2.3.1 Develop a project operating plan informed by community action plan(s)
The community’s members have by this stage prioritised their animal welfare issues and identified the desired changes they wish to make. Utilize all evidence gleaned through this community action planning process, including the results from the community participatory welfare needs assessment, to explore meaningful interventions for addressing any COM-B related barriers and/or motivators to change that your organization may wish to address and monitor. For example, this could include interventions to improve the enabling environment for community animal health workers or undertaking societal level outreach and awareness raising campaigns with the aim of generating improved value of animals and to shift social norms to support the desired changes in practices that have been prioritized by communities. Consider using the following facilitator resources to support your planning process: 12. Behaviour Change Planning Table, 13. Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies. It is important to note that the planning process should include a plan for withdrawal of support and exit and consult with community members about what support they envision will be required to do this effectively.
Refer to any notes taken of key findings and insights identified through PLA activities and discussions undertaken with communities to inform this process, referring to you records within the Project Action Tracker resource if used, adding any additional information as needed.
It is important proper policies and standard operating procedures are in place for the project, including necessary safeguarding measures that protect and create an enabling environment for potentially discriminated and vulnerable groups (e.g. to take on leadership roles within their communities, women as change agents etc.). This includes ensuring sufficient capability within the implementing team to uphold these measures and effectively fulfil their roles and responsibilities to the project without issue.
2.3.2 Develop project monitoring plan and conduct baseline assessment
Identify Indicators of Success
Now that you have identified what the project aims to achieve through its planned activities, you can develop your monitoring plan by first identifying indicators of success. Indicators may be quantitative or qualitative but need to be measurable which you can ensure by designing them so that they are SMART –specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
When thinking about what to measure, consider the following:
Impact Indicators: Impact level indicators may be focused on how animal welfare has improved because of the project, or benefits perceived by the community as a result of the project/improving animal welfare. Examples of impact level indicators to consider may include:
- How animal welfare has improved in terms of the five domains, and/or specific indicators of welfare issues you would expect to see resolved because of the adoption of desired behaviours.
- Benefits perceived by communities as a result of improving animal welfare/ the project.
Outcome indicators: outcome indicators enable you to determine the extent to which project activities have achieved the desired result. Examples of outcome level indicators to consider may include:
- The extent to which community group members practice the desired behaviours, such as “XX% men or women animal carers clean their animal’s shelter daily” (refer to Behaviour Change Planning Table step 1 and 2) [20].
- Indicators that enable assessing the extent to which pre-conditions/barriers to practicing and sustaining the desired behaviours have been addressed e.g. access to and/or availability of quality animal health services, cognitive variables such as attitude and knowledge change (refer to Behaviour Change Planning Table step 4 [20].
- Indicators of the self-sufficiency and effective governance of the community group e.g. savings and loan repayments, peer-peer support, and ability to work together on collective actions and/or advocate to meet their needs.
- In addition to the indicators above, it is also helpful to consider assessing the following [20]:
• Why people practice the promoted behaviours? Such findings provide extremely useful lessons for further promotion of these behaviours in the existing or planned projects.
• Why do people not practice the promoted behaviours? Such findings are crucial for re-designing your strategy to address the factors which prevent people from practicing the behaviours
Output indicators: indicators related to output should enable your project to assess how well project activities were implemented, as opposed to measure the resultant changes that emerge because of activities. Refer to the activities you plan to implement and develop indicators for each activity (step 4 of the Behaviour Change Planning Table). Examples of output level indicators include:
- Total number of male/female community members attending educational or training event.
- Total number of trainings provided on animal welfare.
- Total number of educational posters or murals displayed publicly.
Once monitoring indicators are identified, the next step is to select the method of data collection (e.g. KIIs, FGDs, Surveys, secondary sources of data, photos etc.), and develop appropriate data collection tools as needed, as well as define your sampling parameters. Consider the following when selecting your data collection methods and tools:
Think about where you may be able to rely on existing data sources or use participatory monitoring methods (e.g. Animal Welfare Transect Walk, records of treatments or observations of animal health service providers), and where the project will be responsible for monitoring.
Feedback from members of the target audience can be used for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Consider establishing feedback mechanisms or proactively reaching out to different demographics within your target audience or engaging a small group of proactive engaged target audience for their opinions and suggestions about the content and value of communications, and effectiveness of the project and whether it has affected their animal care and management practices.
If considering self-reporting methods for capturing attitudes and attitudinal change (i.e. members of the target audience report on change), responses may be distorted by the respondents’ wish to give socially acceptable or desirable answers. To overcome this, you can triangulate data by obtaining information from 2 or 3 sources and use observation to give a broad perspective of the effectiveness of the programme.
Ensure whatever monitoring methods and tools you select will enable you to collect data from/about relevant demographics within the target audience so you can assess the extent to which your outreach activities have equally reached and been effective proportionately across demographics. This is particularly important to assess to ensure your project has effectively understood and tailored its approach to address the different realities of target group demographics, and does not further contributed to the marginalization of potentially vulnerable groups.
It is important to strike a balance between sufficient sample size to evaluate project success, ensuring inclusion of relevant representative demographics within the target audience (e.g. men, women, or other marginalized groups), and not overburdening the project. Think about how data will be used and by whom and aim to sample sufficiently to suite your purposes. For example, the understanding needed by your project requires a differently level of data reliability and certainty than would publishing results in a scientific paper.
Applying a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection gives a more in depth understanding for evaluating project success.
Figure 39: Examples of Triangulating Data Sources to Assess Project Success
Determine Monitoring Timelines and Responsibilities
Once you have identified your monitoring methods and tools, decide how often you are going to collect data on the different indicators, who is responsible for collecting and analysing it, and how will the results be shared, including both unexpected and undesirable outcomes. Consider the following recommendations when deciding when to collect data [20]:
At the project’s start: conduct a baseline survey of the projects’ selected impact and outcome indicators
Throughout the project: consider assessing relevant outcome and output indicators to monitor the progress of activity implementation and achievement of results
At the end of the project: conduct an end line assessment to measure impact and outcome indicators and compare this to the results of your baseline assessments. It is recommended the end line assessment also assess the main reasons why people (did not) adopt the promoted behaviours.
6 months- 2 years after the project: replicate the end line assessment of impact and outcome indicators to assess the extent to which changes have been sustained after the project.
It is important to ensure that whatever monitoring indicators, methods, and frequencies are selected, that results can be used to promote reflection, learning and adaptive management for both community members and the project throughout the course of the project cycle. Collective reflection and experience are a powerful tool for learning and change, and effective learning and reflection processes can foster motivation and a sense of self-efficacy and ownership of change amongst community members. It is therefore helpful to create opportunities for community groups to review monitoring results to:
Support their reflection, learning about successes and challenges, and changing trends.
Promote transparency and accountability in terms of what the project is achieving.
Improve motivation for change through a celebration of successes and identify where more effort or adaptations in action plans are needed.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
The resource is intended to support community facilitators design evaluation questions to track the implementation, progress and outcomes of the animal welfare improvement project/behaviour change processes. The resource can be used when developing community project participant’s individual interview or focus group discussion guide. The sample questions explore community vis-a-vis individual level household changes; group sustainability; and tracking behaviour change from the stages of change perspective. Note these are not exhaustive and need to be adapted to fit to your programme/project/context needs.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Exit & Evaluation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Monitoring and Evaluation
It could be helpful to start with questions which encourage the respondent to easily respond to e.g.
Why did you get involved in this project? What did you find the most interesting about this project?
What was the most difficult part for you? What could be done differently to make this project more successful in the future?
You can ask them to recall and explain what things were like before – and then ask them to explain how they are now. Eg) How were animals in your community before this project started? Probe: Were they happy? Why? Did they look healthy? Why? Did they have the things they need? What did/didn’t they have?
Then provide a follow on question, Eg) How are things for animals in your community now? Why? Probe: Do they have what they need? Do they look healthy? If yes, why? If no, why not?
Do people do anything differently with their animals now? Can you give some animal welfare related actions being carried by the community?
Are change agents (if being utilized) playing an active role in supporting your community? In what ways? What do you think they could do differently?
Is there a collective understanding amongst community members of the major animal welfare issues and how to address them?
What are the animal health service providers available in your area? Do these local service providers provide quality services to the satisfaction of community members? Probe: Are group members seeking the help of animal health services?Are local service providers responsive to community requests? Does the responsiveness differ based on people’s gender or socio-economic status? Can you provide examples?
Are community/group members seeking animal welfare related services proactively and in a timely manner? Can you give examples?
Are men, women and children in families who own animals all aware of their animals’ welfare issues and participate in activities that are important to improve and maintain good welfare?
