3.1 Action

QUICK LINKS
3.1.1 COMMUNITY BASED ORGANISATION FORMATION AND STRENGTHENING
3.1.2 Empower community based organisations to improve their capability, motivation and opportunity (COM-B) to achieve their vision of improved animal welfare
3.1.3 Facilitate tiered organization of community groups to support collective action where appropriate
HELPFUL TOOLS AND RESOURCES

The purpose of the implementation phase is to help community members either build on existing community-based organizations (CBOs) or start to build their own CBOs to implement their community action plan, monitor it regularly and reflect on their findings and experiences together.

3.1.1 Community Based Organisation Formation and strengthening

At this point you will have found several people with shared interests in improving their animals’ welfare who have taken part in activities together. Ideally it is easier to facilitate and encourage already functioning CBOs as they have already developed their own systems of working together towards the achievement of a shared goal, and their relationships and procedures will already be in place. Group stabilisation and strengthening is an ongoing process using the resources 14. Overview of community group formation process, and common challenges and factors influencing group success, and 15. Templates for supporting community group governance can aid development of community groups as they contain useful templates and checklists for guidance. The use of facilitation resource T28 Group sustainability mapping can be used to support group strengthening.

It is recommended that CBOs show the following:

• Fair leadership
• Good governance
• Are inclusive both in terms of promoting gender equality, and not discriminating against marginalised community groups

The facilitator resource 15. Templates supporting community group governance, and the participatory resources Matrix ranking and scoring (T9), Before and Now Analysis (T11b), will aid understanding the complexities and needs of the community that the group/s need to tackle, and Group governance self-assessment (T31) can assist with CBO capacity building and strengthening.

If CBOs exist which do not meet the above criteria, you may wish to explore opportunities for strengthening these groups to address any identified gaps. If no functioning CBOs exist amongst the community members you are working with, you will need to facilitate the formation of new CBOs, this a crucial step, which needs your support and experience. The CBO can be composed of men, women and children, or separate groups may be formed as appropriate.

Following the four-stage plan for CBO formation will aid the group development process, as outlined in Figure 40 below:

Promote representativeness (including the leadership) of different CBOs to ensure they are not gender blind/gender exploitative and are inclusive of all people within the community, including those known to be marginalised. The groups must not promote existing systems of discrimination and must uphold safeguarding protection by ensuring they do not promote or engage in any forms of harm to people or the environment. Safeguarding needs to be considered by the project in terms of how they organize meetings and to ensure safety and security of members. Any activities must do no harm, it is essential to ensure there is due diligence so that when encouraging participation and empowering members they are not put at risk. Initial steps may involve working to promote equality and acceptance to mitigate harm that could be caused by sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment and bullying because of their work with the project. Sometimes it can be difficult to initiate collective action by some genders or social groups, in which case organizing CBOs with the opposite gender or other social groups may be easier, as other CBOs will often come together after seeing the success of the first. In some cases, it might be necessary to meet with the men or community leaders before forming CBOs with women or other traditionally marginalized groups, to be sensitive to cultural protocols, and explain the benefits that working with such groups can bring to families and/or the community.

If the experiences or interests of interested members are very mixed, they may not form a strong CBO. In this case, forming smaller groups of similar people) may be more effective than larger mixed groups. These smaller groups can then decide how to associate and network with others to form a larger organization, when they wish to manage broader issues of common interest.

Ask CBO members to select individuals to be ‘animal welfare advocates’ and encourage them to ensure representation of marginalized and vulnerable groups within these key leadership roles, potentially through the adoption of gender quotas as needed to ensure women’s’ representation in leadership roles. ‘Animal welfare advocates can then form a link between the CBO and service providers such as local animal health or resource service providers and may also be trained through the project as change agents, promoting understanding of animal welfare best practices amongst the broader community, and/or to provide basic animal first aid as appropriate. They can also stimulate enthusiasm and action by the group and lead processes such as participatory welfare needs assessments. As time goes on, ‘animal friends can take over some of the roles of the facilitator, which makes the process of withdrawal easier.

This community-led collective action will enable the CBO to sustain animal welfare interventions over long periods of time. A well-organized CBO will continue to function even after the withdrawal of your supporting agency and will provide a strong, stable institutional base from which to meet the requirements of the community and its animals.

