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T3 Venn Diagram

QUICK LINKS
T3a: Local animal Service Provider venn diagram
t3B: Social networking venn diagram

T3a: Local Animal Service Provider Venn diagram

A Venn diagram seeks to represent relationships between individuals, groups and/or other key actors or resources by representing them as “components” or “nodes”, and the associations between them as links or lines. Various attributes such as colour, size, distance between and other properties may be used to characterize different kinds of relationships. For example, Venn diagrams have the potential to visually represent the relative importance of different relationships or resources, the frequency of interaction between actors, and/or access to different actors or resources. For the purpose of animal welfare, the tool has been adapted to analyse relationships between animal owners, users and/or caregivers and animal-related resource and service providers, as well as assess the relationships between individuals, groups, and actors important to the lives of animal-owning communities and their animals. The process of visually mapping relationships can inform planning by enabling targeted strengthening and/or development of new relationships, for both the community and the organization.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To identify animal-related resource and service providers animal-owning communities rely on most and their level of satisfaction with each one.
• To identify the community’s preferred resource and service providers to build or strengthen their capacity, or improve relationships with those less preferred. 
• To identify gaps in service provision, which if addressed, could better meet the needs of animals and people.
• The activity may be repeated to assess changes and improvements that have resulted from any activities implemented by communities and/or the facilitating organization.
1.5 - 2 hours per diagram
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, Community Engagement Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment

Specific Topics:
Animal Health and Services

Resource and service provider Venn diagram

This tool enables community members to identify all the animal-related resource and service providers on which they rely. Examples of resources include: water points, grazing land, fodder production or storage areas, grain grinders, animal shelters; while service providers may include: local animal health service providers, veterinarians, feed supply shops, working animals’ equipment shops and/or money lenders. This activity may build on information gathered in the T1 Mapping activity - related to the most important resources and services to the community - as it goes into more detail to understand usefulness, availability, frequency of use and satisfaction with each provider. Once identified, participants are able to analyze their relationships and usage of different resources and service providers, including their relative importance to the welfare of their working animals and people who depend on them.

Figure T3A Venn diagram of a community’s animal-related resources and service providers

Figure T3A Venn diagram of a community’s animal-related resources and service providers

In the example above, members of an animal-owning community created Venn diagram to represent the animal-related resources and service providers they rely on. The size of the circles represent the perceived relative importance and usefulness. Distances from the centre represent availability and arrows represent frequency of use. Discussions highlighted the following important information:

  • The government veterinarian is shown in a large circle because this service provider is perceived to be useful, and was placed far from centre circle due to their poor responsiveness/availability, with infrequent use indicated by two arrows.
  • The local animal health service provider was felt to be more useful, represented by a slightly larger circle; however, their services are similarly used infrequently, despite their higher responsiveness/availability.
  • Participants indicated satisfaction with the local animal health service provider due to their lower relative cost despite recognizing they provide lower quality care. 
  • They also indicated they were unsatisfied (red dot) with the government veterinarian due to their higher cost and low responsiveness, despite acknowledging that they provide higher quality service.
  • Discussions also highlighted that participants only call the local animal health service provider if animals get very sick, identifying an absence of preventative animal health practices amongst animal-owning households. 
Resources and Service Provider Venn diagram
Step 1Start by explaining the purpose of the exercise and then ask participants to identify the resource and service providers that are important to them in terms of usefulness to their animals. Ask them to start by first identify the MOST useful resources and service providers and represent them on the LARGEST size pre-cut circle of paper with words or symbols. Alternatively, they may use local materials and place them on top of the paper circles.

Continue identifying the next most important/useful resources and service providers using the next smallest sized circle and so on, until all resources and service providers have been identified with the biggest circles representing the most useful resources and service providers, and the smallest circles representing the least useful. There is often a lot of debate and discussion while categorizing the usefulness of different resources and service providers.
Step 2Next ask participants to draw a picture representing their animals (or their community) in the centre and place the different sized circles representing resources and service providers around it. Then ask participants to move the resource/service provider circles closer or further away from the centre according to their availability e.g. enough resources or service provider responsiveness available when needed.

Please note circle placement from the centre may be adapted to represent another variable.
Step 3Once all circles have been placed around the central circle, ask the ask the group to indicate which resources and service providers they use most frequently by drawing arrowheads on the lines between the centre circle and each resource or service provider.

In the example above, a scale of 5 arrows was used to represent the following frequency parameters:
• 4 arrows: weekly
• 3 arrows: monthly
• 2 arrows: every few months
• 1 arrow: yearly

Allow participants to define frequency parameters in a way that makes sense to them.
Step 4Next, ask participants to discuss their level of satisfaction with the resources or service providers. Symbols or objects may be placed on each circle representing the resource or service provider to indicate or score participants’ satisfaction (e.g. happy/sad face ☺/☹, or green/red dot 🟢/🔴, seeds or beans). There is often a lot of interesting discussion and insights generated while participants discuss resources and service providers they are satisfied or dissatisfied with.
Additional dimensions may also be added to this Venn diagram exercise by asking participants to use beans, seeds, or stones to represent other variables. For example, participants can score the cost or quality of an animal-related resource or health service providers.
Step 5Once complete, encourage participants to discuss what the Venn diagram shows. Use the following questions to guide the discussion:
• If not already discussed through during the creation of the diagram, it may be helpful to ask:
Why some resources or service providers considered useful?
Why are participants satisfied or unsatisfied with certain resources or service providers?
Why are some resources or service providers relied on more frequently/infrequently?
• Are there any resources or service providers missing from diagram which, if existed, could better help meet the needs of your animal? Why are they missing and why are they needed?
• What changes in animal-related resources and service providers could better serve you and your animals?
• What have you learned because of participating in this activity?
Step 6The diagram should be documented through photos or recreated on paper. Copies should be made and distributed to the group for their records, future reference and/or action planning. Add a copy to your project action tracker and note preferred resource and service providers.

Facilitation Notes: Resource and service provider Venn diagram

  • It is useful to examine perceptions of animal-related resources and service providers with different groups in a community as they may rely on or have different perceptions of resources and service providers. Consider asking both men and women from animal-owning households to participate in this activity; or if it is not feasible or appropriate to conduct this activity with both sexes together, consider conducting this activity separately. 
  • Facilitators should not control or insert their ideas into the diagram, but rather facilitate the process so that people design it themselves. Probing questions may be used to encourage people to think about the general categories of individuals, groups and actors to include.
  • Facilitators are encouraged to adapt the parameters and symbols as needed to investigate topics of interest and/or simplify the activity.
  • Try representing each resource and service provider on different pieces of paper, as it allows participants to move cards around throughout the discussion. However, the activity may also be drawn directly on the ground using chalk, sticks or stones as needed.
  • If using paper circles, it is helpful to cut out a selection of different sizes ahead of time. Consider preparing at least 5 different sizes of circles to enable the relative importance of all identified resources and service providers to be effectively captured. 

Next Steps

  • Information on resource and service provider gaps identified in the initiation phase may be useful for informing discussions during the community action planning phase.
  • Consider using T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring to better understand the criteria informing animal-owning households’ preferences for different resources and/or service providers, explore their satisfaction/dissatisfaction in more detail and prioritize their preferences for community action planning.
  • Use preferred resource and service providers, identified dissatisfaction and gaps in use or knowledge to inform project planning.

T3b: Social Networking Venn diagram

The social network Venn diagram illustrates relationships between individuals, groups and/or other key actors or resources by representing them as “components” or “nodes”, and the associations between them as links or lines. Various attributes such as colour, size and distance between each may be used to characterize different types of relationships. For example, Venn diagrams have the potential to visually represent the relative importance of different relationships or resources, the frequency of interaction between actors, and/or access to different actors or resources. For the purpose of animal welfare, the tool has been adapted to analyse relationships between animal owners, users and/or carers and animal-related resource and service providers, as well as assess the relationships between individuals, groups, and actors important to the lives of animal-owning communities and their animals. The process of visually mapping relationships can inform planning by enabling targeted strengthening and/or development of new relationships, for both the community and the organization.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To identify individuals, groups and key actors perceived to be important to households and their animals (positively or negatively).
• To understand the relative importance of different actors.
• To understand differences between men and women’s access to individuals, groups and key actors within their social network.
• To inform planning by identifying social network gaps that, if addressed, could better meet the needs of animals and people.
• This tool may be useful for identifying potential collaborators or partners already working in the community.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper or coloured dust, chalk, coloured sticker dots and/or coloured markers, coloured index cards or sticky notes, stones, sticks, seeds or beans.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation 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, Opportunity

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Gender Analysis

Social network Venn diagram

The social network Venn diagram can be used to analyse social networks within a community. The household or community could be the focal point for analysis.

Figure T3B Venn diagram of a social network in Kenya

Figure T3B Venn diagram of a social network in Kenya

In the example above, a men’s equine welfare group in Kenya created a simple social network map. The central circle represented their community and different coloured circles were used to represent individuals, groups and other key actors with whom participants had relationships that were perceived to have an impact on their lives and the lives of their animals. Lines were drawn from each social connection to the centre, with the length of line representing the perceived strength of each relationship. The size of each circle represented the perceived importance of each relationship to their lives of the lives of their animals. In Kenya, as village elders have provincial administration capacity they are considered and categorized under local government. KSPCA (Kenyan Society for the Protection and Care of Animals) is also a non-governmental organization that has a mandated protection that is directly linked with the government. 

Social Network Venn Diagram
Step 1Start by explaining the purpose of the exercise and ask participants to identify people, groups, and key actors that they perceive as significant to theirs and their animals’ lives. Use the following types of individuals, groups, and key actors (not resources) as a guide for probing the community, whilst keeping the conversation animal related.

You can add more as contextually appropriate:

• Social groups (e.g. close friends, relatives, neighbours)
• Community groups, local associations and organizations, local financial institutions (e.g. self-help group)
• Local government staff (e.g. social service officers)
• Non-governmental organization (NGO) and/or agency staff
• Key service providers
• Others e.g. employers, market buyers/sellers, financial service providers

Ask if there are any individuals, groups or organisations missing from the social network which, if existed, could better help meet household needs and/or the needs of your animal? Why are they missing and why are they needed?

Ask the helper to write responses on different note cards or pieces of paper, asking the group which ones are most important (large circles), important (medium circles) and least important (small circles) ensuring they are colour categorised as above, using words or symbols and place them on the ground for all to see.
Step 2Ask the helper to draw a circle in the middle of the chart paper or on the ground and make a symbol representing their community in the centre. Organize all cards in large circle around the community circle.

Next, ask participants to move the cards around the centre circle as per the relative strength of the relationship with those actors. Those closest to the centre represent the strongest relationships, while those farthest away the weakest. The facilitator should clarify the criteria that makes a weak versus a strong relationship, such as accessibility, availability, and level of satisfaction and whether they have a positive or negative impact on theirs and their animals’ lives. Place a symbol (e.g. +/- OR happy/sad face OR green/red dot) on each actor’s card to indicate the nature of the relationship, making sure it reflects the impact on both humans and animals.
Step 3Once all cards have been placed, ask participants which of the actors support their animals specifically. Mark the card with coloured dot or sticker representative of the animal. The more the dots or sticker representing the animal are placed on an actor, the more support the actor provides.
Step 4Ask participants to identify which relationships are accessible by men, women, or both, by placing a different indicative mark on the card (either using pens or stickers, or bean types). If the relationship is accessible to both men and women, ask whether accessibility is equal for both sexes. You may wish to place a > / = / < in between the representative marks or objects to indicate which sex has greater access. If it is just one group (e.g. only men) then this step is not necessary.
Step 5Once the social Venn diagram is complete, encourage participants to discuss what it shows (if not already identified through previous discussions).

Consider using the following questions as a guide:

• Why are some relationships perceived to be more or less important?
• Why are certain actors more important for men or women? (If identified)
• Are there differences between men, women and/or children within the household?
• Why are some actors positively or negatively affecting people and their animals?
• What changes in this network could improve yours and/or your animals’ lives?
• What can you as an individual or group do to improve your relationships with these actors?
• What have you learned because of participating in this activity?
Initiation Phase:
Step 6The diagram should be documented through photos or recreated on paper. Copies should be made and distributed to the group for their records, future reference and/or action planning. Add a copy to your project action tracker.
Planning Phase:
Step 7Have the community helper record any actions the group agrees to the community action plan.
Record the community’s agreed actions and activities in your project action tracker and support the community by following up with any identified key stakeholders.

Facilitation notes: Social Network Mapping

  • Knowledgeable individuals can be consulted in advance to help identify key actors within the community, particularly governmental and NGO actors.
  • Use different coloured note cards or marker colours to represent the different categories of relationships listed above to facilitate diagram analysis upon completion.
  • Both men and women should be asked to participate, as they may have different relationships, value and access to/with actors. If it is not feasible or appropriate to conduct this activity with both men and women, conduct it separately. 
  • Consider having a co-facilitator/note-taker for this activity so that important insights from discussions can be effectively captured.
  • The facilitator must focus the group on identifying primary types of individuals, groups, and key actors, rather than focus on actual names, as this will be different for every participant and will make it difficult for them to identify the relative importance or influence of these relationships in the next steps.
  • Facilitators should not control or insert their ideas into the diagram, but rather facilitate the process so that people design it themselves. Probing questions may be used to encourage people to think about the general categories of individuals, groups and actors to include.
  • Dominant personalities may take over during these discussions and the facilitator must make sure to involve people who are left out. Continue to seek out and encourage input from those who are not participating throughout the exercise. Ask if others agree with ideas of dominants, and consider assigning tasks to different persons throughout the exercise e.g. placement of cards, symbols etc.
  • Often community members do not know the names of key government or NGO actors. In this case, encourage participants to simply explain the nature of the relationship or activities undertaken by these actors and investigate them later.
  • Using paper cards or sticky notes is helpful as it allows participants to move cards around throughout the discussion. Consider using different colour papers or markers to represent different types of actors and create meaningful contrast and easier analysis upon completion of the activity.
  • In the rapport building phase, the community leaders and chiefs will likely be in attendance and, therefore, a clear and accurate picture of the social system may not be possible, as participants may not feel possible speaking freely. Once trust is established and the group size is smaller, the facilitator will come to understand the true social dynamics.