What kind of actions have been taken in your community to ensure better animal welfare improvement is achieved? (Probing questions depending on your focus issue: What examples of community-led animal disease prevention measures are being carried out on appropriate timelines e.g., vaccines and boosters? Are appropriate measures to ensure clean and comfortable environments for animals in place? Are community members engaged in the project have a good knowledge of appropriate and welfare friendly gear? And use them on their animals? e.g., harnessing, saddle-fitting, cart balance and loading, are animals handled in ways that are safe? (Which doesn’t not prevent their development or creates risk of injury. What are the animal – owner/handler interactions? What are the wound prevention or/and management practices in your area? Have you seen changes on that?).
What changes in access to and availability of resources do communities perceive have resulted from their involvement in the project?
Have there been any benefits to the community from this work? Probe: Can you give specific examples?
Have there been any negative consequences on the community from this work? Probe: Can you give specific examples?
Sample questions to ask when assessing group sustainability (if the project included Equine Welfare Group Formation)
Is your community different after forming a group? If yes, in what ways? If no, why do you think this is?
Is the group registered? Is your group functioning well with regular documented meetings? Have there been changes in leadership of your group? Are men and women part of the leadership and membership?
Is conflict resolution mechanism in place, has been used and the outcome recorded in village registers?
Are there examples of collective actions that have been undertaken by the group to meet their animals’ needs and are these recorded in the records of the community group e.g., collective feed purchases, vaccine campaigns, advocacy with government agencies to address their animal needs?
What are the successful animal welfare improvements that were achieved through your collective/group actions? What were your group’s actions to encourage your members to change their behaviour to improve animal welfare? Were there mechanisms that your group established to change your members' behaviour to improve animal welfare? Can you give us examples? Can you tell us more about this?
Sample Questions for Assessing Changes/impact at the individual level
Are all members of your family aware of your animal’s welfare issues? Probe: Your wife/husband? What about your children? Probe: What do they each do for your animal’s welfare?
Have you learnt anything new since being part of this group/work?
What are the changes you have seen in your animals, give examples/specify
What are the practices you have adopted at home that has are helping you improve the welfare of your animals? Give examples.
What kind of support have you received from Brooke/partners or change agents?
Do you do anything differently with your animals now, after being part of this project: Probe: Can you give some examples? Why didn’t you do the things that you do now with your animal, beforehand? What stopped you from doing things with your animal the way you do now, before this project started? What helped you to change your practice or what is a challenge for your not to change your practice? What do you want to know more or practice more to improve your animals’ welfare?
How would you rate your rate of motivation to continue to practice the new targeted behaviour? Do you intend to keep caring for your animal in the ways you do now? If yes, why? What could make it difficult to do this? If no, why not?
What are the prompts and triggers to adopt the new behaviour you identified? [learning questions for reflection and for future programme/project intervention design]
Were you able to identify something that would help you to sustain the desired targeted behaviour? And what is it?
Have you faced unforeseen challenges? If so, what are the unforeseen challenges have you faced?
Is there any resource/time implication of adopting the desired new targeted behaviour when compared to the old practice? Probe: Do you think this will impact whether you continue to do this?
Vulnerable groups’ targeted question: Have you encountered any specific challenges to your gender/situation or position as a result practising this desired behaviour? e.g., making decisions to take the animal to be treated, deciding to pay to a service?
Has it been difficult to continue/maintain the new ways of treating and working with your animal? If yes, why? If no, why not? What or who made it easier for you to keep up these ways of working? What or who made it difficult to maintain the new changes? What kind of support do you still require to maintain/continue with practicing the desired targeted behaviour?
Have you started experiencing the benefits of animal welfare to your livelihood and the associated desired behaviour change?
Tracking Behaviour change using Stages of Change Model
As part of working towards behaviour change, it is important to track progress towards the realization of the desired behaviour. You can use the below questions to monitor progress or as part of overall project evaluation. The below points/questions can help you to check whether you were successful to introduce change within each stage of change. These suggested indicative questions (not prescriptive and exhaustive) can be used for FGD, KII, and within surveys/interviews, or can be included as a follow up of various participatory tools that can be used for evaluation phase. You can also ask these questions retrospectively once the groups/individual project participants progress to the next stage of change to understand the change progress as part of your learning.
Pre-contemplation and contemplation (following Conception phase):
Have community/individual’s knowledge and understanding about animal welfare improved? Do they identify the gap in practice on animal welfare now? You can probe this by asking:- Can you explain what animal welfare means to you? Follow on: What was the standard of animal welfare in your community before this work started/your group formed? Probe: Why was this the case?
Have they become aware of what animal welfare concerns are there in their locality/individual homestead? Probe: Can you provide examples?
Are community/individual’s’ able to link their/o/u/c problem behaviour with the animal welfare gap.
Has the capability (physical and psychological) and motivation (Reflective motivation) of o/u/c changed after the intervention?
What is the belief system of the community/individual about the possibility of change? What is their change talks?
Did their value system change because of the intervention [during conception /planning phase] and/or your organization contribution or that of the CCA?
How would they rate (individual or collective depending on your availability of resource and relevance) their motivation for change? This will be asked retrospectively as part of overall evaluation, or as a question at the end of the first phase? If asked at the end, this could be clearer: “How would you have described your motivation for change at the beginning of this process?”
What kind of steps/actions they are willing to take or have taken so far?
Preparation
How would they rate their motivation to adopt the new desired targeted behaviour?
What is your current understanding about the relationship between the problem behaviour and animal welfare practice gap; and how can you change this?
Did their value system change because of the intervention [during conception /planning phase interactions] and/or your organization contribution or that of the CCA?
What kind of steps/actions they are willing to take or have taken so far?
What kind of support has they received? e.g. Action plan development trainings, etc.
Have they (group and/or individual) developed action plan to act?
What were their barriers to develop action plans before the start of this programme/project? Have these barriers changed? How would they link your programme/project/CCA helped/contributed to reducing the barriers?
What were their barriers to develop action plans before the start of this programme/project? Have these barriers changed? How would they link your programme/project/CCA helped/contributed to reducing the barriers?
Action
Did they find their action plans relevant to their reality when trying to implement them? (This shows doing good COM-B analysis helps in identifying potential barriers and adaptive programming with SI can further help the community/individual to get the relevant/appropriate intervention to help the shift to take concrete actions to perform the desired behaviour change).
What are the prompts and triggers to adopt the new behaviour you identified? [learning questions for reflection and for future programme/project intervention design]
Were you able to reinforce the supporting behaviours that will help you to sustain the desired targeted behaviour? Probe: Can you provide specific examples?
Have you faced unforeseen challenges? If so, what are the unforeseen challenges have you faced?
Is there any resource/time implication of adopting the desired new targeted behaviour when compared to the old practice?
How would you rate your rate of motivation to continue to practice the new targeted behaviour? [for survey or FGD or KII]
Vulnerable groups’ targeted question: what kind of actions were you to take? Have you encountered specific to your gender/situation or position? E.g. making decisions to take the animal to be treated, deciding to pay to a service?
Have you faced any safeguarding issues when practicing this new targeted behaviour [This is particularly relevant when part of the socio-economic and COM-B analysis/gender analysis has shown that it is a hindrance for animal welfare or a prompt/favourable social norm for animal welfare practice without being exploitative of individuals/undermining their dignity and rights]
Who helped you to continue to continue overcome your challenges/distractions to go back to the old way? Did you have supporting relationships or mechanisms?
Maintenance
How long were you able to hold of the maintenance of performing the desired targeted behaviour?
Have you seen the benefit in practicing the new desired targeted behaviour?
Who helped you to continue to overcome your challenges/distractions to go back to the old way? Did you have supporting relationships or mechanisms?
What kind of support do you still require maintaining the desired targeted behaviour?
Termination
How long were you able to maintain/sustain performing the desired targeted behaviour?
Did you have supporting relationships or mechanisms or incentives to perform the desired behaviour and to improve your animal welfare practice? What or who helped you to continue to continue overcome your challenges/distractions not to fall back to the old ways of handling/managing/using your animal?
Have you started communicating the benefits of animal welfare to your livelihood and the associated desired behaviour change to your friends, family, etc.?
Facilitation Notes
Facilitator needs to create an enabling safe space for people/groups who are marginalized to express their lived experiences regarding the different barriers they faced and how they have found the project to help them maintain human behaviour change that benefits their animals’ welfare improvement and also theirs and their family/community lives. Meeting invites to such meetings need to ensure both genders be able to meaningfully participate and for their views to be heard to determine the next steps.