Encourage the CBO to frame and review their own set of norms, rules, or by-laws. We find that these usually include:

• Membership: who may join the CBO, what the CBO size should be and what happens when a member leaves or their membership is terminated.
• CBO structure: how will the CBO be arranged such as chairperson, vice-chairperson, committee and their accountability level, general assembly, board and chairperson accountability and transparency levels.
• Meetings: what is a quorum for the CBO, what happens if people are absent from meetings or turn up late to meetings.
• Representatives: who represents the CBO, how representatives are chosen, whether they are rotated periodically and if so, how often this occurs?
• Sanctions: what sanctions are needed for violation of the rules, and when exceptions may be made?
• Common contribution: if membership of the CBO involves a common contribution or savings fund, what is the minimum amount to be contributed, whether withdrawal of savings is permitted, whether and how interest is paid on savings?
• Loans: if loans can be taken from the CBO savings fund, how these are prioritised, what interest rate is charged, how the use of loans is monitored, and how defaulters are penalised for overdue loans.
• Formalization of the group: when feasible it is recommended as formalization or legal registration of a CBO can enable it to advocate for its rights and needs, and potentially improve access to resources and/or services for the benefit their CBO or members.

It will take several meetings over a period of two or three months for the CBO to have a definite membership and up to a year for a strong and stable group to be established. By sticking to the agreed rules or norms, making collective decisions on a common action plan, and carrying out these actions either individually or together, the CBO becomes increasingly strong and effective.

3.1.2 Empower community based organisations to improve their capability, motivation and opportunity (COM-B) to achieve their vision of improved animal welfare

You should support CBOs to develop their capability, motivation, and opportunity (COM-B) to improve animal welfare. Your role as the facilitator is to contribute to the creation of an enthusiastic atmosphere and enabling environment where the CBO members can help each other with their agreed actions.

This includes:

• Regular meetings to review individual and collective activities against the community action plan.
• Generation of the resources needed to support their actions, for example through regular contribution of money to a common fund, or by creating links with other agencies, resource providers and government support schemes.
• Generation of other external forms of support to implement their activities, if needed
• Maintenance of a record or register by the group in which they record all their decisions. At the beginning you might need to initiate this process of recording and gradually hand it over to the group representatives. Where none of the group members are literate, they may decide to ask for help from a literate person or from school children in the village.

It is important to remember that change is a process, and that people can progress and relapse through the stages of change for any desired behaviour at any time. As a facilitator you will need to gauge the CBO’s stage of change with every interaction by listening for change talk, asking open ended questions, using reflective listening, and supporting the change process throughout the implementation phase. Refer to the recommended facilitator resource 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change for guidance.

Harness Commitment to Change

• Encourage CBOs to set small, incremental, and achievable goals for action. It is more effective to set short term objectives for action that lead to results rather than setting objectives for achieving the results themselves [71].
• Communicate the vision for change in terms of what the community members’ value frequently and consistently to help erode resistance to change [71].

Provide Positive Reinforcement

• Develop social networks amongst stakeholder groups as geography permits, or within or between households, by helping them see how their interests and needs are interconnected and encourage them to provide support and encouragement to each other. By putting peers in a position of being accountable for one another, they reinforce their own progress through helping others [71].
• Set up a system whereby members compete against a target achievement, and all those who achieve the target “win”. People are more likely to help one another win when they are competing against their own progress as opposed to competing against one another in a system where there is one “winner”, which can generate a lack of cooperation [71]. For example, set a target for individuals to improve their individual animal welfare results when the Animal Welfare Transect Walk (T22) is repeated. Consider providing households with a monitoring results tracker that they can keep, ideally posted someplace they will see it, to provide them with feedback on the impact of their behaviours and enable them to track their progress over time and serve as a motivating reminder for them to continue making progress.
• Provide frequent, encouraging feedback to let the CBO members know how they are doing, ensuring people feel praised, supported, and encouraged.

Promote Self-efficacy

• Elevate self-esteem by recognizing their attempts and celebrating their efforts to change even if unsuccessful, and ensure they are never made to feel less than or bad.
• Role model behaviours helps demonstrate what is possible and helps them to believe they can make the desired changes. In addition, it is helpful to get members to encourage and support each other to harness social diffusion [31].

Draw Attention to the Feeling of Change

• Draw their attention to the benefits and positive impacts of the adoption of desired behaviours over the behaviours it replaces based on their direct experiences [71]. Consider using the before and now analysis (T11b) tool to support this process.
• Help members to feel change in terms of intrinsic satisfaction by connecting changes with what individuals’ value [71].
• Help people connect with the consequences of their choices by telling meaningful stories. Consider using the Closed Ended Story Telling (T24a) tool to promote the adoption of desired behaviours.