Next Steps

  • Plan to support the community to strengthen or develop relationships with key actors to support animal welfare improvements and address gaps in services.
  • Keep a list of key stakeholders identified as important to the lives of the participants. Arrange meetings with them to discuss collaborations or future implementation activities (e.g. service providers, government officials, NGOs).
  • Consider inviting identified relevant community leaders or active members of society to future meetings to help strengthen relationships and collaborations between the groups.

Link to References Cited


T4 Daily Activity Schedule

QUICK LINKS
T4a: Daily Activity schedule - community
t4b: Animal Daily Activity Schedule

T4a: Daily Activity Schedule - Community

A daily activity schedule is a chart showing how animal-owning families spend their time, including the time of day that each activity takes place and the time it takes to complete each one. This exercise identifies important times of the day, for example times when people are busy working, when they spend time with their working animals, or when they are free to discuss their common problems. This activity can be used to initiate a discussion about the best times to plan animal welfare activities, to hold a community meeting or for you (the facilitator) to visit the community. Step-by-step guidance for conducting this activity is provided in relation to daily activity schedules for both people and animals.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To understand which activities, take up the most and least time
• To identify the best time to meet with individuals and community members and times when they are not available.
• To identify who cares for the animals in each household and in what capacity.
• To identify times when individuals are overburdened and why.
• To identify potential opportunities for sharing or shifting workloads of men, women, and other family members to improve the well-being of people and animals.
1.5-2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper and markers or using sticks, stones, straw, local resources

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Implementation 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

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Gender Analysis

Daily activity schedule of the animal-owning community

This chart (Figure T4A) explores and compares how animal owners, users and carers spend their work and leisure time. This exercise is a useful, non-threatening exercise that looks at real life experiences and helps people to understand the roles and responsibilities of different family members towards their animals. It can be used to analyse the factors that influence different people’s roles and activities, and to understand the problems and obstacles faced when dealing with animals.

Figure T4 Daily Activity Schedule of an animal-owning community

Figure T4 Daily Activity Schedule of an animal-owning community

In this exercise (Figure T4a above), men, women and children listed all their activities between getting up at 5am and going to bed at 9pm.

  • Women start cleaning the animals’ shelter, preparing the morning meal and fetching water with the children between 5 and 7am.
  • Men and children pray between 5 and 7am.
  • Men take the animal out to work at 9am.
  • Women are involved in feeding, watering and cleaning up after animals several times a day, while men are involved with their animal only between 9am and 2pm and at 8pm for a final feed.
  • Children clean the animals’ shelter between 3 and 6pm.
  • Men are the main income generators and users of the animals, whilst women participate in alternative income generating activities at the market.

This initiated a discussion about the roles and responsibilities of family members in caring for the animals and how some responsibility might be shifted to men.

Daily Activity Schedule of the Animal-Owning Community
Step 1Start by explaining the purpose of exercise to the participants and agree whose daily activities to chart first. This can be the animal owner/carer or members of the owner’s family. Agree whether to make a circular clock or a line chart to represent time. Decide whether to show time in hours or as parts of the day, such as morning, afternoon, and evening. The example above provides a numeric representation of time.
Show daily activities using symbols placed at the appropriate time of day.
Step 2Start a discussion about the activities that a person or a group of people normally do, from when they get up in the morning until they go to sleep. Ask participants to list the activities in ascending order from morning to night.

Key points might include:

• Free time and work time
• Times when animals are fed, or the animal shelter is cleaned
• When animals are taken for grazing
• When animals are offered feed and water
• When people groom or clean animals
Step 3Ask when people have free time to take part in other activities, either individually or as a group.
• How is other/spare time spent? Do they have spare time?
• What are other income generating activities and how much time is spent on those?
• What social activities should be included in the list?
Step 4Once daily schedules are complete, discuss results with participants.

Consider these questions:

• How do participants feel about the way they use their time throughout the day?
• Why are some people responsible for some tasks while others are responsible for others?
• Which periods are busiest or most stressful? Why?
• Which activities are most important for meeting the needs of the household? The animal? Why?
• Are any activities felt to be very burdensome? Why?
• Are there any ways in which some activities could be made easier?

If feasible, bring the two groups back together to discuss any differences in perceived division of daily activities of different people in the two charts.

Summarize the results of the activity and discussion and ask participants to reflect on what they learned through this activity.
Step 5Once the activity is complete, take a photo or record of the chart on a piece of paper, ensuring the community has a copy for their records. A copy is retained by the facilitator for future reference or planning. Add any notes regarding when people are available (men, women, children, all) in your project action tracker.

Facilitator’s notes: Daily activity schedule – animal-owning community

  • Daily activity charts are best made by individuals and small groups, so divide up larger groups to make charts for different people, such as men, women and children.
  • Encourage men and women to create separate charts to enable comparison of perceptions of each other’s daily activities. This will help with identifying the best time to plan community visits with men, women and/or both.
  • Remember that you are not controlling the exercise. Give confidence to people so that they gradually take over the entire process themselves.
  • You might want to discuss how daily routines change depending on the time of the week or the season.

Next Steps

  • As part of rapport building stage in the initiation phase, the daily activity schedule might follow on with one of the following activities:
    • T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
    • T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
    • T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.
    • T7 Historical Timeline to learn which major past events community members perceive to be significant to working animals and people
  • As part of a community needs assessment and shared vision, the daily activity schedule  for the animal-owning community might accompany one or more of the following tools to get a full picture of community dynamics and needs for project planning:
    • T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
    • T2 Mobility Map to understand where people spend most of their time and how long it takes to get places
    • T3 Venn Diagram (T3b Social Networking Venn Diagram) to identify key individuals, groups and actors perceived to be most important to people and their animals. 
    • T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
    • T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.

T4b: Animal Daily Activity Schedule

The chart produced in this version of the daily activity schedule illustrates how working animals spend their time, during both work periods and rest periods. It looks at a daily routine from the animal’s point of view and identifies where improvements to welfare could be made, such as increasing the time available to animals for rest, play or grazing. The animal’s daily activity schedule differs from the community’s schedule as it looks in-depth at how only the animals’ time is spent during the day, rather than humans.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To understand animals’ daily activities and promote understanding of ways it supports meeting their needs in terms of the five domains of welfare
• To identify opportunities for improving animal welfare through husbandry and management practices
1.5-2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper and markers or using sticks, stones, straw, local resources

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning, Implementation

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment

Specific Topics:
Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs

Daily activity schedule of the animal

Figure T4B Daily activity schedule of the working animal

Figure T4B Daily activity schedule of the working animal

This daily activity schedule for animals (Figure T4B, above) was used to initiate a discussion on animal welfare issues amongst rural workers, who use their equine animals to generate income by transporting goods and people to markets and tourist places. The animals’ day starts with their feeding trough being cleaned at 6am, followed by being fed at 6am. The animals are harnessed to carts at 8am and start their work at the market at 8:30am. Water is offered between 11:30am and midday, and again at 5pm when the animals return home. A second feeding is offered after finishing work 6pm From 7 to 8pm animals are provided free time to graze and roll. They are groomed between 8 and 9pm and the last feed is given between 9 and 10pm.

Daily Activity Schedule of the Animal
Step 1Start by explaining the purpose of exercise and agree whether to make a circular clock or a line chart to represent time. Decide whether to show time in hours or as parts of the day, such as morning, afternoon, and evening.
Step 2Start a discussion about the activities that animals are involved in from morning to night. Ask them to list all the activities in order, both with them and other users. Show daily activities using symbols placed at the appropriate time of day.
Step 3Encourage participants to include some of the following activities in the animals’ daily activity schedule:
• Resting and working time
• When animals are taken for grazing
• When animals are offered feed and water
• When animals are groomed or cleaned
• When animals can socialise with other animals
• When animals can perform instinctive behaviours (e.g. rolling around)
Step 4Once the animals’ activity schedule is complete, discuss results with participants.

Consider the following guiding questions:

• What do participants think their animals feel about the activities they do throughout the day?
• When do you think animals feel most hungry/thirsty?
• Do animals have time to satisfy and engage in natural behaviours?
(In natural environment or with other animals e.g. rolling, grazing/roaming, socializing)
• Which activities are most important for meeting the animals’ needs? Why?
• Which periods are considered as heavy workload or strenuous?
• Are there some activities that could be made easier/less strenuous for the animal?

Summarize the results of the activity and discussion and ask participants to reflect on what they learned through this activity.
Step 5Once the activity is complete, take a photo or record of the chart on a piece of paper, ensuring the community has a copy for their records. A copy is retained by the facilitator for future reference or planning. Add any important notes to your project action tracker.

Facilitator’s notes: Daily activity schedule – animal-owning community

  • Animals at one place of work may have different work types, so divide groups by animals’ work type to produce the daily activity schedules.
  • Encourage men and women to create separate charts to enable comparison of perceptions of each other’s daily activities. This will help with identifying the best time to plan community visits with men, women and/or both.
  • Remember that you are not controlling the exercise. Give confidence to people so that they gradually take over the entire process themselves.
  • You might want to discuss how daily routines change depending on the time of the week or the season.

Next Steps

  • As part of rapport building stage in the initiation phase, the daily activity schedule might follow on with one of the following activities:
    • T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
    • T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
    • T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.
    • T7 Historical Timeline to learn which major past events community members perceive to be significant to working animals and people
  • As part of a community needs assessment and shared vision, the daily activity schedule  for the animal-owning community might accompany one or more of the following tools to get a full picture of community dynamics and needs for project planning:
    • T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
    • T2 Mobility Map to understand where people spend most of their time and how long it takes to get places
    • T3 Venn Diagram (T3b Social Networking Venn Diagram) to identify key individuals, groups and actors perceived to be most important to people and their animals. 
    • T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
    • T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.

Link to References Cited


1. Gender Mainstreaming Checklist

Purpose

This checklist is intended to assist projects in gender mainstreaming by providing a list of key considerations for mainstreaming gender within any project. It may be used as a framework to both design and evaluate projects in terms of the extent to which they include gender in their design, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase, Exit & Evaluation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Gender Analysis

Project Initiation/Problem AnalysisYesSomewhat No
1Have the key characteristics and possible differences among the target groups been clearly identified by sex, age, type of work, income, ethnic origin, etc.?
2Has a gender analysis been conducted to identify and understand?
a) The needs of male and female beneficiaries
b) The problems that both men and women face related to their animals’ husbandry and management/use (not just men or women only)
c) Gender roles in the community or home related equine care and use between men and women, boys, and girls (e.g. decision-making in relation to equine care, use and management, accessing of service providers, perception of service providers about women and men), etc.)
d) The gender relations (norms, customs, traditions, beliefs) in the community or home related to the division of labour and benefits amongst men and women, boys, and girls as they relate to their animals.
3Have the views of both men and women community stakeholders been sought in a consultative process?
4Is the outcome of gender analysis used to inform the design of project plans?
Project Planning/Strategy
5Are there strategies in place to ensure that men and women can participate equally in the project activities? For example, if household chores and family care responsibilities are roles expected of women and girls, they tend to have less time to participate in project activities. Are these kinds of concerns considered when organizing activities?
6Are there clear strategies in place to ensure that women and men will equally benefit from project activities?
7Have any existing gender inequalities been identified amongst community stakeholders that could potentially affect their ability to meet their animals welfare needs/adopt desired behaviours?
a) If yes, are any gender transformative strategies built into the project to address this?
8Is the promotion of gender equality included explicitly as one of the project strategies? e.g. ensuring gender equality in representation in messaging, community leadership roles, how men and women are treated and their views valued by the project.
9In strengthening the capacity of the target groups, is there a consideration to avoid increasing the workload of the members of the household who have a greater labour burden? e.g. women, girls
Project Planning/Outputs & Outcomes
10Do the outputs (and corresponding indicators) reflect priority concerns and respond to the needs of both men and women related to their animals’ welfare/their ability to meet their animals’ welfare needs?
11Do the outcomes and outputs identify the intended target stakeholders by gender or other marginalized or vulnerable group requiring special consideration (e.g. migratory workers, religion, caste, race etc.)?
12Do the outputs specify the ratio or number of target stakeholders by gender or other relevant marginalized social status?
Project Implementation/Activities
13In training/education activities, are the numbers of boys, girls, women, and men who will be trained/educated clearly stated?
14Is there proportionate budget allocation as well as staff/trainer time investment to ensure all genders interests, needs and roles are given adequate attention to facilitate their empowerment to improve animal welfare?
15If there is a high chance that women will participate less and/or potentially not benefit equally as men, have quota been set for men’s and women’s participation under the outputs and activities?
16Are communication channels identified that will effectively reach specific target groups, in particular women and girls, and any other marginalized groups?
17If women and girls, or men and boys, cannot or will not speak freely in mixed groups, are separate events planned for women/girls only and men/boys only, or with facilitators of the same sex to promote equal participation?
18During project implementation, do staff take opportunities to raise awareness on gender equality and demonstrate that the participation of women alongside men is beneficial to everyone?
19Does the programme have support from, or cooperate with, gender experts or organizations with gender expertise, if it needs assistance in this respect?
Project Monitoring and Evaluation
20Does the project collect any information or data that can be disaggregated by gender or other marginalized group to identify potential inequalities, constraints, and opportunities these groups face?
21Are methods and tools provided to project staff to enable them to effectively measure and evaluate the nature and extent of impact and benefits for male and female project stakeholders and/or other marginalized groups?
22Does the project collect feedback from male and female stakeholders (or other marginalized groups)? Are the timings for feedback and monitoring meetings convenient for the gender roles of male and female stakeholders? Are there female facilitators/evaluators/translators etc. to create a safe space and culturally/religious norms of the area?

