responses onto flipchart paper. Repeat Step 3 for each of the priority animal welfare issues previously identified by the community |
| Step 4 | Use community reflections from Step 3 as prompts to facilitate completion of a community animal welfare action plan. Facilitate a discussion to identify the following key elements: • Which prioritised animal welfare issues are community members committed to addressing at this point in time? (Not every animal welfare issue needs to make it onto the community action plan, if community members are not committed to addressing it yet). • What are the actions they realistically commit to taking (at both household and community level) to respond to the selected animal welfare issues? • What are the expected changes (indicators of success) that the community would like to see from their actions? • What resources and support do they require to implement these actions? • How/who will monitor whether these actions have been taken and when? Document the plan into the community animal welfare action plan table (see example in Table T34a). Ensure that the community are left with copies of the plan in a language/format appropriate and requested by them. Finally, record the community discussions and their agreed actions into your Project Action Tracker |
Facilitator's Notes
- Ensure that as a minimum the following key elements of a community animal welfare plan are agreed by the community during this exercise, using participatory and gender aware facilitation:
- What are the priority animal welfare issues community members are committed to addressing? E.g. some priority issues might have been identified, but there isn’t true commitment from the community yet for addressing these.
- What are the actions that participants can realistically commit to taking (at both household level and community/group level) to address selected priority issues?
- What are the expected changes/indicators of success of their actions?
- What resources and support to they require to implement these actions?
- How/who will monitor whether these actions have been taken and when? Be realistic.
Communities will likely require further support and input from you/other organisations in order to implement their action plans. It is vitally important that during the community action planning session you are clear with community participants about what it is realistic and appropriate for you and other organisations to provide, and that you ensure these provisions are sustainable. If a request doesn’t fit these requirements, explain this to the participants and help them to develop a more suitable request.
Next Steps
- To support community members in implementing their action plans, it will be important to resources and support identified by community members as needed to implement their action plan are secured, and you may need to consider holding meetings with other relevant stakeholder e.g., local government officials, animal health and resource providers to secure their support as needed.
Tool adapted from [71]