It is important to note that such discussions with communities should be voluntary and use ethical standards which includes informing the participants why they are selected, the purpose of the discussion/interview, that their views won’t affect their involvement in the project and how the interview/the discussion will be take and the purpose of the meeting should be clearly communicated to them. The following tools may also be used to support the evaluation of project success:
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
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:
Figure 40: Stages of Group Development [70]
Key Characteristics of Community-based Organizations:
A CBO is not just any collection of community members. It is those who come together with commitment to improving animal welfare, with shared objectives, goals or purpose and a plan.
Members work together to design plans for collective action to improve welfare.
Communication between members is open, supportive and all voices are heard.
All members are aware about the membership criteria, the rules, procedures, rights, and responsibilities of members.
Regular meetings are held with active participation from members.
The size of the CBO allows all members to participate actively, small enough to not overwhelm and large enough to ensure effectiveness of any collective actions and sustainability of the group. As a rule of thumb, 15-30 members should be considered the maximum membership range for group functioning.
All members understand the reason for the CBO and have a shared sense of responsibility.
There is identified leadership, the members recognise the leadership and the leader/s lead actively.
Leadership is accountable, transparent and is on a rotational or election process.
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.
Figure 41: Mechanisms for Supporting Behaviour Change
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.
Figure 42: Reflection and Learning Process [7]
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.
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.
Figure 43: Example of Sindh Rural Support Organizations Three Tiered Social Mobilization Approach
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.
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.
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.
The problem animal tool supports identifying and exploring the underlying causes of perceived animal welfare issues through an in depth root cause analysis. This activity can be revisited when planned actions have resulted in desired welfare improvements to promote evaluation and reflection on unidentified or unaddressed root causes. Please note that the first step in this exercise is the same as that ofAnimal welfare body mapping (T20).
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To raise awareness of the root causes of welfare issues affecting different parts of an animal’s body and possible actions to be taken to address them, either collectively or individually • To inform organisational planning based on root cause analysis of animal welfare issues
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, cards, sticky notes, coloured markers, tape, and scissors
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs
Problem Animal
Figure T25a Problem animal diagram
Exploring the complexities of need and demand for farriery service.
This diagram was made by a group of animal owners. First, the group discussed the problems affecting each part of the animal’s body, then they analysed the problems in depth to find their root causes. The group found that wounds on different parts of the body have different causes, but there are also causal factors (sub causes) which are common to more than one body area, such as bad road conditions and the way that ropes are tied. Wounds on the belly, breast and tail base were found to be inter-related. The group created a community action plan to address some of the root causes identified during this exercise.
Figure T25b Problem animal – causes of identified animal welfare problems
Animal body mapping PLEASE NOTE: Steps 1-3 are the same as in T20 Animal body mapping and should be completed prior to carrying out T25 Problem animal.
Animal body parts map
Step 1
If the broken animal jigsaw puzzle is available, start by playing the game. Then, ask participants to sketch the body of their animal on the ground or on paper and to identify the different body parts and the local names used for each body part.
Step 2
Once participants have identified all body parts, initiate a discussion on their perceptions of the role and function of each part. This discussion often creates an opportunity for facilitators to sensitize participants about which body parts are important to animals’ function, which is particularly relevant in relation to working animals.
Animal body issue map
Step 3
Follow step one above, then ask the group to identify issues they commonly perceive on the body of their animals. This may include wounds, symptoms of disease, or other problems with animal health or function which they observe. It is important to allow participants to identify what they perceive to be issues, rather than identify issues you as the facilitator perceive. Encourage participants to draw these issues on the body map or represent those using symbols next to the appropriate body part.
Problem animal
Step 4
Then, ask the community which 2 or 3 of the issues identified in step 3 are the biggest problems and focus on those for the rest of the activity. Start with those most common to everyone.
Have participants discuss the causes of the problems and draw or write the causes near the relevant part of the animal’s body. Analyse each welfare issue in depth by repeatedly asking ‘why?’ questions.
For example:
‘Why does the animal get that wound?’ – ‘Because of the leather belt on the harness’
‘Why does the leather belt cause the wound?’ – ‘Because it is not cleaned and oiled’
‘Why is the belt not cleaned and oiled?’ – ‘Because we don’t have the time’
‘Why don’t you have the time?’
…and so on, until the group reaches the deepest root causes of the welfare problem and cannot go any further.
When one welfare problem is complete, take up the next one and repeat the questions until root causes are drawn or written next to all the problems shown on the body of the animal. If time permits, add additional issues, and repeat the same process with participants.
Step 5
As the discussion progresses and all the causes are identified, analyse any links or relationships between different causes and show these using lines or arrows (see Figure T25).
Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to guide participants to the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 6
Ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped.
Discussion questions may include:
• What have they realized or learned because of doing this activity? • What are possible solutions for addressing the root causes of priority animal welfare issues? • Are there opportunities to take collective action to address the root causes the issues? • Referring to the identified root causes, what are the implications or consequences for owners or animal-owning households if not addressed?
Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 7
Have the community helper record the root causes and any specific actions and activities in the community action plan, including who will monitor, a realistic timeline and any help needed from external stakeholders. Record the root causes and actions to be taken by the team to your project action tracker and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders
Facilitator’s notes: Problem animal
The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas.
Men, women, owners, users and carers all have different roles and responsibilities related to their animals and may have different knowledge to contribute to understanding the root causes of welfare issues. Decide who best to include in this activity and whether to carry it out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on group dynamics, your rapport with the community and the local context.
The in-depth problem analysis explores socially and traditionally induced inequality related issues as root causes from different people’s lived experiences depending on their position within a society e.g. gender inequality, caste systems, migratory status, race, etc. might uniquely affect owners/users/carers understanding in living within and dealing with root causes. Therefore, the importance of creating safe and enabling environment during such discussion is a high priority as part of a ground rule when leading such sensitive areas. It is also important to acknowledge people’s realties/lived experiences; rather than being dismissive.
This exercise needs a lot of patience and questioning in order to enable the deepest causal factors to come out of the discussion. Keep asking “why” until all root causes are identified.
Consider using cards or sticky notes to document the causes and sub-causes, as participants may change their mind about the causes and either move or remove them.
It is important for the facilitator to end such meetings on a positive note by doing Step 6 and 7 focusing on the potential solutions. Doing this helps with reflective motivation for people to be more motivated to continue to engage and work with us (rather than leaving them pondering about all the magnitude of the problems they have to tackle).
If the animal body mapping (T20)exercise was performed by the group in the recent past, it should not be necessary to repeat steps 1-3. In this case, review and summarize the issues identified with the group, then move to root cause identification in step 4.
T26 Animal welfare cause and effect analysis to explore the root causes of an individual welfare issue identified during this Problem Animal activity in greater depth along with the related effects on animals and people. This tool is great for fostering motivation to improve animal welfare, as it explores the consequences of inaction for both animal and humans.
T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the risks and opportunities of action and inaction on both animals and humans, including potential solutions for reducing costs and increasing benefits to both. This tool is useful if previously agreed community actions are not being adopted due to lack of motivation or high perceived costs.
Undertaking the root causes analysis using T25 tool paves the way to do COM-B behavioural diagnosisto further support the kind of substantive intervention needed to address the desired behaviour change.
3.2.1 Participatory monitoring of animal welfare and human behaviour change
Getting communities to monitor their progress is important to show tangible results for their efforts which in turn will encourage further support and effort for future improvements. This process helps indicate whether a community has all the resources it needs, how effectively the group/s are working together and whether they have something important they should share with other communities to disseminate information learned.
It is important to understand all the stages of change, anticipating that groups may be in pre-contemplation regarding some issues, and are likely to be in contemplation and preparation stages of change early on, developing into action and maintenance at the later stages of this process. Be aware though that behaviour can relapse backwards at any stage so refer to the facilitator resource 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change for support with this.
Participatory monitoring of animal welfare and behaviour change enables group members to feel proud and good about themselves, therefore more likely to maintain the changes they’ve adopted. Repeating the Animal welfare transect walk (T22), at intervals of one, two or three months, enables the group to monitor changes in the welfare of their animals. Their scores for each animal welfare issue are recorded on the same monitoring chart each time.
Group members then sit together again to reflect on their findings, both positive and negative. Improvement in scores shows the effect of the actions they have taken to improve management of their animals and to prevent welfare problems from occurring. If there is no improvement, or if scores decrease, possible reasons for this need to be discussed. They may identify gaps in their current practices, decide if further actions or closer monitoring are needed and record all relevant details to refer to as they progress.
3.2.2 Participatory review and reflection on monitoring results, community action plans, and lessons learned, adapting as needed
It is essential for the group to critically appraise the performance of both the individual members and the group collectively, for the animal welfare interventions to succeed. These positive, constructive appraisals translate action into learning which in turn translates into further action. The depth of reflection has a major effect on the quality of the action that follows.
Periodic tracking of progress can help group members to:
Build their interest in the intervention and their commitment to making it work.
Assess the roles of different stakeholders.