Adapted from [87]

Link to References Cited




T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities

QUICK LINKS
T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities Resources and Services
T5 community activity
T5 Facilitator's NOTES
T2 NEXT STEPS

T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities Resources and Services

This adapted gender roles and responsibilities activity explores the division of labour and workload between men, women, boys and girls related to animal care and use [49]. All family members are usually responsible for looking after the animals in the household, although different people are responsible for different tasks and use animals for different purposes. Sometimes animal welfare interventions unintentionally target only men or only women. However, to improve all aspects of animal welfare and promote gender equality, both men, women and children who play a role in the lives of animals should be invited to participate in this activity. It can be helpful to conduct T4 Daily Activity Schedule prior to undertaking this activity so you can contextualize gender roles and responsibilities related to animal care and use understand within men’s and women’s broader daily activities and associated time and labour commitments. 

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
• To inform appropriate targeting of animal welfare extension messages, capacity building and training to relevant household members
• As a useful entry point activity for involving men and women in an animal welfare improvement project and beginning to understand different opportunities and constraints men and women face in promoting animal welfare.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Markers, chart paper, post-it notes, cards or coloured powder/chalk, sticks, stones, beans or other locally available activities.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation, Planning, Evaluation and Exit

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach; Community Engagement; Social Outreach and Campaigns

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Opportunity

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) Tools, Needs Assessment, Gender Analysis

Specific Topics:
Animal Husbandry and Management

Gender roles & responsibilities

An animal-owning community in Halaba, Ethiopia, used this activity to explore differences in roles and responsibilities between men and women. The group of men and women started by identifying animal use and care activities together. The mixed group then divided into two smaller groups - one group of men and one group of women - to examine the distribution separately. The group used 10 pebbles to score the division of labour for each identified activity.

Figure T5A Animal-related men’s and women’s roles and responsibilities

Figure T5A Animal-related men’s and women’s roles and responsibilities

Men and women viewed the differences in division of roles and responsibilities differently, as reflected in figure T5A. In many cases, men considered themselves to have more responsibility for caring for animals than women. For example, men claimed that they are the main seekers of service provision and health treatment (vaccinations) for animals. The main differences between men and women were:

  • Women have more responsibility for providing water and cleaning the animal’s shelter
  • Men have more responsibility for grooming, cleaning equipment, allowing the animals the play and roam freely
  • Men use animal’s more for incoming generating activities
  • Women came up with more animal use activities following the division of women’s and women’s groups

Once the mixed group of men and women were divided, women identified three more categories of animal usage (highlighted in red), which men were mostly responsible for, including transporting agriculture for household consumption (urban to rural), transporting agricultural inputs for household use and free transport of people around the community or to local events. 

Participants discussed why some of the activities were only carried out by men or women and what effect this had on their animals. Men commented that women do more for the animals than they would have acknowledged before undertaking the activity and that there might be an opportunity for women to take on more responsibility. Women also expressed an interest in taking on more responsibility and suggested an opportunity for:

  • Men to share more of the water provision and shelter cleaning activities
  • Women to share more of the equipment cleaning and hoof care activities
  • Women to use the animals more for income-generating activities

Following the community activity, the facilitators examined the two charts side-by-side and identified an opportunity for training women on humane handling, which they had already provided to men and witnessed significant improvements. They noted this opportunity in the team action tracker and made a point of discussing interest with the group in the next community session.

Gender Roles and Responsibilities
Step 1Ask the community helper to draw a large table, either on the ground or on chart paper. There should be three main columns: ‘activities’, ‘men’ and ‘women’.
Please note: Additional columns can be added to include boys and girls (children) if desired.
Step 2Ask participants about the activities and decisions men and women are responsible for related to the care and use of their animals. Have the community helper write them down on cards using words or drawings or use locally available materials representative of the activities identified. If this activity is being conducted about working animals, once all activities related to care have been identified, ask participants to identify any ways they use their animal, and have the community helper list these within the first column.

Include activities carried out on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis (e.g. seasonal, or periodic work such as festivals or special events), as well as key decisions important to the care and use of the animal
Step 3Ask the group to indicate how the workload for each identified activity is divided or shared between men and women (and boys and girls if included), using up to ten seeds, stones, or marks/dots to score their relative contributions. You might start the conversation by asking the question: ‘Who is responsible for each activity?’

For example: A score of 10 = full responsibility; 0 = no responsibility. If men and women are both responsible for carrying out the activity, the pebbles would be divided equally (see figure T5A, in ‘care’ + ‘feeding’, men and women scored evenly).

Once the chart is complete, ask the community helper to circle the scores with large discrepancies between men’s and women’s responsibilities.
Step 4Ask the community to discuss the results of the activity. The facilitator or supporting note taker should take notes on key insights that emerge from the discussion.

Consider using the following guiding questions to facilitate the discussion:

• Who is predominantly responsible for care? For use? How were these roles and responsibilities determined?
• Referring to identified discrepancies circled in the chart, why are these activities predominantly done by men or women?
• How would animal welfare improve if roles and responsibilities in animal care and usage were shared more between men and women within the household?
• What would need to change to give them greater opportunities to share their roles and responsibilities in animal care and usage between men and women within the household?

If feasible, bring the two groups back together to discuss any differences in scoring of perceived roles and responsibilities of men and women in the two charts, along with any desired changes to roles and responsibilities identified by each group.

Summarize the results of the activity and discussion and ask participants to reflect on what they learned through this activity.
Step 5Once the activity is complete, take a photo or record of the outputs on a piece of paper, ensuring the community has a copy for their records. A copy is retained by the facilitator for future reference or planning.

Take note of any of following identified during this activity within your project action tracker:

• Roles and responsibilities of men and women related to animal care and use – for tailoring communications and trainings as needed
• Changes in gender roles and responsibilities identified by participants as having potential to improve animal welfare
• Changes recommended by participants as necessary to creating greater opportunities for sharing roles in animal care and use to improve animal welfare.
• Social and physical opportunities, capability, and/or motivational/self-belief drivers related to men’s and women’s animal care and use roles and responsibilities which you as a facilitator identified through discussions.
• Key influencers/gatekeepers of gender roles and responsibilities mentioned by participants during discussions

Facilitator’s notes: Gender roles & responsibilities

  • As topics related to gender may be sensitive, facilitators are encouraged to gauge participant’s level of comfort to effectively facilitate group discussion. 
  • The gender roles and responsibilities activity works best when carried out in small groups of men and women separately, with each group analysing the gendered division of labour/work for both male and female members of the household. Depending on what is culturally appropriate in the local context, the two groups may be brought back together at the end of the activity to review the results of each chart and discuss any differences if feasible.
  • This activity can highlight societal wide patriarchal assumptions and related social opportunities (e.g. social norms, peer support), physical opportunities (e.g. time, access to resources and services), as well as capability and motivational elements related to self-beliefs and societal values, which may either hamper or hinder certain animal care and use practices as a result of people’s gender. Listen for these within discussions and note them in the team action tracker if they emerge. 
  • It is important to recognize that the interplay between social, economic, and/or other vulnerable statuses may result in members of the same gender group having different roles and responsibilities and levels of paid and unpaid, labour burdens (e.g. women of higher socioeconomic status may transfer their roles and responsibilities to women of lower socioeconomic status). It is important to enable these different experiences to be acknowledged and understood. 
  • Discussions may identify potential (positive or negative) influencers or gate keepers that affect men and women’s roles and responsibilities related to animal care and use. Observe and listen to understand who influences gender roles and responsibilities (e.g. household member, social norms) and whether any changes in roles and responsibilities to improve animal welfare are desired. Take note of any identified key influencers for consideration in future involvement in the project as appropriate to supporting the desired changes in animal care and use roles and responsibilities. Key influencers may need to be engaged at the household level to influence household decisions, or to engaged to influence norms at the broader societal level.

Next Steps

As part of a community needs assessment and shared vision, the gender roles and responsibilities activity is useful to conduct when accompanied by one or more of the following tools to get a full picture of community dynamics for informing project planning: 

  • T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
  • T2 Mobility Map to understand where people spend most of their time and how long it takes to get places.
  • T3 Venn Diagram (T3b Social Networking Venn Diagram) to identify key individuals, groups and actors perceived to be most important to people and their animals. 
  • T4 Daily Activity Schedule (if not yet carried out) to understand broader labour burdens and the activities which are most time consuming.
  • T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify seasonal trends in resources, activities, and potential risks to animal owning communities.

Link to References Cited


2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase, Exit and Evaluation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Motivation

Stages of Behaviour Change:
Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage, Preparation Stage, Action Stage, Maintenance Stage

Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics:  Outreach and Communications; Compassion/Empathy; Community Change Agents

2a. Promoting Effective Interpersonal Communication through Emotional Intelligence

The most important skills that can improve a community facilitator’s ability to be a catalyst for change and influence behaviour change are effective inter-personal communication skills, which are comprised by the skills people use to exchange information, feelings, and meaning through verbal and non-verbal messages. 

Emotional intelligence (EI) is a foundational competency in effective inter-personal communication defined as the ability to recognize and manage our own feelings, and recognize and respond effectively to those of others [94].  Emotions are one of the aspects to lookout under automatic motivation as positive or negative feelings can either encourage or discourage a particular behaviour. Emotional intelligence can enable community facilitators to respond to challenging situations in ways which improve rather than hinder collaborations and better support communities’ in changing their behaviour. 

EI is comprised of four competency domains related to understanding and managing one’s self (personal competencies), and relationships with others (social competencies) including: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. The figure below illustrates emotional intelligence in terms of these four competency domains, demonstrating how they influence each other and ultimately the community facilitators’ ability to be successful in their work [94, 95]. Emotional self-awareness is a precursor to the other three competencies, as the more we are aware of our feelings the easier they are to manage and in turn effectively interact with others.

RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMPETENCIES AND THE WORK OF COMMUNITY FACILITATORS - Diagram adapted from [95, 94, 96]

2b. Transactional Analysis - Using Human Psychology to Improve Communications

Effective interpersonal communication and relations can be improved through an understanding of the concept of transactional analysis (TA) [97].  Transactional analysis is psychological model developed by Eric Berne to make sense of how people interact with one another (referred to as transactions) based on their feelings influencing their actions [98]. TA has proven a useful method for increasing emotional intelligence by helping one become aware of one’s emotions, exert greater self- control which are essential to ensuring the effectiveness of communication and associated positive interactions with others [98].

The key assumptions of TA are as follows [99, 98]:

  • People are OK: all people are good and worthy when they enter the world.
  • All people can think:  every person has the capacity to think, and are therefore responsible for the decisions they make.
  • All people can change: as everyone is responsible for their decisions, change is possible and decisions need not be determined by one's past.

Key Influences on Inter-personal Communications

1. Ego States

TA defines the different “ways of being” or “personalities” people adopt in their interactions with others, and refers to these as ego states. Our interpersonal communications can be classified as falling into one of the three following ego states: the child ego state, the parent ego state, and the adult ego state [98]. Each of these ego states are comprised of consistent feelings and behaviours, and these activate (unconsciously) in our interactions. By enabling you to identify which ego state is activated when interacting with others, TA can help better manage your emotions and respond in ways which promote collaboration and improve your ability to influence behaviour change in others. The three ego states of parent, adult, and child are further described below [100]

  1. Parent Ego State: the parent ego state is rooted in the past, and contains the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours taught/learned from our parents or other significant authority figures. It involves responding as one of our parents would have: saying what they would have said, feeling what they would have felt, behaving how they would have behaved. It can take one of two forms: 1) the critical parent (criticizing, censoring, punishing authority-based judgments or rules e.g. “You should”, “You must”), and 2) the nurturing parent (protective, loving, and encouraging). The parent state can negatively hinder our interactions when experienced as being judgemental, dominant, punishing, condescending, smothering, overprotective or stifling. Other examples which may indicate the unhelpful parent ego state is activated include: impatient body language, anger, judgemental comments, criticisms, providing unsolicited advice, ordering others, raised eyebrows, arms folded across chest, blaming others. 

The concepts of ego states and life positions are discussed below as they are key influencers on our inter-personal communications.

  1. Adult Ego State: the adult ego state is the only ego state rooted in the present and contains the attitudes, feelings and behaviours we have learned to help us interpret reality based on our rational, objective appraisals. A person behaving or interacting with their adult ego will properly seek information and use their reasoning skills to evaluate it before making decisions. Interacting from the adult ego state is always the ideal as it promotes clear, effective communication because responses are logical and appropriate to the situation or present, and this ego state is able to keep the parent and child ego state under control. A good way to know if your adult ego state is activated is to examine whether your questions/comments are fuelled by compassion and curiosity, or irritable emotions, the desire to blame, criticize, and/or prove a point. Other example indicators the adult ego state is activated may include: being/feeling relaxed/composed, calm, open, reasoned statements, unemotional, thoughtful, leaning in to listen/look, clear confident tone, taking responsibility, focused on facts not opinions, discussing alternatives or results, seeking information, evaluating pros-and-cons, questioning: “why?, how?, who?, what?, where?, how?
  1. Child Ego State: the child ego state is rooted in the past, and contains the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours we felt in our childhood related to avoiding perceived painful experiences or pursuing pleasurable experiences. It involves responding instinctually in the present as we would have as a child seeking to meet its basic needs: saying what we would have said, feeling what we would have felt, and behaving how we would have behaved as a child. The child ego can present in one of two forms: 1) the adapted/rebellious child (defiant, complaining, compliant, and/or passive). 2) free child (curious, creative, spontaneous, affectionate and fun-loving). The child ego state may negatively hinder interactions when anger or despair dominates an individuals’ reasoning. Other indicators the unhelpful child ego state is activated may include: feeling/being resistant, defensive, uncompromising, withdrawn, disengaged, helpless, dejected, sullen, manipulative, subservient, obstructive, destructive, wanting one’s own way, feeling like a victim/persecuted, shoulder shrugging, irritable, monotone, fidgeting.

In TA, interactions are referred to as complementary when the ego states of the interacting parties are the same/sympathetic to one another (e.g. child-child, adult-adult, parent-parent). This means there is alignment between what an individual says and expects to receive as a response, and what they actually receive as a response, and results in more clear and effective communication [100].  Alternatively, when transactions occur between individuals communicating with each other from different ego states (e.g. parent-child, adult-parent etc.) they are referred to as crossed transactions, which can lead to breakdowns in communication, misunderstanding, and associated conflict.