It is important to remember that in almost all successful change efforts, emotions rather than facts are the most effective agents of change [20]. It is therefore important that reflection and learning opportunities are created to enable group members to feel something about the changes they are making and experience the benefits that the adoption of desired behaviours brings to their lives and the lives of their animals [20]. We recommend using the adult learning cycle whenever feasible as it focuses on facilitating processes for reflection and learning by focusing on:

• Direct Experiences: drawing on participants personal experiences related to animal welfare improvements and behaviour change, and/or by conducting participatory learning and action activities, participatory demonstrations or presentations through which participants experience/feel new information for discussion and learning.
• Facilitating Reflection: helping participants think about how experiences make them feel, analyse new information, and develop their own ideas about the specific topic or issue.
• Generating Conclusions: encouraging participants to generalize lessons learned to draw broad conclusions for themselves about their experiences.
• Promoting Application: enabling participants to visualize how they may apply their experience/new knowledge in their own lives in the future.

Incorporating reflection and learning through periodic meetings with the group/s to discuss and reflect on progress and monitoring results is useful for the following reasons:

• Promotes accountability and improves community members’ commitment to adopting desired changes. Specifically, seeking voluntary commitments in these public forums and/or seeking group commitments can improve adoption of desired behaviours [31].
• Generates peer pressure and peer motivation to influence individual actions, as well as opportunities for building social networks amongst peers to support change.
• Generates increased knowledge about actions that work or don’t work in their action plans, leading to corrective action or improvement.
• Better understand the barriers and motivators to adopting desired behaviours, and identify additional resources, support, and/or capacity building needs to address them.
• Creates a sense of shared responsibility for dealing with challenges.
• Promotes greater understanding of their animals’ welfare and their related behaviours that support or hinder its improvement.

3.1.3 Facilitate tiered organization of community groups to support collective action where appropriate

Depending on the number of CBOs, consider facilitating the formation of associations from amongst multiple community groups. This can be particularly helpful to supporting larger collective action, enabling better access to resources and resource providers, greater sustainability of change, and the ability of animal owning communities to advocate for their needs and rights more effectively through a broader unified voice. In some circumstances, a further level of organization may be helpful, with the formation of federations formed from amongst several associations. However, associations and larger federations are only effective when there is sufficient motivation and need to address collective issues of concern, otherwise they can become directionless and inactive and perceived to be a waste of time due to lack of utility.

Examples of successful CBO organizing:

1. Brooke Pakistan partners Sindh Rural Support Organization model of group organizing uses a tiered approach to social mobilization around human development priorities. In this approach “Local Support Organization” (LSO) acts much like a federation comprised of smaller “Village Organizations” (VO), which act as associations comprised of smaller Community Organizations (CO) acting as self-help groups. They are effective as they seek to address priority issues of communities, which is not always the case in the context of focusing on animal welfare issues.

2. In a project in South-East Asia, a community identified that a key reason why their pony carts kept losing wheels, which in turn caused animal welfare issues, was that a key road through their community developed dangerous potholes after each rainy season. A group formed to work together to address this issue. The group organised their members, and others in the community, to each fill the holes in the road outside their dwellings so that all together the road was repaired. This group is convened after each rainy season to coordinate the road repair activities.
3. There are many examples worldwide where groups of people who give tourists rides in horses and carts have formed groups. Examples of activities of such groups include working together to negotiate the authorities to provide amenities such as shelter for their animals while waiting for customers and water points to allow their animals to drink; and working together to create rules that promote fair competition regarding attracting customers, for example, a queuing system.
4. In Kenya, Brooke East Africa (BEA), works with partners to engage the community. At the community level, BEA support the communities to form animal welfare groups. The community animal welfare groups then elect a representative to a county/or sub county umbrella group. Kenya is currently divided into 47 administrative areas (called counties). The county umbrella groups engage the county government to ensure county by laws support animal welfare, and resources are also allocated at the county level for improving animal welfare. From the county umbrella groups each county elects a representative to a national coalition (from the 47 counties), which is referred to as the Association of Donkey Owners of Kenya (ADOK). ADOK is responsible for engaging national government, including successfully petitioning the national government to ban donkey slaughter in Kenya.

Creating associations of groups of animals owning community members at levels beyond their immediate locale is an important method of sustaining momentum after you (the facilitator), your organization, or other external forms of support are withdrawn. However, it is important not to wait until the exit phase to begin work in establishing such associations as they will require time and capacity building to establish and are most sustainable when they are linked to supporting prioritized collective action or benefits for all.

Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:

PLA tools
Animal welfare transect walk (T22)
Closed ended story telling (T24a)
Before and Now Analysis (T11b)
Matrix ranking and scoring (T9)
Group governance self-assessment (T31)

Facilitator Resources
6. Techniques for supporting progress through stages of change
14. Overview of community group formation process, and common challenges and factors influencing group success
15. Templates for supporting community group governance
28. Group sustainability mapping
20. Project Action Tracker

Link to References Cited