Understand the changing dynamics in their environment.
Generate increasing knowledge about actions that work or that are not effective in their community action plan, leading to corrective action or improvement.
Share responsibility for dealing with challenges.
Bring peer pressure and peer motivation to influence individual actions.
Trigger greater understanding, sensitivity, and care for their animals.
This will also enable you and your project to understand their situations and constraints more clearly. Two types of participatory monitoring are essential for the success of the action and reflection process:
Monitoring of group activities to check that group members and other stakeholders are doing what they agreed to do in their action plan. It is recommended this be a regular activity conducted every group meeting.
Monitoring of changes in animal welfare and related husbandry and management practices, which can be achieved by repeating the Animal welfare transect walk (T22).
During this process:
Organize regular group meetings to review individual and collective efforts towards welfare improvement.
Check and record the activities agreed in the community action plan to ensure that they are carried out.
Generate resources needed for implementation of the plan, through collective contribution and by forming links with other resource providers.
Initiate support for implementation of those activities that need external support.
Analyse the results of the Animal welfare transect walk recording chart.
Take corrective action to keep the plan on track and/ or to develop new action points.
We have found when refinement of community action plans occurs, it commonly occurs in two ways. First, as the group increases its sensitivity towards its animals, the members choose to use a longer list of welfare changes that they want to measure, and they create more detailed scoring systems for these. They will do these themselves in time. If they do not, you should not introduce more complexity because it is important that the community decides what they feel is useful to measure. Both the animal-based indicators and those relating to resources or management practices increase in number and complexity. Second, group members start to come up with more root causes and the associated welfare-promoting actions that need to be encouraged, and they include these in their community action plan and recording system.
Holding meetings for reflection and learning, lead the group in collectively looking at their activities, to find out whether they were carried out as agreed and whether they led to the desired change in a welfare issue. Have group members sit together to reflect on findings from their participatory monitoring, both positive and negative. The group will find that some issues can be resolved quickly (e.g. within three months), while others take longer, and some will not change despite the group’s action. This stimulates further discussion, which can be further supported through root cause analysis on these specific issues, using the Problem animal tool (T25) or Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (T26). This second level of root cause analysis is an essential step in the process of solving the more difficult or long-term welfare problems facing animals. In addition, the Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis (T21) may be useful to use here as it can enable the group to assess its’ progress against initial results of activity if previously conducted, explore the extent to which they have been able to change their animal care practices to meet their animals’ needs, and highlight potential constraints they may be facing in adopting these new practices.
If improving the quality of animal health service providers was an issue the group prioritized to address, implementing the Community Score Card (T35) activity anew and comparing results can help inform the group’s reflection and learning as it will enable them to evaluate changes from initial results. To aid reflection and learning and development of collective actions the following facilitator resources are useful: Dependency Analysis (T12), Income, expenditure, and credit analysis (T13), Group inter-loaning analysis (T14). In addition, the Cost Benefit analysis (T15) can generate motivation to act by enabling communities to weigh the costs and benefits of action vs inaction for both animals and people.
In addition, it can also be useful to the group’s reflection and learning to ask the group to look back further, comparing the situation before they started to implement their community action plan with the situation now. Using the Before and Now Analysis (T11b) tool can support this process. The group analyses which actions have been most effective and which less effective and the reasons why. This helps participants to learn, to change their interventions if necessary and to plan for continuing action. Matrix ranking (T9) can be used to compare the relative success of the activities taken up. During this part of the analysis, it is also useful to discuss the achievements and difficulties faced while working together as a group, with reasons for these, and how any difficulties were overcome. The resource 14. Overview of Community Group Formation Process, Challenges, and Factors Influencing Group Success has a section on Common Challenges and Solutions Related to Community-based Organizations/ Governance which can support this process. When groups are faced with complex problems, they have yet to be able to solution, consider using Open Ended Story Telling (T24c) to help them to brainstorm possible solutions to the complex issue they are facing.
Community groups will go through an iterative planning process adapting their action plans throughout the course of the project. Upon achievement of desired results, encourage the group to decide whether to initiate community action planning to address new priorities or issues. In this case, support the group to identify new priorities and enable all participants to progress through the stages of change for any new behaviours they decide they wish to adopt to improve welfare issues. This is one of the key measures that can show that a group has become successful in institutionalizing behaviour change and taking collective and individual actions to see improvement in animal welfare in their communities/members. When groups add new issues and behaviours to their plan this is also an indicator of a successful group.
You are likely to find that in the early stages the animal-owning group needs a lot of support and capacity-building, which relies heavily on your skill as a facilitator. As the group becomes more familiar with animal welfare issues and confident in solving them, they will drive this action-reflection-action cycle themselves. This is a sure sign of the success of your work. This is also the stage where you start to discuss how long they will need your support as a facilitator and over what period you should withdraw from the group. Planning for your eventual withdrawal is essential to support the growth of a self-reliant group and not increase its dependency on you. In our experience it takes the group 12 months to reach this stage, and a further 12 to 18 months of strengthening until you finally withdraw.
Throughout these discussions, record any key insights in your Project Action Tracker for use in reflecting and adapting your own project plans and strategies as needed to support the group’s continued progress. Update your Behaviour Change Planning Table and refer to Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies as appropriate to supporting your adaptive management process based on lessons learned from these monitoring, learning and reflection processes.
The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is sometimes called a problem tree, in which causes are depicted as roots of the tree and effects as branches. This adapted version of the tool provides a visual representation of the relationship between the causes of specific priority animal welfare issues, and the effects of the issues on both people and animals [48]. This tool has proven to be one of the most important and effective participatory tools in this toolkit, as the improved understanding and awareness that results from discussions and outputs of this activity have effectively motivated participants to take action to prevent animal welfare issues, as well as respond to them when they do occur. In particular, the effect analysis portion of this tool can be a key motivator of behaviour change. Consider conducting a pairwise ranking (T8) or matrix ranking and scoring (T9)prior to this one to identify the priority welfare issues.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify and promote participant understanding of the root causes of a specific priority animal welfare issue and their implications for humans and animals. • To generate participants’ motivation to take action or change their behaviour, either collectively or individually, to prevent or respond to animal welfare issues • To identify root causes of animal welfare issues and potential implications on the livelihoods and well-being of animal-owning households.
1.5 - 2 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards or other locally available materials
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings, and Needs; Livelihoods; Compassion / Empathy
Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (or problem tree)
The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is used to analyze an animal welfare issue or problem by identifying the complex contributing factors and any relationships between the factors, as well as their effects on animal-owning households and animals alike. In the context of working animals, this tool has been used to help identify the causes of priority welfare problems such as wounds and overloading, and to discuss the effects of these welfare issues on animals and the people who depend on them. For example, discussing the causes of wounds on specific parts of a working animal’s body may highlight causal factors such as the size and structure a harness or saddle, or the design of a cart or carriage. Effects on the animal could include pain, weight loss and reduced working capacity. Effects of the animal’s wounds on the owner could include less income (from reduced work and increased expenditure on treatment) or lower status in the community.
T26a Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis diagram for an Animal-Owning Community
The above animal welfare cause and effect analysis was produced by a group of working animal owners in a rural community. They were particularly concerned about reducing and preventing wounds on their animals’ backs. Four major causes were initially identified: whipping by users, beating by children, bad road conditions and improper harness fitting. These causes were then continuously analysed to better understand why they were happening, until the underlying root causes were identified. The effects of back wounds on the animals were then discussed and identified as decreased energy, low appetite, pain and increased risk of infection. The resulting effects on the household were decreased income, increased expenditure on treatment and always feeling stressed and worried about where money would come from and whether the animal would recover.
This activity motivated the group to take action on the root causes that were within their influence.
This included:
Petitioning the local government for road repairs between nearby communities and major transport routes
Promoting more humane handling amongst members of their household to prevent wounds from whipping and beating
Making their own welfare-friendly harnesses from recycled materials
Animal Welfare Cause & Effect Analysis
Step 1
Ask participants to identify the animal welfare issues they feel are a priority and select one issue to explore in depth with this exercise. Consider referring to animal welfare issues and priorities previously identified using T25 Problem Animal,T8 Pairwise Ranking or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring, if available. Make sure that the issue is not broad, such as ‘wounds’ generally.
Step 2
Have the community helper draw a circle on the ground or on a large piece of paper and ask him/her to draw or write the priority welfare issue in the middle of the circle using a symbol, picture, or word.
Step 3
Begin the discussion by asking the group what they perceive to be the major factors that cause this problem. As main causes are identified, each cause is added below the priority issue, using symbols, pictures, or words, and connected to the problem with arrows.