Examples 1 (top) and 2 (middle)
Examples 3 (left) and 4 (right)

Examples of complementary transactions: 

  • Parent-Parent (See Example 1):  “What a terrible meeting!” -  “One of the worst I’ve been to!” 
  • Adult-Adult (See Example 2): “I noticed you weren’t able to take action since we last spoke, can we talk about what’s been going on for you?” - “You’re right, I’ve been really busy with illness in the family, however plan to take action now that things have calmed down” 
  • Child-Child “I’m not going to try these recommendations as the people who made them don’t even understand our lives!” - “Yeah, I’m not going to bother trying any of them either.”

Examples of crossed transactions: 

  • Parent-Child (See Example 3): “You should be careful or your animal won’t be able to continuing to earn money for you” - “What do you care?”
  • Adult-Child (See Example 4): “We haven’t spoken for a while and I’d be interested to hear your experiences trialling the solutions we discussed when we last met.” -  “I feel like giving up as nothing is working!” 
  • Adult-Parent: “I noticed you attended the training, what were key learnings for you?” - “They should have provided that training ages ago when we really needed it!” 

The goal of TA is to have all parties involved converse in the idealized state of adult-adult because these are the only interactions informed by rational appraisals of reality in the present (vs  feelings or learnings from the past), and thus result in clear and effective communication, decision making, and problem solving. However, as we go about our daily lives, we move from one ego state to another in reaction to different interactions without any thought, and our (perceived) ego state can also elicit different ego states in others that can either help or hinder communications and relations. Operating in the idealized adult-adult state can therefore be challenging, particularly when we are faced with emotionally difficult situations or interactions with people who have not yet developed an ability to manage their emotions and behaviours. 

The following example illustrates how ego states inform the nature of our transactions:

When a community member feels like their needs are not being met e.g. does not feel understood, or like they are being judged by the community facilitator, their “child” ego state of mind may intervene to influence their interaction causing them act uncooperatively in defiance. This child ego state response may in turn arouse frustration in the facilitator, arousing an annoyed “parent” ego state response which can further break down relations as a sense of disdain takes over their interactions. This example illustrates how the parent and child ego states interact to create crossed transactions and undesirable outcomes. However with an understanding of TA, the community facilitator can identify ego states activated in themselves and others, and manage their emotions to effectively communicate from their adult ego state without undermining relations with community members that can hinder desired behaviour change and animal welfare improvements.

2. Life Positions

In addition to the ego states that define our personality state in any given moment, TA also defines “life positions” which are the basic beliefs about ourselves and others which act as the frame of reference through which we experience our interactions with others [101]. These beliefs refer to our sense of feeling “OK or “not-OK” about ourselves and those we’re interacting with, and ultimately influence the nature of our social interactions. In this context, being “OK” refers the innate value, goodness, worth, and equal right to live and meet needs we perceive ourselves and other parties in the interaction to have. The TA model assumes that everyone is born viewing themselves and others as “OK”; however it also recognizes our childhood experiences shape can change our perception of ourselves and/or others as “not OK”. Life positions therefore may change and adapt throughout life as we learn in develop, and can also be influenced by our/others’ states of being (ego states). As we interact with others, we take one of four life positions, which in turn result in one of four specific social interaction reactions or outcomes as illustrated in the below matrix and described further below [102, 99, 103, 101]:

Life Positions and their Influence on Social Interaction Outcomes
adapted from Franklin Ernst’s OK Corral
I am not OK with me (-)
(e.g. I don’t feel good/worthy/equal)

You’re OK with me (+)
(e.g. I feel you are good/worthy/equal)
I am OK with Me (+)
(e.g. I feel good/worthy/equal)

Helpless/One Down Position
I’m not OK, You’re OK
 
Interaction Outcome:
I get away from you
Healthy Position 
I’m OK, You’re OK
 
Interaction Outcome:
I get on with you

Hopeless Position 
I’m not OK, You’re not OK
 
Interaction Outcome:
I get nowhere with you
Better than You/One Up Position 
I’m OK,  You’re not OK 
 
Interaction Outcome:
I get rid of you

You are not OK with me (-)
(e.g. I don’t feel you are good/worthy/equal)
  1. Healthy Position = I am OK, you are OK 
  • This is the healthiest position, with people occupying this position holding the belief they and anyone else in the interaction are innately worthy and valuable. This position is grounded in the belief in one’s own abilities, and is characterized by mutual respect and seeing the best in the other person, thereby allowing parties to find a constructive approach to issues. This healthy position is expressed in the adult ego state, and results in the individual wanting to continue interacting with the other party (I get on with you).To adopt this way of thinking requires self-awareness and the ability to manage one’s emotions (automatic motivation). In addition, this position benefits from having positive beliefs about self (reflective motivation) e.g. confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy, perceived competencies, sense of empowerment, and behavioural control. It also requires feeling one’s role and identity are valuable, even in the face of factors which may render one disadvantaged or marginalized. As such, this position may be a challenge for community members to adopt, particularly if they are marginalized and lack this self-belief. However, by communicating from this position using the adult ego state, community facilitators can demonstrate their belief in community members’ worth and value, which can contribute to improving community members’ own belief in their ability to make desired changes. 
  1. Better than you/One Up Position = I am OK, you are not OK 
  • In this position the individual is at an advantage or feels superior or right  (“I’m OK”) and projects anger, disgust, or disdain onto the person with whom they are interacting who they perceive to be wrong, inferior, or a scapegoat (“You’re not OK”).  As a result of this projection of anger, blame, and/or criticism, the other party may get angry in response. This position can be expressed in the critical parent or rebellious child ego state, and results in an individual blaming or feeling hostile towards the other party (I get rid of you). When community facilitators operate from this position they can undermine community members’ self-efficacy when they don’t seek to understand community members’ lived experiences or recognize them as experts in their own lives and instead act as the expert or limit their meaningful participation, which can give the impression they don’t believe community members are capable of change or finding solutions to their own issues. 
  1. Helpless/One Down Position = I am not OK, you are OK 
  • In this position, the individual feels disadvantaged, helpless and disempowered in comparison with others they are interacting with and may experience themselves as victims. This position is often expressed in the rebellious child ego, and creates a sense of wanting to withdraw from others in the interaction (e.g. I get away from you) due to not feeling as worthy as others in the interaction, often as a result of existing limiting self-beliefs (e.g. individuals who are marginalized or discriminated against may not believe they have anything valuable to contribute, or believe in their capability to affect change).
  1. Hopeless Position = I am not OK, you are not OK 
  • In this position, the individual perceives themselves and the other party as not good, worthy, or having equal rights. It is essentially a hopeless and frustrating situation where effective communication is very difficult. This position if often expressed in the rebellious child ego, and results in the individual feeling that their interactions with the other party are futile (I get nowhere with you). For example, individuals who have experienced discrimination may have developed limiting self beliefs as well as a lack of trust in others/social systems, which cause them to feel hopeless about working with others or trying to affect change.

In the previous example where the community member interacts from a child ego state and community facilitator from their parent ego-state, the community member perceived the interaction from a hopeless life position as they don’t feel “OK” about themselves or the community facilitator, which results in their child ego state influencing the community facilitator’s to perceive the interaction and respond from a Better than you/One up life position. As this example shows, it is important to understand how your ego state and life positions may be triggered when faced with emotional situations and interactions with community members, as well be aware their ego states, so you can manage your feelings, thoughts, and actions and respond in ways that not to hinder your influence and ability to collaborate. Additional examples of how TA can aid your role as a community facilitator include:  

  • It is important for community facilitators to understand that different communities and social groups may respond or behave differently as a result of their unique social and cultural experiences and learnings influencing their ways of being (ego states) and relating (life positions). TA can help you understand, appreciate and accept this diversity amongst community members, and help reduce unconscious bias from hindering your efforts to promote inclusivity, diversity and equality, and achievement of desired behaviour change outcomes [104].
  • When one is exposed to situations where the welfare of animals or people is compromised, community facilitators can experience negative feelings such as anger and hostility which can be challenging to manage (e.g. child or parent ego state). When these negative emotions influence community facilitator’s perceptions of, or are directed towards community members, the ability be an effective community servant can be compromised as rapport and trust break down [104]. Being aware of how and when your ego state and life position influence your interactions in these situations can enable you to regain control of your feelings, thoughts and actions so you can respond appropriately from your adult ego state.

How to Apply Transactional Analysis in Practice

Two models which help to understand how our roles in social interaction, which are influenced by our ego states and life positions, can produce ineffective and effective communication are referred to as the Drama Triangle and Winner’s Triangle which are illustrated in the figures below. 

The Drama Triangle is a model which describes conflicted or drama intense relationship transactions [105]. The drama triangle defines the three unconscious roles people take on (and can switch between) in stressful, emotional, or high conflict situations. When two people enter an interaction in one of the three roles on the drama triangle, their interactions will be characterized by drama, stress, conflict, or rescuing people from their responsibilities to solution problems for themselves. These interactions are unhelpful, and interfere with problem solving and effective communication. The three roles of the drama triangle which are further described below are Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer; and people are likely to have a preference for playing one of these roles.

  • Victim Role: people who play this role feel oppressed, hopeless, and helpless. They may complain of unmet needs, and be unable to make decisions, solve problems, take pleasure in life, or achieve insight. The payoff for individuals who take this role is that they can avoid dealing with things that are unpleasant or difficult. The problem with the victim role is that individuals discount themselves, and typically seek out a persecutor and a rescuer who they think will save them but who in fact just disempowers them by perpetuating the victim’s negative feelings and/or creating dependency e.g. nothing is my fault, I’m not capable, poor me. The victim role is aligned with the hopeless (I am not OK, You are Not OK) or helpless/one down life positions (I am not OK, you are OK). Characteristics commonly associated with the victim role include: complaining, being helpless, withdrawing, catastrophizing, pretending to be incompetent. 
  • Rescuer Role: people who play this role tend to be enablers, will feel guilty if they don’t come to rescue, can be over-helpful, self-sacrificing. The payoff of this role is to be needed, wanted or liked. The problem with the rescuer role is that rescuing discounts others’ ability to think for themselves, keeps those in the victim role dependent, and gives the victim permission to fail e.g. you need me, let me help. The rescuer role is very prevalent amongst helping and caring professions, and is aligned with better than you/one up position (I am OK, you are not OK). Characteristics commonly associated with the rescuer role include: fixing, telling, giving solutions, taking over, martyrdom.
  • Persecutor Role:  people who play this role tend to blame, criticise, and can be oppressive, controlling, rigid, authoritative, angry, and unpleasant. The payoff for persecutors is that they get what they want. However the issue with this role is that they tend to discount others’ value and integrity, don’t enable others to show their full potential, and keep the victim feeling oppressed by their demanding and inflexible behaviour. Persecutors will seek to control and criticize while failing to solve any problems or help anyone else solve the problem e.g. its all your fault, you got it wrong, and  people tend to want to get away from them whenever they can. The persecutor role is aligned with the better than you/one up life position (I am OK, you are not OK). Characteristics commonly associated with the persecutor role include: criticizing, blaming, labelling, putting others down, feeling inadequate.

While the Drama triangle describes the above roles in their most extreme form, we often encounter milder versions of these roles in our work and personal lives. When people are caught up in a drama triangle, they will switch roles, and a rescuer may become a victim or a victim may become a rescuer, and these roles can change as the dynamics of the interactions change and develop. 

As an alternative to the problematic drama triangle, the winner’s triangle was developed as a model for more productive social interactions that lead to a win-win situation for everyone involved [106].The roles within the winner’s triangle reflect the positive aspects of the three drama triangle roles and include: Assertive (vs. persecutor), Caring (vs. rescuer), and Vulnerable (vs. victim), which are further defined below [106, 107]:

  • Vulnerable Role: people who play this role may be suffering however express their real feelings, accept themselves, use their thinking and problem solving, and take action to care for themselves.
  • Caring Role: people who play this role have genuine concern for people which they demonstrate by: giving help when asked, trusting the other person has their own answers, accepting and encouraging others’ to think for themselves, actively listening (without trying to solve the problem), having clear boundaries, doing their share, and not doing things they don’t want to do (unless absolutely necessary). They are caring, understanding, and don’t need to be needed by others. 
  • Assertive Role: people who play this role are aware of their own feelings, needs and wants, and act in their own best interests by: asking for what they want, saying no to what they don’t want, being flexible in order to get their own needs met, and don’t punish or others feel wrong. They often use “I” statements (vs. you statements), are non-judgemental, and accept others’ value and integrity.

The drama triangle can be transformed into the winner’s triangle through development of one’ self-awareness, managing one’s emotions, and communicate effectively [107]. Once we understand these drama patterns and become aware we are no longer operating in the adult ego state, we can break free and choose to step off the drama triangle and consciously seek to operate from our adult ego state. 

As facilitators of behaviour change, it is therefore helpful to understand which role you tend to play on the Drama triangle. For example, as a community facilitator you may have a tendency to step on to the drama triangle in the role of rescuer, or potentially persecutor, and perceive community members as the victim who either are to blame for the welfare issues of their animals or who need your help to address observed welfare issues. Or you may perceive other community members or stakeholders within the role of persecutor, for example the animal health service provider who provides poor treatment and puts animals at risk may be perceived as the persecutor. These roles may then change if after your initial interactions, you find community members are not following your advice on how to improve animal welfare and are instead following the advice of the poorly trained animal health service provider. In this example, you may find yourself moving from rescuer to persecutor and start feeling negative feelings towards the animal owner. These feelings and associated responses and interactions are unhelpful to problem solving and achievement of the goal for improved animal welfare. Alternatively, if you perceived the animal health service provider in the role of persecutor, this would be similarly unhelpful to promoting a collaborative approach to addressing animal welfare issues. 

When our professional interactions don’t seem authentic, or when we find ourselves confused or frustrated by conversations with others, we probably we have entered into one of the roles on the drama triangle. So how can you become free of all that could be holding you back so you can relate to people with congruence and authentic influence?