Step 4
Once all initial causal factors have been identified, start with one causal factor, and have participants identify the sub-causal factors by asking them why that causal factor happens? Show this sub-cause below the major cause it is associated with, connecting it with an arrow (see Figure T26). Continue asking why each sub-cause happens and continue adding sub-causes - spreading out like the roots of tree - until the group reaches a stage where no further sub-causes can be found. As a rule, these probing using “why” questions may need to be asked 3-5 times per cause, before the root cause is finally identified.
Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to teach participants about the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 5
Once all the root causes of the welfare issue have been identified, facilitate the same process to analyse the effects of the welfare issue on the animal and the animal-owning household. Start by having the helper add two circles above the welfare issue: one representing the animal and the other representing the animal-owning household.
Step 6
Ask participants to identify the effect of the welfare problem on the animal. As effects on the animal are identified, linkages to the animal-owning household will naturally emerge and the discussion can quickly turn to effects on the household.
Please note: The facilitator should allow the discussion to flow naturally, ensuring full exploration of effects on the animal AND household. It is common for participants to identify only a few main effects on the animal, especially in contexts where animals are not viewed as sentient beings. Here, the facilitator’s role is to ask probing questions to promote discussion around the animal’s feelings and experience of the welfare issue. It may be helpful to frame questions in terms of, “If you had this issue, how would you feel?”
Please note: When discussing the effects on the animal-owning household, encourage participants to consider potential effects on all household members, including men, women, and children. Ask: do the identified household effects effect all household members equally? Make sure effects on different household members are accounted for on the diagram.
Step 7
When the diagram is complete, ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped. Some discussion questions may include: Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 8
Once complete, take a photo or record the outputs on a piece of paper. Ensure that the community has a copy for their records and facilitator has a copy for future reference or planning.
Finally, have the community record any root causes and activities to address the causes in the community action plan. Make sure to include any resources/materials needed to achieve this, including who will monitor it and a realistic timeline. Record the actions, activities, and proposed linkages into your project action tracker, and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
Facilitation Notes
The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas. Participants may ask for advice on actions to address root causes.
Decide the group dynamics ahead of time and whether it would be best carried out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on your rapport with the community, culture and local gender dynamics. This is important when their roles and responsibilities related to animals differ, and/or they use/depend on animals differently, as their perceptions and concerns may differ.
If conducted separately between men and women, consider bringing the two groups back together at the end of the activity to review the results of each chart and resolve any discrepancies if time allows and culturally appropriate.
If it is not appropriate to conduct this activity with men and women together in the local context, or if it could prohibit participation and freedom of discussion, consider conducting this activity separately.
This exercise can take considerable time, so discuss this in advance with the group and agree a suitable time to set aside for doing it.
Avoid using your own examples; encourage everyone to express their individual views.
This exercise requires patience from the facilitator in order for deepest causal factors to emerge from the discussion. Allow time for participants to discuss their experiences.
Next Steps
The cause and effect analysis is useful for action planning, especially when combined with:
Animal welfare transect walk (T22) to monitor changes resulting from actions related to animal body issues, resources and environment, and management practices
If the group is struggling to understand that animals have feelings and identify them as sentient beings, consider conducting the T19 Animal feeling analysis again.
If monitoring identifies that the solutions to root causes are unable to be adopted or behaviours go unchanged, conduct a T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the cost of continuing negative behaviours or practices and benefits of positive behaviour change.
Follow up with resource or service providers needed to help the group carry out their activities. Revisit the activities in the next meeting to monitor progress and if further support is required.
Results may also be useful to informing inform project planning and/or identify potential for partnerships to support:
Identification of community capacity building support to address the root causes of priority animal welfare issues
Addressing priority root causes which may be external to communities’ e.g. changes in policy
Identification of potential livelihood or human wellbeing indicators which could be used in monitoring to assess changes in people’s lives as a result of actions taken to improve animal welfare.
Working animals’ (e.g., donkeys, horses, oxen etc.) welfare is often overlooked in comparison to other livestock/production animals who have a more direct and understood role in supporting communities’ livelihoods. This tool is specifically designed to be used to aid communities in realizing the critical role and importance of these often-overlooked working animals to improve their motivation to similarly meet these animals’ welfare needs.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
To increase community members' motivation for better meeting the welfare needs of working animals by understanding their valuable contributions to their lives and/or livelihoods.
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
chart paper, index cards or sticky notes, pens/markers, chalk and/or locally available materials.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Change: Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Compassion/Empathy, Community Change Agents
Increasing perceived importance of animals
Step 1
Take the community through the process of identifying the general resources and services important to meeting their households’ needs and supporting their livelihoods which their animals either directly or indirectly contribute to obtaining (e.g., water, fertilizer, education, transport, health care, animal health services, agricultural products, income, food, feed for animals etc.). Write or draw these ideas on cards or paper until all are listed for all to see. The resources and services listed need not be limited to animal-related resources or services.
Step 2
Once these important resources and services are identified, ask participants to identify the animals which directly or indirectly contribute to obtaining them e.g., livestock/production animals, working animals etc.). Write or draw pictures of each animal on a card and place them on the ground. Then write the list of the resources or services they support /contribute to the family beside each of the animals.
Step 3
Then ask participants to identify which of the roles listed against each animal are important to them. They can rank them in order of priority. Each listed role should be paired with a picture of the animal that support that role in the household. To aid the participants in identifying these roles, ask participants to think about each animal’s relationship/contribution to all resources identified including(ability to support different resources identified).
Have the community write or draw the roles of each animal on cards or list them on a large piece of paper under each animal identified.
Step 4
Based on the roles and their importance, then ask participants to reflect on which animals they feel are most important/which they cannot live without and why based on the identified roles for each animal. Rank each animal in order of the agreed upon importance based on their roles.
Step 5
Next, support community participants to assess the value & contribution of each animal to their household through a cost & benefit analysis. Use the following discussion points to help facilitate this discussion:
• How much income do they get from their animals? • What are some of the uses of each of the animals? • What are the contributions of each animal in meeting household needs? time savings, social status, labour burden savings? • Prioritize how they spend income and savings from each animal based on the needs of the various household (Distribution of income expenditure at home) • Then consider how much is spent to meet each animal’s welfare needs and compare this to each animal’s contribution to the household income. • Then rank the animals in order of contribution to the household versus what is spent on the animal.
The process helps community members appreciate the value and importance of their working animals in relation to their contributions to meeting the household’s needs. Note which members of the community respond to the various contributions of working animals and lead the discussion for all views and lived experiences are taken, recognized and valued.
Step 6
Summarize the results of the activity and ask community members to reflect on their learnings and motivations for acting to better meet the welfare needs of their working animals. Agree on any actions and activities that that individual and/or the group identified they will take to improve the welfare of their working animals to add to the community action plan and agree on a date to repeat the exercise to assess changes in their perceived importance of their working animals and to monitor any actions taken.
Facilitation Notes
It is helpful to understand how to use processes which support communities in ranking or prioritising, as utilising a ranking process may be helpful to employ if communities’ members struggle to identify priorities through discussion alone.
It is good to note that the discussion/reflection doesn’t lead to the utilitarian assumption that undermines animal welfare.
4.1.1 Project end line monitoring to assess achievement of project
An overview of the exit and evaluation phase supported by the steps that follow are outlined in Figure 44 below:
Figure 44: Overview of Process for Assessing Whether to Exit Project
To help inform determination of whether to exit and withdraw support, final end-line monitoring of indicators in accordance with the monitoring plan is an essential first step. It is also important to assess where the community are in terms of the stages of change and facilitate whether they feel they can maintain the behavioural changes to sustain their animal welfare improvements. It is also useful for you as the facilitator to listen for change talk, and assess their progression, or the progression of others they sought to influence (e.g. animal health service providers), into the maintenance phase for the behaviours they sought to promote.
Once collected, analyse data, and compare end line results with results from the baseline assessment to determine the extent to which project objectives were achieved and preconditions for adopting and maintaining the desired behaviours have been addressed (e.g. barriers and motivators to desired behaviours). Identify successes as well as underperforming outcomes, for further follow-up discussion, reflection and learning with communities. Providing opportunities for such collective reflection and experience sharing can be powerful tools for learning and change, help inform adaptive management, and can foster motivation and a sense of self-efficacy and ownership of change amongst the community.
In addition, it is helpful to share the lessons learned more widely. They may be shared with the whole community to which the animal owners’ group belongs, and through workshops where different CBOs or communities come together from across a wider geographic area. This can generate motivation amongst others to support or take part in similar activities and helps to increase the reach and effectiveness of your programme.
4.1.2 Community Self-evaluation
The purpose of this step is to assess the longer-term impact of the group’s efforts to improve the welfare of their animals, to enable community group members to understand the positive changing trends in animal welfare and reflect on any issues that might need further action and identify potential needs for external support. Your job is to determine whether the group can stand on its own feet before the project withdraws support and exits.