Use the following steps when interacting with community members to support effective inter-personal communication to promote collaboration and improve your ability to influence behaviour change: 

  1. Notice how you feel: the first thing to do when you feel a sense of confusion, irritation frustration, or helplessness is simply to notice this is actually happening. Ask yourself the following questions to improve your self-awareness:
  • Are we frustrated, confused, irritated, do we feel it's somebody else's fault? 
  • Does that mean that we might be operating from a parent or child role? 
  • Are we feeling “not ok” about ourselves or the other person? 
  • Do we feel as if we're in our adult ego state?  
  • Are we experiencing crossed transactions (where either our and/or another person’s non-adult ego state is operating). 
  1. Think about what might be happening for you, and also for the other person?
  2. Listen - in order to communicate effectively we first need to listen (for additional guidance re to section on active listening below)
  3. Move to your adult ego state 
  4. Soothe the child or parent ego state (yours or the other’s)
  • Enabling someone to move to their adult ego state so they can communicate from their best self is easily done by giving a few meaningful and positive comments e.g. empathetic responses or positive affirmations (for additional guidance refer to sections on empathy and active listening below). For example, you can say “That must be difficult for you”, “I understand how stressful that is for you”, “I know its frustrating when things don’t go as you believe they should” which helps the person then move back to their adult ego state so you can interact in a congruent adult-adult ego state.  
  1. Feel/show: it is important to authentically feel, and to show qualities of respect, vulnerability, authenticity, and empathy.

By understanding TA and being aware of the different ego states, you can learn not to respond based on unhelpful ways of being (e.g. from parent or child ego states, unhealthy life positions), and instead choose to respond consciously to improve communication, collaboration, and your ability to influence human behaviour change. TA therefore lends itself to strengthening emotional intelligence and inter-personal communication in the following ways: 

  • Improves self-awareness through enabling identification and understanding of our/others’ emotional state and how this is influenced by/influences inter-personal interactions
  • Enables self-management as we can learn to keep our emotions under control once we are aware of them, thereby enabling us to choose to react consciously and in ways which are congruent with our values and objectives even in the face of challenges
  • Improves social awareness by enabling us to understand how others are feeling and why they reacting as they are, 
  • Increases social skills by enabling us to respond effectively and with empathy, based on an understanding of our self and others, which also helps mitigate potential for conflict and break downs in interpersonal relations. 

2c. Key Communication Skills

Empathy: Understanding Others’ Perspective

Empathy is a foundational skill which underpins emotional intelligence. The ability to communicate (send and receive messages) and lead by understanding others' thoughts, views, and feelings (being empathetic) is one of the most important means through which community facilitators enhance the quality of their interactions with community members to influence transformation and change.

Definition of Empathy: empathy is the ability to see things from another person’s point of view or from their frame of reference and feel what they feel.  It involves understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another person without making judgements [108]. In terms of communication, being empathetic involves communicating your sense of the other person’s experiences and feelings from your understanding of their perspective.

Benefits of Being Empathetic 

Empathy involves being able to understand what a person is feeling in a given moment and also why their behaviours or actions make sense to them and we can use these insights to appropriately frame our communications with others, build trust and strengthen our relationships, and ultimately be more effective leading and inspiring desired change. The benefits of empathy are further described below:   

  1. Rapport Building: when facilitators express understanding of community members’ experience and feelings, and community members in turn feel they are accurately understood, accepted, and feel secure, rapport is built which is critical to a facilitator’s ability to influence behaviour change.
  2. Improved Understanding and Awareness: responding with empathy provides community facilitators the opportunity to better organize and reflect back the meaning of the information community members are processing and communicating. This enables the facilitator to:
    • Demonstrate and check their own understanding of community members’ experiences and feelings, and
    • Evoke community members’ own reflections to support them in identifying problematic behaviours and solutions for themselves, as opposed to telling them or providing personal opinions or judgements which can cause defensiveness and a break down in relations. This is helpful to facilitating community members’ to move through the stages of change.

Guidance on Being Empathetic 

Factors Influencing Empathy: People tend to be more empathetic toward some people and less so toward others [108]. As a community facilitator, it important to understand some of the factors that may influence your empathy so you can mitigate them and ensure your empathy is consistent across people you interact with. Factors influencing empathy include [108]:

  • How you perceive the other person
  • How you attribute the other individual's behaviours
  • What you blame for the other person's predicament
  • Your past experiences and expectations

You can mitigate these factors’ potential negative influence and improve your ability to be empathetic  through an understanding and application of transactional analysis, particularly in relation to its assumptions, ego states, and life positions. Furthermore, the following points provide suggestions for how to be empathetic with others [109]: 

  • Actively listen: effective listening must be active, which requires listening attentively to a speaker, understanding what they're saying, responding and reflecting on what's being said (refer to section below for guidance on active listening). It can also be demonstrated by providing appropriate feedback through body language e.g. nodding, smiling to encourage them continue, leaning forward, eye contact etc. Active listening encourages both the listener and speaker to remain actively engaged in the conversation.
  • Imagine yourself in the other person’s situation and accept their interpretation of it: By Imagining being in same situation as the person enables you to connect with their emotions and perspective and help ensure you don’t draw incorrect conclusions, comment and/or judge from your perspective without knowing the full details of what a person is experiencing e.g. “this is no big deal”, “you should try harder”, “you’re overreacting” etc.  It is important to accept their interpretation of their experiences/situation without judging it, even if you do not agree and have a different interpretation.  
  • Show care and concern: when someone tells you about their challenges or issues, show care and concern by asking how they are doing, if they would like your support, and/or let them know you are there to listen and support them in the ways you can/as appropriate.  
  • Acknowledge the person’s feelings: it is important to validate people’s experiences and feelings as a means to build trust and rapport before working with them to address issues. Acknowledging means to recognize the importance of how they are feeling. Ensure you do no brush off or dismiss their feelings, avoid the topic, say something irrelevant, or attempt to move the conversation on before acknowledging and respecting how they feel. 
  • Ask questions: ask people questions to learn more about them and their lives and help encourage people to share more (refer to section below on open questions). 
  • Don’t Rush the Conversation: a common mistake in community facilitation is trying to rush conversations to reach a certain end point or achieve a predetermined objective. When someone is sharing about their situation or issues, glossing over what they are feeling to rush towards the desired end point without acknowledging their feelings is invalidating and undermines the potential for collaboration. The more empathetic thing to do is connect with them based on their current emotional state by understanding their perspective and how they feel, and then seek to move them forward with questions. For example, a conversation like this may flow like this: “That sounds really frustrating” → “What happened that made it so difficult?” → “How are you feeling about it now?” → “What are your ideas about how to move forward?”. You can better build rapport by pacing the conversation and matching a person’s emotional state rather than trying to rush a conversation to a specific end point.
  • Don’t Judge: it is important to not to express judgement on an issue or person, nor form one before you understand the situation. Instead always give people the benefit of the doubt and understand they are doing the best they can and likely have their own justified reasons for their decisions, thoughts, and actions. It is also important to remember that all people have the ability to change and to uphold this belief regardless of their current actions.  
  • Mirroring: mirroring is about connecting authentically with others by imitating their nonverbal signals as a means to build rapport e.g. their gestures, speech patterns, or attitude etc. The goal is not to copy someone’s mannerisms blindly but rather to adjust your behaviour to match their tone and vibe to create a sense of congruence with them. 
  • Show emotional support: emotional support means giving people your trust, affirmation and encouragement (refer to section below on affirmations). Let them know that you will support them in whatever they choose to do and do not judge them. An example of a supportive statement is: “Knowing you, you always consider things very carefully. You know your situation best and I am supportive of whatever you choose to do.” Sometimes, what people are looking for is not answers or not solutions, but rather are looking for empathy and support.

In addition to the above, other things you can do to strengthen your empathy skills include [108]: 

  • Work on listening to people without interrupting.
  • Pay attention to body language and other types of nonverbal communication.
  • Seek to learn more about how others feel to strengthen your connection with them.
  • Seek to identify your biases to understand and mitigate how they affect your perceptions of others.
  • Look for ways in which you are similar to others versus focusing on your differences.
  • Be willing to be vulnerable and open about how you feel.
  • Engage in new experiences to improve your understanding of how others in that situation may feel.

Examples of Responding with Empathy

Example Scenario: a community member expresses the following:  “I’d like to meet my livestock’s welfare needs and am worried that I won’t be able to continue to rely them to earn a living if I don’t; but I don’t know what I can do given how busy I am and how limited my resources are. It’s overwhelming.

Examples of empathetic responses: 

  • “You rely on your animals and care about their wellbeing, and face challenges in meeting their needs which leaves you feeling very overwhelmed and not sure what to do.”
  • “It is understandable that you are worried about your animals and your livelihood which depends on them, and feel a sense of powerlessness.”
  • “There’s a looming uncertainty and risk if you don’t meet your animals’ welfare needs, and it feels like there’s a wall in front of you which prevents you from being able to take action to improve their welfare.”
  • “So, on the one hand, you want to take action and improve your animals’ welfare, but on the other, you worry you won’t be able to do anything even though you have the desire to.” 

Applying Empathy to Improve Communications 

When you are communicating it is important to adapt your communication to what will be most effective for the interaction from the perspective of the person you are engaging with. The following two step sequence outline how you can take the concept of empathy and apply it to your communication practices [110]:

  1. Attribution:  attribution is the act of gathering information concerning where your audience or recipient is and how they will best receive your message. You can do this by seeking to understand the perspective of the person receiving your communication and see the world from their eyes and understand how they feel. This will enable you to make some “attributions” about where they are, what they want, and how they may need something conveyed to them. 
  2. Accommodation: once you have taken into account the perspective of the person receiving your communication, you will then need to accommodate their perspective and feelings by adapting your behaviour and communication to their perspective.  Adapting to a context and speaking empathically doesn’t mean you have to tell people whatever they want, but rather when you know where people are at, you can be more effective in compelling them into a different future. To help you adapt your communications to be empathetic, consider the following questions from the perspective of your audience [110]
  • What communication do they need to hear (e.g. choosing the right words that make the most sense in the situation to fit their perspective)? 
  • How do they need to hear it?
  • Where do they need to hear it?
  • What is the style they need to hear it in?
  • Why they are interested in hearing it in the first place?

Active Listening - open ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, summarizing

The core skill associated with effective communication is active listening which includes: asking open questions, and providing affirmations, reflections and summaries. This can be remembered by the acronym OARS.

Listening is different to hearing what someone says. It is a very active process and can achieve the empathy, deep curiosity and exploration of someone’s perspective needed in the change process. This can also be vital to overcome any challenges regarding the interpersonal relationship between listener and speaker. 

OPEN QUESTIONS

Open questions are questions that encourage more than a yes or no answer. They elicit understanding, encourage talking and facilitate abstract thinking skills.

The goal: use more open than closed questions. 

Open Question Examples:

  • “How are you today?” 
  • “What’s made you speak to me about this?” 
  • “Can you tell me more about that?” 
  • “Why do you want to make this change?”

Additional tips for framing open-ended questions to be authentic and situationally appropriate:  

  • During initial discussions, ask questions which first seek to identify a person’s own understanding of situation/problem e.g. ask what they know about the issue. This will enable you to focus your discussion with them on areas where they may lack understanding or awareness. 
  • Remain curious to learn and focus on evoking more change talk through open ended questions and reflections.
  • Keep in mind which stage of change a person is in at a given point in time, and tailor your questions depending on their stage of change/how they respond. For example you can tailor questions or elicit change talk in  pre-contemplation, contemplation stage, or tailor questions to evoke ideas about how to plan/solutions in preparation stage. How to use open ended questions within the four facilitation processes for facilitating progress through the stages are described below: 
  • Process of Engagement: use open ended questions when starting to build a foundational relationship to gain sense of what is important to community members and help build rapport 
  • Process of Focusing: after rapport has been built, use open ended questions to begin identifying the priority issues community members are interested in to set a clear direction for working together moving forward.
  • Process of Evoking: use open ended questions here to elicit change talk change talk and draw out their own reasons and motivations for change.  
  • Process of Planning: once community members are aware of the issue and have expressed a desire to change to behaviour, use open ended questions to ask about what they think they can do/what solutions they can implement to achieve desired change. 

AFFIRMATIONS

Affirming means to actively listen for a client’s positive strengths, skills, values, efforts, accomplishments, aspirations and traits, and to reflect those to the client.

The goal: be in a mind-set of consciously ‘looking out for’ these positive qualities, and, if genuinely appreciated, to reflect them back to community members. 

Affirmation Examples: 

  • “You came up with a lot of great ideas to address your animal’s welfare needs. Great brainstorming today.”
  • “It’s important to you to be a good animal owner.” 
  • “You are the kind of person who takes their responsibilities seriously, and want to do the right thing.”
  • “You’re investing a lot of effort and really trying to make this change.”

Additional tips on giving affirmations: 

  • Affirmations should be framed in terms of “You” and never include the word “I”. This is because “I” reflects your opinion rather than affirms an innate quality or strength in the person e.g. “You clearly have through about this care a lot” vs. “I think you care a lot.”
  • Focus affirmations on reflecting a person’s efforts rather than their results as a means to encourage and motivate them and promote their self efficacy and confidence.
  • Avoid using words like good, bad, great etc. when making affirmations as they imply judgement. When such positive words are used they act more like praise rather than affirmations e.g. “It is good you are supporting your animals” (praise) vs. “Caring for your animals is important to you” (affirming).
  • Focus affirmations on positive aspects as a means to express empathy for what and why they want to change e.g. focusing on their strengths, efforts, who they are as a person/animal owner etc. 

REFLECTIONS

Reflections are statements rather than questions, and are based on having listened to what someone said, and making a guess as to what they meant. Often a question statement can be turned into a reflection by removing the inflection at the end and any query words at the beginning.  Reflections can be simple or complex. Try to use complex reflections at least half of the time.

The goal

  • Remember that what we think a speaker means may not be correct, and that we must ‘hypothesis test’ our thoughts with reflections to ensure common purpose
  • Reflect more often than you ask questions.

Reflection Examples: Consider the statement: “If I was happier monitoring my animal’s welfare, I would do it”. Possible reflections include: 

  • “You would like to be more confident in monitoring your animal’s welfare.” 
  • “You feel unsure about whether you’re monitoring your animal’s welfare correctly.” 
  • “Observing your animals’ welfare issues is upsetting for you.”

SUMMARIES

A summary is a special type of reflection that brings together content from two or more statements made by someone. They encourage us to listen very carefully to what a person says throughout a session, and, when offered, show a person that you remember and value what they say. They also give the person we are speaking with an opportunity to point out if we have missed something important in the discussion, so they can fill in the gaps. 

The goal: listen attentively to a person’s thoughts and feelings throughout, ready to use a ‘basket of reflections’ to thoughtfully collect, link or transition client statements as needed. For example, you may wish to form a collecting summary to bring together all the reasons for change someone has offered in an interaction. 

Summary Example: 

“So one thing you hope will be different a year from now is that you will have some better buildings on the farm, that will help make your daily routine easier and be more positive for the cows. You’ve been finding it easier to keep on top of the shelter cleaning recently, and you’d like that to continue. You also said you’d like to learn a little more about nutritional feed composition. What else comes to mind when you think of where you’d like things to be a year from now?”

This resource was developed with support of Human Behaviour Change for Animal (HBCA) and Alison Bard

Link to References Cited


3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase, Exit and Evaluation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Stages of Behaviour Change:
Contemplation Stage

Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics:  Outreach and Communications; Community Change Agents

When someone is contemplating making a change, there is balance between their reasons for and against change, and people often experience a period characterised by ambivalence where they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of change to help them make a decision. Resolving this ambivalence and tipping the balance in favour of change can be achieved by strengthening a person’s language about their reasons to change, referred to as change talk, and softening their language in favour of the status quo, referred to as sustain talk. The purpose of this facilitator resource is to enable you to recognize and understand the difference between change talk and sustain talk. Your ability to recognize change talk and sustain talk is a necessary first step to enabling you to effectively facilitate conversations about change as needed to evoke and strengthen community members’ rationales for change (change talk), and overcome their arguments for not changing (sustain talk).

Ambivalence

Ambivalence is the state of experiencing conflicting beliefs, feelings or emotions simultaneously, which can stop people’s progress towards change. When someone is in a state of ambivalence, they will often have very good reasons for change and very good reasons against change. The language community members use (change talk and sustain talk) will indicate whether they are in this contemplation, or ambivalent stage of change

If someone is simply not yet ready to change or does not believe there is a problem, this is different than ambivalence. In such situations you may instead encounter resistance talk, indicating they are in the pre-contemplation stage of change. For example, someone may say “I don’t believe this is a big a problem and don’t see the need to change.” 

Change Talk

The acronym “DARN CAT” is useful to use to understand the types of change talk we hear. When someone is preparing to change, “DARN talk occurs, which is described with examples in the table below [111].

Types of Change LanguageChange Talk Examples 
Desire
Statements about preference for change.
“I’d like my animals not to be lame regularly.”“I want to...” “I would like to...” “I wish…“
Ability
Statements about capability.
“I guess I could pick out my animal’s feet more regularly.”“I could…”, “I can...”, “I might be able to…“
Reasons
Specific arguments for change
“I want my animals to have good welfare.”“I would probably feel less stress if my animal’s welfare improved”“My animal needs to feel better as my family’s livelihood depends on it.”
Need
Statements about feeling obliged to change.
“I must spend less time and money seeking treatments from animal health service providers.” “I ought to…”, “I have to…“, “I really should…”

When someone is close to resolving their ambivalence in favour of change, CAT talk appears which is described with examples in the table below.

Types of Change LanguageChange Talk Example Statements
Commitment
Statements about their willingness to change.
“I have good reasons to improve my animal’s welfare.”“I am going to ... “, “I promise…”, “I intend to... “
Action
Statements about their readiness to take action.
“I’m willing to talk to an animal health service provider about this.” “I am ready to ... “ “I will start tomorrow…”
Taking steps
Statements about action taken. 
“I’ve started attending community meetings where this topic is discussed.”“I actually went out and…”, “This week I started...”

Sustain Talk

Any language that can act to promote change also has an equal and opposite partner in favour of staying the same: sustain talk. You will be able to identify sustain talk when a person verbalizes their reasons not changing. The table below outlines the types of sustain talk with examples.

Types of Sustain LanguageSustain Talk Example Statements
Desire
Statements about preference for staying the same/not changing.
“I don’t want to spend that long trying to prevent issues.”
Ability
Statements about not having capability.
“I’ve tried, and I don’t think I can check my animal’s feet that often.” “I can’t afford to seek treatment for my animal.”  
Reasons
Specific arguments against change
“If I try to manage this issue I just create a problem somewhere else.”
Need
Statements about not feeling an obligation to change.
“I’ve got to focus my time on other things.”
Commitment
Statements about their unwillingness or lack of commitment to change.
“I’m just not going to care for my animal’s feet - that’s final.”
Action
Statements about not wanting to take action.
“I’m prepared to accept the risks of keeping my animals this way.”
Taking steps
Statements about actions no taken. 
“I threw away that information sheet earlier this week.”

Change talk and sustain talk are often intertwined, even within the same sentence. This is the simultaneous nature of ambivalence, and guidance for supporting community members tonavigate through it and elicit change talk can be found in facilitator resources 4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change and 5. Negotiated Behaviour Change: Guidance on Overcoming Resistance to Change, and 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change.

This resource was developed with support of Human Behaviour Change for Animal (HBCA) and Alison Bard


6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through Stages of Behaviour Change

The table below provides a summary of general guidance for community facilitators to support working with community members to progress through the different stages of change. It includes definitions of each stage of change with examples in the context of animal welfare, along with the process for community facilitators to focus on when individuals are in each stage, as well as recommended tools and techniques helpful to harnessing people’s own motivations and rationales for change, and building their confidence and commitment to take action and sustain change.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase, Exit & Evaluation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Motivation

Stages of Change:
Stages of Change, Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage, Preparation Stage, Action Stage, Maintenance Stage

Project Support:
Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics:
Outreach and Communication, Community Change Agents

Stage of ChangeProcesses for Change / What to Focus OnRecommended Tools / Techniques to Use in Each Stage of Change
Pre-contemplation:

Individuals do not recognize the need for change or are not actively considering change.

Consequences/cons of change are felt to outweigh the benefits/positives.

For example, a person doesn’t think it is a problem if they do not provide their animals with access to water to drink throughout the day.
Build Rapport – show respect and empathy by recognizing individuals’ expertise in their own lives/situations, their intentions for acting informed by their expertise and lived experiences, support their autonomy in decision making rather imposing your expertise.

Evoke individuals’ reasons for change by connecting behaviour change to the things the individual cares about.

Elicit change talk/their rationales for change by bringing their attention to their rationales for change and minimize attention and discussion focused on exploring rationales for sustaining their current practices.

Consciousness Raising: Support individuals to seek out new information to gain understanding and feedback about the problem behaviour to help improve their awareness of the problem (e.g. facts, leaflets). You may wish to consider undertaking a Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach as a first step.

Dramatic relief: Support individuals experience and express feelings about the problem behaviour and potential solutions, encourage self-evaluative process that enables individuals to assess/understand the negative impacts of the current behaviour and potential benefits of change.

Environmental Re-evaluation: help raise doubt and increase the person’s perception of the risks and problems with their current behaviour e.g. guided discussions with others, testimonies, storytelling that promote learning and reflection about how their actions affect their animals/themselves/others.

If individuals continue not to recognize or accept there is a problem, focus on continuing to build rapport through active listening, asking open ended questions, using reflections and summaries about what they community and show empathy so they feel understood. Ensure they understand change is ultimately up to them and not being pushed on them. Consider asking to schedule a time when the discussion can be revisited, perhaps after they take time to reflect or seek out additional information.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:

Use OARS to elicit change talk, build rapport, show empathy, and:

Open ended questions to invite individuals to tell their story in their own words, and provides an opportunity to learn more about what the person cares about e.g. their values and goals.

Affirmations: Can take the form of compliments or statements of appreciation and understanding that recognize a person’s strengths and acknowledge behaviours / qualities / characteristics that encourage the direction of desired positive change, helps build rapport and their confidence in their ability to change.

Reflective listening: Involves rephrasing a statement to capture the implicit meaning and feeling of a person’s statement, encourages and helps people understand their motivations more, and helps amplify or reinforce individuals desire for change.

• Summarize what you have heard individuals, highlighting in particular any recognition of the problem, their concerns about the issue, their intent to change, or their optimism about their ability or outcome of making change.

Provide Feedback using Ask – Offer – Ask approach:

Ask permission to discuss behaviour to show respect, Ask what they already know before offering feedback / advice / information about the issue, Ask permission to offer information they may not know.

Offer information or feedback if granted to permission to do so.

Ask them to reflect on the feedback/information you have provided.

C4A Participatory Tools:

T16. Animal Welfare Snakes and Ladders Game
T17. If I Were an Animal
T18. Thriving not Surviving
T19. Animal Feelings Analysis
T22. Animal Welfare Transect Walk
T23. Three Pile Sorting
T32. Animal Welfare Conversation Tool

C4A Facilitator Resources:

2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change
3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk
4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change
5. Negotiated Behaviour Change: Guidance on Overcoming Resistance to Change
7. Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging
Contemplation:

Individuals recognize the problem related to their behaviour and are considering change.

They are weighing the pros and cons of change but are ambivalent and/or uncertain, and may feel the negatives of change still outweigh the positives.

For example, a person doesn’t take preventative measures against animal disease despite being concerned about the health risks diseases pose.
• Guide their internal motivation by continuing to elicit change talk / their rationales for change to strengthen their commitment to change.

• Self re-evaluation/Re-evaluating self-image: work to facilitate changing their beliefs and attitudes by (Davis Jr. 2010):
- helping them recognise the difference between their values and behaviour/creating cognitive dissonance,
- values clarification activities or discussions,
- contact and discussions with role models,
- guided imagery (where people imagine themselves in the new situation [e.g., animal experiences good welfare and they feel good about practicing desired behaviour]

• Support individuals to choose change through weighing up the pros and cons of change to resolve their ambivalence/tip the balance between the pros and cons by:
- exploring ambivalence and alternatives,
- identifying reasons for change/risks of not changing,
- increasing the persons confidence in their ability to change.

Highlight/promote awareness of success stories/those who have made and sustained similar change to encourage others to follow their example and improve their confidence in their ability to change.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:

Strengthen commitment to change through use of OARS (see above):

• Elicit change talk by asking open-ended questions related to:
disadvantages of the status quo
advantages of change
optimism for change
their intention to change.

• Use reflections to amplify or reinforce individuals desire for change.

• Use affirmations to help build individuals confidence in their ability to change.

• Use summaries to point out discrepancies between the person’s current situation and future goals.

A Readiness for change ruler, and/or Decisional balance /costs and benefits analysis exercise can also support strengthening commitment to change.

C4A Participatory Tools:

T15. Cost Benefit Analysis
T16. Animal Welfare Snakes and Ladders Game
T17. If I Were an Animal
T22. Animal Welfare Transect Walk
T24a. Closed Ended Story Telling to promote a specific behaviour to solve a particular problem
T26. Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis
T27. Increasing Perceived Importance of Animals
T33. Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis

C4A Facilitator Resources:

2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change
3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk
4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change
5. Negotiated Behaviour Change: Guidance on Overcoming Resistance to Change
9. Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours
Preparation:

Individuals are motivated to change their behaviour/see the benefits of change, and are intent upon taking action.

They believe the positives/benefits of change outweigh the costs, however are considering what to do.

For example, a person is convinced of the benefits of addressing a particular welfare issue, but lack the understanding of what to do about it.
• Goal Setting - support individuals to identify a specific target for change / goal.

• Making a commitment to change.

• Support them to explore options for making the change and select appropriate strategies for taking action e.g. identify time to act, who/what will help.

• Recognize/reiterate individuals’ choice and control over any decisions or change they make.

• Develop a realistic plan for taking action.

• Discuss potential problems/challenges and solutions to help reduce their perceived/real barriers that may make the behaviour more difficult to adopt e.g. how to acquire the necessary knowledge or skills, or ideas for reducing costs.

• Create social conditions to support individuals in making the change as needed (Davis Jr. 2010):
- work to change community norms to favour change
- draw attention to those who have made a change
- organize events or create opportunities for individuals to make their commitment to change publicly or in front of others for greater accountability
Recommended Tools/Techniques:

• Continue elicit change talk to strengthen individuals commitment to change.
• Write down individuals goals for change and change plan.

C4A Participatory Tools:

T21. Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis
T22. Animal Welfare Transect Walk
T24b. Animal Welfare Before and After Story to promote understanding of the steps to achieving desired change
T24c. Open Ended Story Telling to help identify possible solutions to problems
T26. Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis
T28. Group Sustainability Mapping
T30. Community Animal Welfare Visioning
T33. Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis
T34. Community Animal Welfare Action Planning

C4A Facilitator Resources:

2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change
3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk
4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change
9. Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours
19. Community Action Planner
Action:

Individuals have initiated change and start practicing the new behaviour, experiencing its benefits as well as costs, such as time, effort, money, opinions of They are taking steps towards change, however haven’t fully stabilized in the process.

For example, a person has begun sheltering their animals at night, however may find that this now requires extra effort to regularly keep it clean.
Support individuals to implement action plans and take steps toward change based on the plan they developed and revise as needed.

• Work to

Recognize/reward successes: provide encouragement and feedback on positive steps taken towards desired behaviours, praise and recognize individuals efforts.

Support individuals to overcome challenges e.g. skill building, assisting with solving problems, identifying and removing/avoiding problem behaviour triggers.

Consider mechanisms for supporting accountability to help maintain individuals motivation and commitment e.g. self-monitoring, public sharing of achievements/proud moments, give praise and recognition of efforts, facilitate peer-peer support networks.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:

Affirmations can be used to recognize individuals’ strengths and efforts in taking action to change.