For this step you will need to gather community members together to perform end-line monitoring to review the effectiveness of their community action plan and decide future objectives. You will need to plan this meeting in advance because it will take longer than a regular group meeting. Some groups decide to hold a two-day meeting, whereas others plan to spend two hours every day for three to four days on the self-evaluation process. It is very useful to involve local stakeholders and service providers identified during the initiation and planning phases. Their involvement will help to strengthen the community action plan by encouraging them to continue working closely with the group on improving service provision for animals.
During these discussions, two main areas will be evaluated:
1. Success and failures of the community action plan
Facilitate the group to look together at their activities to investigate how well they were carried out and whether they led to the desired change in the welfare issue and refer to any monitoring results collected from their Animal Welfare transect Walks and results available from the project’s monitoring. The group analyses which actions have been most effective and which less effective and the reasons why. This helps participants to learn, to change their interventions if necessary and to plan for continuing action.
Start by asking the group to remember what happened right at the beginning when their interventions started. Conduct a Before and Now Analysis (T11b) and/or compile a Historical timeline (T7) of the events and challenges that occurred throughout the period since they began to work together. If changes in the quality of animal health service providers was an aim of the group, reviewing any recent results from the Community Score Card (T35) activity, or conducting the activity anew to evaluate changes from initial results can be helpful. Such activities will set the climate for in-depth discussion. During this part of the analysis, it is also useful to discuss the achievements and difficulties faced while working together as a group, with reasons for these, and how any difficulties were overcome.
2. Evaluating sustainability
Once the community action plan and resultant changes in animal welfare and related impacts have been evaluated, it is important to evaluate whether improvements in animal welfare can be sustained, both in terms of the group’s functioning and members’ maintenance of new behaviours.
Facilitate the community group to reflect on whether their plan has achieved the desired results and agree on any areas that may still require continued action and/or support. If the community finds that at least most of them can sustain their changes in behaviour without any support (are at the at maintenance stage of change) and, if possible, that performing these new behaviours have become part of their norms/values or habits, then it can be said that these changes have become sustainable.
In addition, conduct or revisit results from the Group sustainability mapping (T27), along with the Group Governance Self-Assessment (T31), and Group Inter-loaning Analysis (T14), for CBOs with savings and loaning function, as appropriate. Review results with the CBO and support them to self-evaluate the sustainable functioning of the group and/or association if this has been feasible to organize in terms of the extent to which the necessary elements are in place to enable them to maintain their results and continue functioning without support from the project.
4.1.3 Project Process Evaluation
In addition to end line monitoring, it is recommended the project conduct an evaluation of the project using internal or external evaluators, with preference for using impartial third-party evaluators whenever feasible. These process evaluations are particularly essential if desired changes in animal welfare were not achieved as it will enable you to assess opportunities for the project to improve its implementation strategy or processes to improve outcomes, as well as help inform the determination of whether to continue the project using a different strategy. Evaluations should seek to assess the following in consultation with relevant stakeholders:
The appropriateness and effectiveness of the processes employed to: - improve and sustain animal welfare and the adoption of desired behaviour change, - promote participatory engagement and empowerment of communities, and - promote gender equality and safeguarding of vulnerable groups.
Stakeholder satisfaction with the project: - assess stakeholder perceptions related to the benefits and value of the plan both in terms of animals and people, - satisfaction with the project/implementing organization - recommendations for improvement
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
A group sustainability map is a tool for visually representing the cornerstones for successfully achieving sustainable animal welfare improvements. It enables a community group to visualise the key ‘results areas’ that need to be in place to achieve a long-lasting improvement in their animals’ welfare. It is recommended this activity be conducted in the planning or implementation phase of the project, and then its outcomes referred to during monitoring and reflection and learning processes throughout the project, as well as the exit and evaluation phase. In this way, the tool supports assessment of the extent to which the group can sustain its animal welfare improvements independently and help inform the determination of the group’s readiness for withdrawal of external support.
Sustainability mapping is slightly different from vision or dream mapping which involved visualizing broad goals, with vision statements often drawn by participants in the form of pictures [79]. Sustainability mapping on the other hand, focuses on identifying specific results areas needed to achieve sustainability, then breaking down each results area into the specific activities to deliver them, thereby enabling participants to formulate a concrete action plan for achieving lasting change.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Enable community group members to identify specific results areas that will support their achievement of lasting animal welfare improvements without external support. • Support community action planning by identifying activities community groups need to undertake to deliver each result area and achieve lasting animal welfare improvements. • Support evaluation of group readiness for withdraw of project support.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, coloured cards, markers, or other locally available resources, like sticks, stones, straw, beans, seeds, coloured powders or saw dust, etc.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning Phase, Implementation, Exit and Evaluation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Opportunity
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Group formation/strengthening
Group Sustainability Map
An example group sustainability map is provided in figure T28 below. The map illustrates the results areas identified as needing to be in place for a community group to achieve lasting animal welfare improvements.
Figure T28 Group Sustainability map
The following activities were then identified to support achievement of each results area, followed by discussions about opportunities for carrying them out:
Animal owners, carers, and users with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to meet their animals’ welfare needs
Advocate for and secure training for group members on animal husbandry and management best practices from extension service providers
Raise awareness of animal husbandry and management best practices to others in the community
Provide guidance to those who need it on preventing/addressing animal welfare issues as needed
Model best practices in animal husbandry and management and share experiences with other community members to encourage their uptake
Effective and functioning community group governance structures andsavings and loansystem
Group develops and approves constitution with clear vision and purpose to improve animal welfare
Group elects governing body members regularly as per the governance constitution including ensuring women’s and other vulnerable groups genuine participation and leadership
Group has financial system (e.g. records, audit reports, minutes of decisions, etc.) and strong management to ensure efficiency, financial stability and sustainability
All members contribute to group savings as per constitutionally agreed requirements
Group action plan is regularly revisited and adapted as needed based on monitoring results
Secure training for group members in community group governance from extension service providers
Mechanisms for monitoring animals’ welfare needs within the community
Agree on observable indicators of animal welfare within their group and the community at large that the group can monitor
Conduct animal welfare transect walks at regularly agreed intervals
Securing access/availability to/of quality and affordable resources and services necessary to sustaining their animal’s welfare
Establish good working relationships with key animal resource and health service providers to support the community in meeting animals’ welfare needs through quality service provision.
Facilitate collective bargaining and purchases from animal resource and service providers at reduced cost to support group members and others in the community in meeting their animals’ welfare needs
Advocate for and secure water point maintenance training for group members from extension service providers
Establish, maintain or provide support to a water point management committee to maintain water points or other community-led natural resource management important to the community and their animals
Group Sustainability Mapping
Step 1
Invite community group members to identify what they need to put/have in place (sometimes called results areas) in order to maintain good working animal welfare on their own to sustain lasting improvements in their animal’s welfare without external support. Give the participants coloured cards and ask them to draw or write down their thoughts. Some areas to consider are suggested under Step 2.
It is important to ensure that different community members are invited and have a safe enabling space for them to share their views on what sustainability looks like from their point of view.
Step 2
Next, ask participants to analyse what is on each card and sort them into categories, facilitating their debate until they come to a consensus on the ‘results areas’ which they believe need to be in place for them to achieve a long-lasting improvement in their/their community’s animals’ welfare. Once results areas are agreed and paste the cards comprising each area onto a big piece of chart paper and ask participants to develop a results statement on each area.
Some examples of possible results are provided below for reference: • Animal owners, carers, and users with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to meet their animals’ welfare needs • Effective and functioning community group governance structures and savings and loan system • Mechanisms for monitoring animals’ welfare needs within the community • Securing access/availability to/of key resources and services necessary to sustaining their animal’s welfare
Step 3
Once results statements have been created, ask group members to identify activities which they would need to undertake to achieve each result statement. Ask them to draw or write each activity on the chart under the result area which it contributes to, and discuss the opportunities for carrying out these activities. Once completed, encourage the group to incorporate their identified activities within their community action plan.
Step 4
Document results by either transferring it to a piece of paper or by taking a photo of the completed outputs. Ensure a copy of the sustainability map produced is retained by the community. Record any relevant insights from the community’s analysis in your project action tracker. Follow up with the community to further support their action planning and implementation of identified activities as needed.
Facilitation Notes
Note what different sustainability aspects are identified as priorities by different community members considering their lived experiences.
It is also important to identify what form of group formation and structure is relevant for the intended group sustainability.
Based on results of monitoring and evaluation and community self-assessment, and related discussions sharing results, determine which of the following options is most appropriate and feasible. It is important that any decision to exit the project and withdraw support should be based, as far as possible, on the CBO members’ assessment of their own self-reliance, readiness for withdrawal, and desire to continue to act on improving animal welfare.
Withdrawal Support and Exit - this option is recommended when: a. The desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have been achieved, or b. When the desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have not been achieved/seem unlikely to be sustained and feasibility of achieving them is unlikely.
Continue Support and Do Not Exit: this option is recommended when desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have not been achieved or are unlikely to be sustained due to issues with strategy, community capacity, or unexpected circumstances, and your project has the necessary resources to continue supporting the project. In such cases, it is recommended you build the necessary capacity and/or adapt the community development strategy and re-plan in collaboration with the community to continue working to achieve desired results.
Any determination to exit and gradually withdraw support, and the projects’ ability and desire to continue support should be shared and discussed with the animal owning community and other relevant stakeholders for full transparency and accountability.
4.2.2 Gradual phase out of project support and exit
The aim of this period is for the community to become gradually independent of regular facilitation while maintaining animal welfare improvements and reacting rapidly and effectively to any threats or downturns in welfare.
Develop plan for withdrawal of regular support with the group. During this stage you should come to an agreement with the group about how much of your support that they will need in the future. The group needs to agree on a transition from your facilitation to a situation where they continue to meet and take action to improve animal welfare without your regular support. This will involve careful planning. Long-term support may include holding an annual meeting, helping to overcome specific problems or crises, and/or linking the group with other relevant agencies and federating local community groups.
Get the community to discuss how they will plan, who will be the representative for the group, whether this will change over time and how new representatives will be decided. Encourage the group to reach out to other resource or service providers for collaboration, find out what further support they might need from the project, agree a timeframe, establish criteria of how group will measure self-reliance and enable identification of their own self-reliance based on criteria.
Prepare an action plan to continue welfare improvement based on the self-evaluation analysis:
Discuss the process of continuing improvement in animal welfare with the group when they develop their new action plan.
Agree what support is needed from you and the project to implement their action plan.
Agree a time frame for giving this support and implementing the plan.
Get the group to decide who their representative will be, whether this will change over time and if so, what will guide decisions about employing new representatives in the future.
Establish criteria with the group for measuring their self-reliance and enable them to identify their current level of self-reliance based on these criteria.
Encourage the group to reach out to other resource- and service- providers
Withdraw your regular facilitation from the group according to the agreed time frame. Provide active support only in response to the group members’ request and only in a crisis, which they cannot resolve on their own.
Gradually withdrawing support will enable you to extend your facilitation into other communities where animals are in need and enable you to support improving the lives of more animals over a larger area in the long term than would be possible if you stayed closely involved with one group or community.
4.2.3 Conduct follow-up monitoring to assess sustainability of change and consider follow up action as needed
Animal welfare improvements are only truly a success if the desired behaviours continue to be practiced by the community and the related improvements in animal welfare are sustained over the long term. As such, it is essential to conduct follow-up monitoring for a period after all support has been withdrawn. This will enable the project to use learnings from results to adapt its implementation strategies as needed, and potentially re-engage the community to support maintenance of desired change. Consider continuing monitoring activities on a yearly basis for up to two to three years before determining the extent to which the project has been a success.
It is recommended you develop post-exit re-entry criteria for providing spot interventions to address underperforming indicators identified through monitoring. For example, you may consider providing additional project support if results show two or three indicators are not being maintained, or if any indicator falls below a certain limit of acceptance. Continue periodic monitoring to assess improvement in underperforming indicators due to any re-entry activities.
This tool can be used to assess the extent to which community (or other) groups and organisations’ decision making and management practices align with good governance principles.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Support the identification and analysis of who makes decisions and how. • To identify and promote understanding of the principles of good governance • To assess the extent to which existing group decision making and management practices meet good governance principles • Help identify and/or negotiate group governance improvement measures as needed and aide in strengthening the adaptive capacity of community groups • To improve organisational/group practices to be inclusive from the perspective of different groups of people, and help promote more equitable participation in decision making and benefit sharing amongst community group members, especially of vulnerable groups,
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, coloured sticker dots and/or coloured markers, coloured index cards or sticky notes, large circular cut-out of different colours and sizes.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Initiation Phase, Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach,
Specific Topics: Group Formation/Strengthening
Table T29: Example Community Group Governance Assessment Score Card
1
0
-1
Participation and Non-discrimination
The group’s governing body (e.g., executive committee, council, board) is representative of all group members and is not dominated by any individual/s or sub-group/s or does not discriminate against people who are excluded/marginalized groups and vulnerable.
At least 30% of office bearers (e.g., chair, secretary, treasurer) are women
Other members of the community that are marginalized, excluded or who are vulnerable in that community have a seat in the governing body
There is regular dialogue with, and active involvement of, all members in the community group’s discussions and activities
Equity (Fairness)
Respect and attention are given to all group members’ views and all views weight equal weight unless provided in the Group’s governance constitution
There is no personal bias in decisions made by the community group
Consideration is given to the distribution of costs and benefits (of decisions and actions) between group members
Transparency
All group members are aware of the community group’s rules and regulations and division of roles among members and governing bodies, and among governing body members
All group members are aware of how and why decisions are made by the group governance body
There is clear communication with all group members, including on all financial transactions and decision-made including record keeping
Accountability and Integrity
There is a clear system for the allocation and acceptance of responsibility amongst group members
There is a process of planning, monitoring and reporting to ensure that agreed actions are effectively implemented and reported
There is mechanism or process in place for resolving conflicts or grievances which is accessible by all group members
The group has audit group or gets to be audited to ensure financial accountability and financial health
Group Governance Self-assessment
Step 1
The first stage in the group governance assessment is ‘setting the scene’ by sharing experiences and perspectives of good governance.
To ‘set the scene’ invite community group members to recount an event or change in their community that was because of (or was followed by) decisions made by one or more local groups/organisations. The local group/organization used as an example could be community group itself, or another local group or organisation such as a community council, school board, or church.
It is advisable to carry out this exercise by breaking the community into smaller groups of 2-3 and present back (as a story or role play, if appropriate), or alternatively you can conduct this as a group discussion. Questions to guide the discussion can include the following:
• How, where, when, and by whom were decisions made? • How were they communicated to others? • What possibilities were there to debate decisions? • Was there consensus around the decisions made? How and among whom was the consensus achieved? • Who had most influence over decision making processes? Why? • Who had the least influence over decision making processes? Why? • What was good about the decision-making process? • How could decision making have been improved?
Through this discussion, elicit participants’ perspectives on what constitutes good governance. Then principles of good governance, against which the organisation/group will be assessed, can then be presented, and discussed. Although values are strongly influenced by the local cultural context, there are some universal norms that apply across cultural boundaries. Some principles of good governance include:
• Participation and Non-Discrimination - All stakeholders participate in decision making that affects their lives, including representatives of people from marginalised and disempowered groups. Decisions rendered does not negatively impact in discriminating against women and other vulnerable groups. • Equity - Costs and benefits are shared fairly and impartial judgement is available in case of conflict. • Accountability - Lines of responsibility are clear and those in positions of responsibility are answerable to all stakeholders. • Transparency - All relevant information and records are available, in an appropriate form, to all stakeholders.
Step 2
Prepare an assessment score card table (refer to example in Table T29) to enable the group to score itself against good governance principles using the key indicators identified. Then identify a scoring system. An example scoring system that has proven useful is using a scale of -1, 0, +1, with good = +1, moderate = 0, and poor = -1. The process of discussing good governance practices is more important than reaching a consensus in one session. If there are differences of opinion these should be noted, and the discussion moved on.
Step 3
Encourage individual participants to prepare their own scoring followed by a group analysis and discussion of the patterns that emerge. In this case, it may be appropriate to make the statements as shown in the table (Figure T29) more personal e.g. I feel that respect and attention is given to my views, or I am aware of the organisation’s rules and regulations.
Step 4
Discuss and analyse the results as a group, focusing on why and how the score was allocated to each principle. Any differences of opinion should be discussed. Revisit the table either during or following the discussion to adjust the scores as needed.
Step 5
If time permits and if appropriate, participants can discuss the scores they would like to see in the future and begin to explore the steps needed to improve the group’s governance practices. Consider adding a column to include any actions or steps identified as needed to improve scores or keep track of the key discussion points.
Step 6
If the Table was drawn on a chart on the ground, document it by either transferring it to a piece of paper or take a photo. A copy should be left with the community.
Record the community’s analysis and responses in your project action tracker and follow up with the community later if/when you start action planning together.
Facilitation Notes
The focus of this exercise is about who makes decisions and how those decisions are made within community groups (i.e., governance) rather than the technical or financial capacity of local groups and organisations.
Consideration should be given to whether the exercise is to be carried out with group members or wider ‘community’ who may not be members, but who may support the community group in other ways, including stakeholders who may affect or be affected by the group’s actions. This similar exercise can also be carried out amongst elected governing body members.