C4A Participatory Tools:

T22. Animal Welfare Transect Walk
T24c Open Ended Story Telling to help identify possible solutions to problems
T34. Community Animal Welfare Action Planning

C4A Facilitator Resources:

2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change
17. Ideas for Structuring Community Meetings to Promote Reflection And Learning
19. Community Action Planner
Maintenance:

Individuals are practicing the new behaviour and making necessary adjustments to sustain the change. The benefits or positives of change are clearly outweigh the costs/negatives. new behaviour is sustained for at least 6 months.

For example, despite efforts to require to learn how to train their animals using positive reinforcement rather than harmful punishments, a person continued guiding their horses without whipping for at least 6 months.
Ensure preconditions for sustainability of change.

Support individuals to develop processes and skills for maintaining change.

Support individuals to identify and use strategies to prevent return to prior behaviour.

Continue to promote individuals’ motivation and confidence in abilities to sustain change through:

• Regular discussions and reflection, and sharing of success stories by those who have made and sustained change, and recognize people’s efforts to change and encourage others to follow their example.

• Continue positive reinforcement and establish mechanisms of rewards and recognition for maintaining behaviours e.g. acknowledge individuals efforts, commitment, and achievements, encourage individuals to be role models for others, public sharing of their successes, continued self-monitoring and reflection on their positive efforts and achievements, as well as benefits of change.

• Encouraged utilization of support systems e.g. peer support networks, linkages with local organizations/extension agents etc.

Establish accountability mechanisms that encourage individuals to sustain change e.g. self-monitoring and sharing of results, peer-peer support and sharing of progress.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:

Affirmations can be used to recognize individuals’ strengths and efforts in maintaining change.

C4A Participatory Tools:

T11b. Change Analysis: Before and Now Analysis
17. Ideas for Structuring Community Meetings to Promote Reflection And Learning
T22. Animal Welfare Transect Walk

C4A Facilitator Resources:

2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change
17. Ideas for Structuring Community Meetings to Promote Reflection And Learning
Relapse:

When individuals return/relapse to previous behaviour.

Individuals may relapse to any prior stage of change.
Help the person renew the processes of contemplation and action without becoming stuck or demoralised.Refer to suggested tools associated with stage of change individual has relapsed to.

Use affirmations to recognize individuals’ strengths and efforts to change rather than focusing on their unsuccessful results.

C4A Facilitator Resources:

2. Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change
3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk

This resource was developed with aid of Human Behaviour Change for Animals and the following sources [114, 112, 57].


7. Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging

QUICK LINKS
1.1 Developing your messaging strategy
1.2 Psychological and societal drivers your messaging strategy needs to consider
1.3 How to design and deliver effective messages

Effective outreach messaging is key to delivering sustainable changes to improve animal welfare. This resource will outline how to develop your messaging strategy; the psychological and societal drivers to consider that will influence the content and design of the messaging; and how to design and deliver messaging in the most effective way to be heard, accepted, and ultimately change behaviour. Follow the steps outlined in the Community Development, Community Engagement, and Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approaches to gather the information you need to generate a greater understanding of your target audience, including barriers that might prevent behaviour change, and what messaging and communication mediums may work best for the specific audience you aim to target.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Capability, Motivation

Stages of Change:
Pre-Contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage

Project Support:
Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics:
Outreach and Communication,Community Change Agents

ATTENTION!

Communication is a two-way process; it is as important to listen as it is to speak. Listen to feedback given by your target audience, ask for their guidance and then actively listen to their response, and avoid imposing your own ideas without giving full credence to theirs. Your target audience will teach you about their community, so listen and observe carefully.

1.1 Developing your messaging strategy

No community is homogenous, so it is critical to consider the following as you develop ideas (adapted from [32]):

  • Who do you want to communicate with?
  • Are there potential supporters or barriers to communication? You need to ascertain who the allies and gatekeepers are to the information you want to communicate i.e. those who may support or regulate the way messaging can be designed and disseminated? You will need to need to anticipate reactions when developing/framing the messages so ensure you work with these allies and gatekeepers to facilitate the effectiveness of the communication.
  • Do you need to tailor messages for different target audiences? Are you trying to change the behaviour of animal owners, or perhaps people who offer resource provision for animal owners, or those at a higher level of leadership within a community?
  • Why should your message matter to your audience?
  • What are the differences within your target audience you need to consider, such as values, social norms, beliefs, religions, traditions, power dynamics and varied experiences because of intersecting issues in their lives?
  • Does everyone in your target audience have a similar capacity and motivation for change? For example, are there differences in literacy levels, knowledge, and access to resources or wide socio-economic divides? Does everyone have the same need or want to change?
  • What is the main overarching narrative any messaging needs to convey?
  • What are your communication goals? Key messages need to support these goals. Try to keep specific goals to only one or two; distribution of resources over too many goals will dilute messaging and reduce the likelihood of behaviour change.
  • What are your messaging needs - are they needed to support a long term or short-term subject?
  • How does your messaging create a sustainable vision for the future – do you know what that might look like?
  • How widely do you want to disseminate information? (this may also depend on your organisation’s targets, which will influence how accessible it needs to be to a wider audience) A small, more personalised approach can be more effective but is more resource heavy, than a larger scale approach, which is less resource intensive, reaches a greater audience but may cause less degree of change [88].
  • How do the audience share information between themselves, and how do they most readily receive information?

Your message is the core information you wish to communicate, through whichever media you have decided will be most effective within your target audience (refer to Societal and Campaigns Approach for more information about types of communication media). Your messaging needs to persuade people that they need to change, though of course behaviour change is not as simple as telling someone they need to change. People need to be supported and given opportunities to explore the problems and generate ideas for possible solutions - giving them ownership of the changes they need to create ( [89]). Bear in mind you will never attain 100% uptake of any behaviour change target, people are individuals with differing priorities and pressures.

1.2 Psychological and societal drivers your messaging
strategy needs to consider

Behaviour is incredibly complex so effective messaging to create sustainable behaviour change needs to consider how all the following drivers’ interplay and influence each other, for example, knowledge can influence attitudes but then changing attitudes can lead to a person seeking out more knowledge; internal and external drivers can be interdependent [90]. Also refer to the facilitator resource 2. Essential communication skills for promoting behaviour change.

1.2.1 Internal and External Drivers

Internal and external drivers must be considered when designing messaging for human behaviour change. The following section outlines different internal and external drivers influencing people’s behaviours.

Internal and external drivers must be considered when designing messaging for human behaviour change.
The following section outlines different internal and external drivers influencing people’s behaviours.

Social norms

Social norms are the informal rules and understandings everyone abides by [91] and are an important driver in behaviour change; what people see others doing may be more likely to encourage them to adopt the behaviour [90]. However, social norms can also create barriers to positive behaviours by the persistence of negative behaviours that are perceived as acceptable within that community [91]. Social norms as drivers of behaviour make perfect sense; if we see others performing a behaviour, we can see that it works, and we can also observe the method. People are drawn towards those who behave the same way and avoid those who deviate (generally!). Using messaging that harnesses social and descriptive norms may increase the effectiveness of the information you are trying to convey, particularly when the information is included as part of guided group discussion [90]. For example, highlighting how a target behaviour has benefitted or been adopted by a proportion of people already within their community, is more likely to influence uptake, than communicating about social responsibility towards animal welfare improvement. Be careful when developing messaging, as highlighting the frequency people engage in undesirable behaviours can also increase the likelihood of other people adopting these behaviours for the same reasons as previously mentioned. People are highly social, so if they believe an undesirable behaviour is common within their community your message could have the opposite impact to the one you are expecting [90, 89].

Values

Introducing this concept in your messaging is important to overcome barriers such as those mentioned previously, in the maintenance of negative behaviours due to social norms. Introducing shared values, a value-based approach, or thinking about the values needed to grow within the community to move towards positive behaviour change, can create useful dialogue about the similarities we share with the audience and enables diverging behaviour to be reframed within a more acceptable vision [91]. Values determine a person’s willingness to change, their openness to new information and their concern for ‘others’. Although changing people’s values is incredibly difficult, targeting these values when developing messaging can be a very effective method to encourage behaviour change [90].

Attitude

Attitudes are strong predictors of behaviour when “based on personal experience, specific to the behaviour, and salient”. The most effective messaging considers the credibility of its source (your key influencers), the format your messaging takes and its content. Make messaging applicable and salient for your target audience, something the audience can believe is replicable and beneficial to them in their current environment [90].

Beliefs

In addition, an individual’s beliefs will influence their interpretation and processing of messaging; beliefs are an individual’s assertion that something exists or is true developed from their direct personal exposure to information. People are more likely to accept messaging that is framed in a way that is consistent with their beliefs; if messaging does not challenge their world view, they are less likely to reject it. When people are exposed to messaging that is inconsistent with their beliefs, they are likely to show resistance to the new information and more firmly fix onto their original view; this also has implications when developing messaging as people will most strongly believe the first messaging that is delivered so ensuring it is accurate is essential. Be aware of your own beliefs when developing messaging, incorrect assumptions may cause offence and alienate your audience.

Personal norms

Personal norms will play a part in how willing someone is to take responsibility and change their behaviour. It is difficult to increase someone’s sense of personal responsibility but asking for a level of commitment through your communications can increase the likelihood a person will try to act. This is even more effective when people verbalise or write their commitments publicly rather than in private, but these commitments should always be a voluntary action [90]. When an agreed commitment is written and displayed publicly within a community, those who have joined in with the agreement will have a greater feeling that the behaviour change is being internally driven by their own choices. For behaviour change to be truly sustainable, a person needs to be able to attribute that change to themselves, rather than some external forces. However, there will be differences on how much value is placed on individuals expressing their own individual behaviour, depending on whether communities have interdependent or independent cultures [90].

Emotions

Emotions are a useful route to encourage sustainable behaviour [90]. Increasing empathy, such as encouraging your target audience to ‘imagine how an animal feels’ or by appreciating some elements of shared experiences with their animals, may promote willingness to try methods of husbandry that are known to be more humane.

Self Efficacy

Self efficacy or a person’s belief in their ability to perform an action, increases motivation to perform a behaviour [90]. Some members of your target audience, such as those more marginalised or discriminated against, may have less confidence in their ability to create change or make a difference [92, 93]. Using messaging that increases knowledge about the behavioural options available to improve animal welfare, particularly when broken down into smaller manageable steps with regular positive feedback, can support peoples’ perceptions of their ability to change their practices [90]. Messaging may need to be developed that helps support the challenging or broadening of perceptions within the wider public e.g. promoting women as key decision makers in seeking services when this is not typical within their community or how an individual woman perceives themselves.

Social Capital

Encouraging the collaboration of groups of individuals, either as formed memberships or peer to peer, can increase the effectiveness of messaging. Groups of individuals working together may provide a link between individual action attempts and a wider societal reach; working together provides social support and encourages sustaining behaviour change to form habitual patterns. Social capital or the shared bonds, reciprocity and trust encouraged by working together increases obligations and cooperation and is a useful concept to embrace. However, it will not work in isolation if a community does not have the capacity for change (such as a lack of resources, knowledge, power and so on) but embedding messages within social groups is known to increase their effectiveness. Ensuring messaging and communications are participatory in their development increases the chances the behaviour change will be adopted by heightening the sense of group or social identity and empowerment within the target audience [90].

Cognitive dissonance

Correct framing will influence how well received and understood your messaging is, and ultimately influence whether people are likely to change their behaviour and/ or attitudes. Incorrectly framed messages may move people into cognitive dissonance and denial, creating a barrier towards any further change [94]; but harnessing dissonance may also motivate behaviour change in a direction more consistent with a person’s attitudes and as the behaviour changes the attitude may change to be more consistent with the behaviour [90].

1.3 How to design and deliver effective messages

Messaging as a journey (adapted from [124])

To provide a good, solid foundation, messaging needs to capture attention and be relevant to your audience:

Vivid

  • visually eye–catching, vividly descriptive and/or audibly attention grabbing
    • Where possible, use media or communications that utilise all the senses – people learn and remember in different ways so try to capture the imagination of as many of your audience as possible. Embed messages within the physical environment your target audience frequent and the media sources they tend to utilise [125].

Applicable

  • Applicable: to real life - tangible, believable, achievable
    • Make the idea you are trying to convey tangible to that audience – if a concept is tricky to understand make it clearer by relating it to something where they do have experience.

Personalised

  • Personalised: to your target audience – beliefs, social norms, attitudes etc.,
    • Use images as close to the target audiences’ experience as possible – it needs to be believable, and people need to feel they too could achieve what is being shown. Use local landmarks, recognisable clothing, types of building, and so on.

(Adapted from [32])

1.3.1 Development of messaging

An effective communication strategy must include well-conceived content, but the delivery, dissemination and execution of the information is key to drawing the audience in whilst also motivating and empowering them to change [97].

Empower

Messaging needs to support a person’s feeling of empowerment, be inclusive, non-discriminatory and avoid gender-blindness/ gender exploitation.

Use understandable language

Keep messaging simple, avoid jargon or the use of unfamiliar terminology as this will turn a receptive audience into an ambivalent one very quickly.

Use audience guidance to develop messages

Target audiences may adhere to very different values and behaviours in terms of communication styles. Develop relationships and be creative, respect, listen and respond to these differences. It is important to generate messaging that is meaningful to your audience and allow them to be instrumental in supporting that process of change. Prescriptive communications and provision of solutions can create reliance and disempower your audience, and this process can encourage psychological reactance, which creates barriers to change [91, 98]. See Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach for the practical ways to encourage target audience discussion.

Frame your message

Evaluation of ways that make the behaviour easy or difficult, and whether solutions are simple or require more involved interventions, all impact how messaging is framed and how it will be received. People cannot change their behaviour if the resource required to support that change is not available within their environment or is inaccessible due to its cost or complexity of use [90]. Most messages highlight positive outcomes but sometimes highlighting the losses that may be incurred if a behaviour change is not adopted can be more effective. Emphasising the local and immediate impacts of the issue can encourage your audience to relate to the issue and increase effectiveness of communications [32, 97].