The emphasis here is on the principles of good governance, some of which may threaten existing power imbalances in decision making, the facilitators must be aware of how the different principles promote good governance and be able to explain this with examples, as well as awareness on how power imbalances can lead to organisations being destabilized.
The facilitator must also be aware of the group composition, in terms of gender, power, social relationships with the community and how political or social relationships might inhibit group discussion, and the fact that stakeholders may be unwilling to share their true thoughts, this can be addressed through having different group meetings.
This can also be used when an elected governing body is facing governance issues and need to have a facilitated dialogue to ensure governing bodies solve issues using self-assessment tool.
Local participants should be encouraged to build as much of the diagram as possible without interruption and to suggest anything else that should be recorded.
Community visioning tools aid animal owning community members in brainstorming and agreeing on what they desire to achieve in the future within their community. Through a facilitated series of meetings, workshops, surveys, and growth-scenario comparisons, the animal owning community members can create a community vision—a written statement that reflects the community’s goals and priorities and describes how the community should look and feel in years to come with regards to how they treat their working animals.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To generate ideas from the community on how the future should look like for them, with regards to working animals’ welfare. • To cultivate a sense of community ownership and buy-in on a shared animal welfare vision for future actions, decisions and regulations around animal welfare in a community.
2.5 - 3 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards, or other locally available materials.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Initiation Phase, Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Group Formation/Strengthening, Community Change Agent
Community animal welfare visioning
Step 1
Before embarking on a community visioning process, it is crucial to define the geographic boundary of the community and the key stakeholders who are relevant to improving animals’ welfare within the community including those who may be impacted by or influence the project and decisions made by animal owning community members/community group or their ability to improve their animal’s welfare. It is critically important to ensure the inclusion of people who are marginalised for various reasons (e.g. gender, disability, socio-economic status, etc.) and acknowledge the different lived experiences of animal owning communities and ensure their participation through the processes to be used, the discussions and decisions to be made. It is equally important to create an understanding why community animal welfare visioning needs to be done.
Step 2
After defining the geographic community, the next step is to form a vision committee. The committee should include representatives from the animal owning community members, animal health and resource providers, local government extension agents among others to ensure diverse and inclusive representation as well as participation of men, women, and animal owning community members facing marginalization. This committee or a similar nature can further be maintained in the future as a sounding board for the programme/project implementation area; and membership can be rotated. The aim of establishing the committee is to have a representative body and point of contact for the project who can help encourage community participation, organize, and lead meetings, and draft actions that would put the community towards realizing their animal welfare agenda. The wider community can be facilitated to vote for members to serve in the committee from the different groups that need representation. There can be a quota or reserving of seats/spaces to such committee membership roles to ensure representation of diverse community members. See 1 Gender Mainstreaming Checklist for ideas to consider and create a safe space for participants to share their views].
Along with ensuring inclusivity and diversity of animal owning communities, it is important to craft clear questions that will inspire communities and stakeholders what the future could be for themselves and their animals’ welfare including exploring the resources they have to support their animals’ welfare improvement. See 4 on Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change.
Some illustrative open questions that can be asked are
• Why are working animals important to you and your families/communities? Why do you care about your animals’ welfare? • What do you wish to see happen after 10 years in your community regarding working animals’ welfare, animal owning communities and related services? What would make your locality a better place for working animals and their owners? What has worked well and how? Who are the key people/stakeholders or resources making it work? • What opportunities currently exist in your locality to help you realize those visions come to life? What do you think will make the greater animal welfare improvement in your locality? How can you create change to realize the vision? What opportunities do you see?
When facilitating such discussions, it is important to actively listen (3 Guidance on Listening to Change Talks) to help you bring the positive forward looking aspirations and the change talks from the animal owners, service providers and local government agents who partake in the committee initial conversations.
Step 3
The next step involves facilitating a visioning process where community members develop a vision of their equine/working animals’ welfare in their community as they imagine 10 years into the future. This process can be made through a series of community meetings if the geographic scope is wider or if separate sessions are required to create an enabling safe space.
The idea is to freely vision what communities wish to see happen 10 years into the future that will enable both the community and animals to enjoy a better/good life. To probe into this, ask the community to identify their strengths, opportunities, aspirations (e.g., what the community is deeply passionate about), and desired results in relation to meeting their animals' welfare and their animal husbandry and management practices. Once results have been identified, then ask community participants to identify impacts of achieving these results, building different scenarios for both the animal owning community as well as their animals.
Examples of potential result scenarios could include allocation of a certain number of water points, expansion of grazing area land, availability of animal feed throughout the year etc.
Once all ideas are compiled as the group starts to develop distinct results visions taking into consideration the community’s identified strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results, and impact. Explain these will then be shared in a public meeting with the broader animal owning community to gain broader community agreement on a preferred vision for animal welfare for their community. Note that this is not about the majority’s views but also valuing the visions of minorities by valuing diversity and their different lived experiences.
If holding a series of community meetings is not possible, the other option is to use the identified diverse and inclusive steering committee to do the visioning exercise and bring it to the wider group for consultation(stated in Step. 5) and validation after undertaking step 4.
Step 4
Next step is to take inventory of the resources in the community. Then identify among the list of the resources, which ones are important to supporting animal welfare, such as veterinary services, land for grazing or animal feed production, water points, shelter for animals, animal resource providers such as feed and equipment sellers for the identified vision. The vision steering committee will play the role of documenting the community discussions and promote participation of all actors, so that everyone’s voice is heard, and their views captured. This discussion should strive to encourage community members to list resources they like, dislike, or want to change, as well as resources the community lacks. They could also identify areas for potential development.
Once created, the community can then vote on the list to rank the priorities, choosing the top 3 priorities to focus on. The community can use 1- 3 dots to vote on the top 3 priorities. The inventory serves as the basis for discussion about animal welfare improvement priorities and provides a framework for which the vision committee can track progress, report to the bigger community, and support the community with taking on board the next priorities (after addressing the first priorities).
Convene a public workshop including the broader animal owning community where the steering committee will present different scenarios of potential visions for animal welfare in 10 years within their community that are collected from the different community group discussions. In discussing these different visions, it is helpful to share the rationale for how they came to be – e.g., what community strengths and opportunities could be harnessed, which community aspirations they speak to, and results and impacts they are likely to achieve, to gives community members the opportunity to choose a preferred scenario. Graphical representation of the scenarios is helpful where feasible to develop and provide.
Once presented, ask community participants to select their preferred vision for animal welfare, for which the steering committee will then draft a community vision statement that identifies and explains specific community goals and expands upon how the preferred scenario satisfies those goals. If there are some modifications required, it is good to facilitate the discussion to ensure a buy-in by all. Good to note that this is not about the majority's views but also valuing the visions of minorities by valuing diversity and their different lived experiences. The statement should also include a description of the existing animal welfare situation, as well as details about how the visioning process unfolded. The vision statement should be broad in scope and clear in vision. This needs to be written as well as read out loud considering the different needs of participants (catering to illiterate or people with different disabilities).
The steering committee should present the draft statement to the community for review; after comments and feedback are incorporated, then it will be adopted as the community vision. Ideally, other key institutions within the community such as school and business associations will also adopt the statement, helping ensure that all major community entities follow the same guidelines when making animal welfare decisions.
Step 6
The visioning process and vision statement allow a community to clearly articulate its values—however, without proper implementation, they are generally ineffective. Once developed, the vision statement can then be used to identify members of the community who are interested in working to improve their animal’s welfare in accordance with the vision, serving as a basis for community group formation around this shared vision and for working with the project to take collective action to achieve their vision. In addition, it can inform discussions, planning future next steps and identification of potential stakeholders that need to be engaged to support realization of the visions e.g., non-profits, business associations, and other key entities (e.g. veterinary service providers). Document key insights and interest to engage with the project within the Project Action Tracker to help inform project planning.
Facilitation Notes
A steering committee should represent a diverse range of stakeholder groups from all segments of the community to help keep the committee accountable to the community, ensures that no voices are left out of the visioning process as this boosts community participation and buy-in.
Encourage aspiration, communication and open sharing; the participants should not go into the visioning process with a defined outcome.
Community participation is critical for a successful visioning process; after all, the goal of the process is to create a vision that reflects the priorities and concerns of people in the community, and that cannot happen if they do not speak up.
As the community visioning discussion might become more than animal welfare, facilitator needs to refocus the discussion on animal welfare.
![Figure 40: Stages of Group Development [70]](https://communitiesforanimals.thebrooke.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-4.png)
![Figure 42: Reflection and Learning Process [7]](https://communitiesforanimals.thebrooke.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Picture-1-1.png)