Debunking

Correcting misinformation or myths can backfire, so it is recommended to avoid using this technique in your messaging. Mentioning misinformation can serve to increase familiarity and reinforce the maintenance or adoption of negative undesirable behaviours. If you have no option and this technique must be used, any misinformation debunking should always follow clear evidence containing the correct information [97].

Make messaging specific

Describe actions clearly, in easy steps to improve clarity and comprehension and increase a person’s self-efficacy (see section 1.2.1).

Avoid fear based, threatening or authoritarian/ prescriptive messaging

People react to these types of messages with either problem-focused coping or emotion-focused coping, and responses are heavily reliant on the degree of self-efficacy (see section 1.2.1) and the control people have of their situation. Reactions are likely to lead to avoidance, particularly when dealing with marginalised communities, so this method of messaging should be avoided [32].

Encourage commitment

By getting people to sign up to the project, perhaps those who have signed up or pledged to work at targeted changes get some visible marker that they have joined – such as a badge or other signal that increases the chance of them sticking to the project (people do not like to be inconsistent), which can then encourage peers to want to sign up. Refer to personal norms and social norms in section 1.2.1. for more information. Public commitment to change tends to be effective at sustained behaviour change by transferring motivation from an external source (pleasing others) to an internal one (self-fulfilment) [90, 89].

Provide goals

Encouraging the target audience either individually or together to work towards certain target behaviours can increase the perception of social norms (see section 1.2.1.) and encourage peer-to peer pressure to engage in them.

Make messages memorable

Develop specific prompts to help people remember the behaviour changes when you are clear which behaviour you are targeting, these prompts can also be linked to parts of an established routine to increase the chances of habit formation [91]. If there are barriers to people adopting some behaviours, for instance being unsure about how to treat certain wounds, you could create a card that your audience can use that takes them through the steps (either visually or written depending on literacy) or create a vivid reminder to water their animals that they can attach to somewhere prominent [32, 89].

1.3.2 Delivery of messages

Use a credible source

Pick your spokesperson/s carefully; trust and rapport is an important element of behaviour change [97]. To disseminate some of your messaging you may want to use existing social networks and so enlisting people considered influential within their community is key – refer to Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach for guidance on how to identify these key influencers. Do not immediately assume the key influencers to be the official leaders within a community. Do your research; key influencers are those who the target audience look up to as valuable sources of credible information and are also those who encounter the greatest number of people [90]. Avoid the use of groups or channels that could increase social divisions, such as strongly political or those from a very different socio-economic background [90].

Avoid solely providing information

This is known to be less effective at promoting behaviour change, although knowledge does matter. Giving people information to enable them to understand their behavioural options and the impact of these options on welfare is important, particularly at low levels of knowledge [90].

Narratives

The use of narratives with compelling storylines and characters that relate to the target audiences’ beliefs and values can emotionally engage audiences and motivate change with greater effectiveness than arguments and information [97].

Behaviour change is dynamic

Not all information will be relevant or most effective at the same time or in the same way [96] – adapt your messaging, accordingly, listen to feedback and for change talk, different messaging will work effectively depending on the Stage of Change of your target audience.

Showcase

Use early adopters of the targeted behaviour change to showcase the benefits in your messaging. Showcasing examples from early adopters serves two purposes, it not only shows the target audience that behaviour change is achievable, which creates social norms and overcomes barriers, but also it increases the commitment the adopter has and in doing so increases the chance the behaviour change will be sustained [89]. These early adopters could also assist by disseminating messaging; encouraging peer to peer or community contact is a major influence on adoption of behaviour changes via social diffusion [32].

Feedback

Effective messaging involves receiving feedback from your target audience, which can help guide and adapt your messaging to make it more effective, but you also have a responsibility to feedback to your target audience. Where target behaviours have been adopted feeding back to your community about, for instance, how many people have reduced the wounds in their animals, or have adopted free access to water provision, can serve to increase the likelihood of the behaviour change being sustained in the longer term.

Monitor and evaluate

Do this throughout your communications and adapt your strategy where needed using the tools outlined in Community Development, Community Engagement and Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approaches.

The following videos provide more insights on the concepts in this resource:

• VIDEO: How to Design Effective SBC Messages and Materials
• VIDEO: The recipe for great communication
• VIDEO: Brené Brown on Empathy
• VIDEO: Norm - Communication Theories
• VIDEO: Values
• VIDEO: Cognitive Dissonance Theory: A Crash Course
• VIDEO: Self-Efficacy Theory of Motivation Explained
• VIDEO: Le Sentiment d'Efficacité Personnelle (French)
• VIDEO: La Dissonance Cognitive (French)
• VIDEO: Principe De Réactance - Definition & Solution (French)
• VIDEO: Reactancia Psicológica (Spanish)
• VIDEO: ¿Las personas se resisten al cambio? (Spanish)
• VIDEO: 5 Etapas del Cambio (Spanish)
• VIDEO: Las Actitudes (Spanish)
• VIDEO: Autoeficacia (Spanish)
• VIDEO: Les techniques de communication (French)
• VIDEO: les Normes Sociales (French)
• VIDEO: Les valeurs c'est quoi? (French)
• VIDEO: L'Empathie et l'Ecoute Active (French)
• VIDEO: Persuasion #1 - Attitude, comportement, communication persuasive (French)
• VIDEO: Comunicación Efectiva • Cómo Mejorar La Comunicación (Spanish)

Link to References Cited


T11 Change Analysis

QUICK LINKS
T11a Changing trend analysis
t11b Before and Now Analysis Changing Trend

This PLA may be conducted to assess change in a variety of contexts, and this tool includes guidance for two different versions, including: a) changing trends analysis, and b) before and now change analysis.

T11a: Changing Trend Analysis

A changing trend analysis helps the community to identify changing trends over time, for example over generations. Here, a ‘generation’ refers to people born and living around the same time e.g. ‘grandparents generation’, ‘parents generation’, ‘present generation’ etc. Through discussion of present and past situations, this tool enables participants to identify the significant changes that have occurred over time, promoting a greater understanding of the current situation.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To reflect on changes to the lives of animals and animal-owning households within a community over time:
- animal populations
- reliance and use of animals
- animal husbandry and management practices
- disease patterns
- availability and use of health services and resources
- climate or other environmental factors

• To generate discussion about significant changes over time and reasons for any perceived negative changes that have occurred
2 - 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

Approaches for Working With Communities:
Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Capability, Motivation

Project Support:
Participatory Learning and Action Tools

Specific Topics:
Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services;  Livelihoods; Vulnerability / Resilience

Changing trend analysis

Figure T11A-1 Changing trend analysis matrix (analysis criteria on vertical axis, generations on horizontal axis)

Figure T11A-1 Changing trend analysis matrix (analysis criteria on vertical axis, generations on horizontal axis)

Figure T11A-2 Changing trend analysis of changes affecting potters and their working animals over four generations

The completed matrix above is the result of a changing trend analysis carried out with a group of animal-owning farmers. It was used as part of a community needs assessment and shared vision. It shows changes in work type and land ownership, quantity, type and cost of animal feed and fodder, grazing land accessibility and availability, average household income and expenditure, availability of and distance to travel for water, human and animal disease prevalence and treatment options, and changing political situation. As a result of this exercise, farmers were able to identify opportunities to mitigate the trends they identified as negatively impacting their lives and the related welfare of their animals.

Changing Trend Analysis
Step 1Start by explaining that the purpose of the exercise is to understand how the situation in the community has changed over time, and that the group will start with the present and then look at the past. Then ask the group what changes they have experienced in their lives as compared to the past?

Examples:

• Income-generating activities for men and women (separately)
• Household income
• Household expenditure

Other human aspects, such as food consumption, health and illness, education, and social groups, such as religious groups, self-help & savings/loaning groups, women’s groups. Access & availability of natural resources, such as water, wood, soil, land, etc.

Then ask about changes they have experienced related to their animals.

Examples include:

• Types of animals
• Animal work types
• Feed practices
• Health/illness
• Treatment

Ask the community helper to write all identified changes on cards using words or drawings. Make sure that each criterion is specific, for example if participants say ‘water’ clarity if they mean ‘access and availability of water’. Once all changes have been identified, ask participants to select the cards representing the changes which are most important to them. It is the facilitator’s job to ensure that the ones most important to the project are included.
Step 2Then ask participants to define a timescale for their analysis. It may be based on generations, such as ‘in our grandparents’ time’, ‘in our parents’ time’ and ‘in our time’, or other important activities, events, or years.

Ask the community helper to draw a matrix on the ground and show the chosen time scale on the horizontal axis along the top of the matrix and place the cards with the trend criteria identified in step 1 down the vertical axis (figure T11A-1).
Step 3Next, explain to the group that they will complete the matrix and decide with the group how they wish to display the situation for each trend criteria. For example, by scoring criteria that can be measured using seeds or stones (0 to 10 for income/expenditure), and/or drawings, symbols, or words for lists of objects etc. As the group defines the scenario for each trend criteria, ask the helper to represent the situation on cards using the chosen means of display.
Step 4Once the matrix is complete, record the trend analysis by adding a column labelled ‘analyses to the matrix.

Use the following guiding questions to facilitate a discussion about changes over time:

• What are the significant trends or changes that have occurred over time?
• Are these trends/changes positive or negative?
• What caused these trends/changes to occur?

In the ‘analysis’ column, write whether the change has been positive or negative and have participants expand on the negative changes. Explore the possibility and interest in taking action to address the identified negative changes.
Step 5The matrix produced should be left with the community. Take a picture or copy and add it to your project action tracker for future reference and to assist with intervention planning.

Facilitator’s Notes: Changing trend analysis

  • Include a broad cross-section of animal-owning household members of all ages. Invite 10-20 people to participate in this exercise (e.g. youth, adults, elders).
  • If it is not possible or locally appropriate to do the exercise collectively with both sexes, conduct the exercise separately with men and women. Each may recall different events and changes due to the impacts that resulted in their lives.
  • Do not lead participants into identifying changes that are not important to them. While asking probing questions, emphasize identifying changes that they perceive to be important. Events or perceived changes should not be included simply because the facilitator inquiries about them.
  • Clarify any doubts to understand people’s perceptions about changes over time by reaching consensus amongst participants.

Next Steps

As part of a community needs assessment and shared vision, this activity might accompany one or more of the following tools to get a full picture of community dynamics and needs for project planning:

  • T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
  • T2 Mobility Map to understand where people spend most of their time and how long it takes to get places.
  • T3 Venn Diagram (T3b Social Networking Venn diagram) to identify key individuals, groups and actors perceived to be most important to people and their animals. 
  • T4 Daily Activity Schedule to understand which activities take up the most time.
  • T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.

Once a needs assessment is complete, consider:

  • T12 Dependency Analysis to understand animal-owning households’ level of dependency on external actors and their implications on resources and services important to ensuring animals’ welfare.

T11b: Before and Now Analysis Changing Trend

The before and now analysis helps the community to identify changes from the beginning to the end of an animal welfare improvement project. This tool may be used to analyse many different aspects of peoples’ lives and the lives of their animals, including changes in people’s reliance/use of animals, animal care practices, animal disease patterns and related impacts on people, availability and use of animal-related health services and resources, climate or other environmental factors affecting animals and people.

Tool purpose:Time needed:
• To reflect on perceived changes in the lives of animals and animal owning households within the project period
• As a learning and reflection tool to assess perceived changes in animal welfare and people’s behaviours  as a result of community/project activities
• To determine if there are remaining areas of improvement that can be addressed
2 hours  
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards or other locally available materials.

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Exit & Evaluation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation

Stages of Behaviour Change: Maintenance Stage

Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Monitoring and Evaluation

Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Livelihoods; Vulnerability/Resilience

Before and Now Analysis
Project Change CriteriaBeforeNowScore
Food ProvisionProvided:
• Wheat straw
• Rice husk
Provided mixed feed:
• Wheat straw
• Wheat bran
• Gram
• Green fodder
8
Water ProvisionOnce during workday4 – 5 times during workday10
LSP SkillsFarriers were unskilled and made mistakesFarriers now more skilled and make less mistakes7
Owners’ knowledge of AWOwners lacked knowledge of how to recognizeOwners know what to look for when animals being treated by LSP7
LSP accessPreviously free servicesAvailability better – now have LSP phone numbers7
BeatingEveryone used to beat their animalsNo more beating6

Figure T11B Before and now results from a group of animal owners in Faisalabad, Pakistan

The matrix in figure 11B was produced by a group of animal-owners at the end of a five year project as part of the community’s self-evaluation. They wanted to determine whether the human and animal welfare changes within their community could be sustained over time without the intervention team. The group compared the situation before the intervention to the present state, analysed what the differences meant and whether they thought that they had the skills, knowledge and tools needed to continue to improve on their own.

The group identified six key areas where change has been observed since the beginning of the animal welfare improvement project: food provision (dietary diversity), water provision (daily increase), local service providers’ skills (improvement), owners’ knowledge of good animal welfare, access to local service providers (LSPs) and beating of animals. After scoring the extent to which the majority of the community had made positive change, the group determined that more work was needed to improve LSP skills, owners’ knowledge of animal welfare, access to LSPs and beating of animals. They added the actions that they would take to the community action plan and set a date for the next meeting to focus on beating, which scored the lowest amongst the positive changes.

Before and Now Analysis
Step 1Start by explaining to the group that they will be reflecting on changes in the lives of animals and their own community members within the project period, comparing how things were before the project to now.
Step 2Ask the group about the present situation relating to animals’ care, use and their own livelihood status. Have the group compare the present situation to the past.

Ask:

• What are some of the changes that have resulted since project/community action plan activities were implemented?
• How have things changed since the beginning of the project?

As the community comes up with the present situation, have the community helper write the changes with words or symbols on cards.

Examples of change categories might include:

• Men’s/women’s work types
• Animals’ usage
• Household income, expenditure, credit (group formation)
• Land access & usage
• Animal and human diseases and treatments
• Community dynamics (more cohesion amongst group)
• Climate change situation (water/feed storage)
• Political situation (changes to laws, by-laws)
• Environmental change (infrastructure improvements, increased availability of resources)

Please note: If the community comes up with more than 10 changes, ask participants to select the cards representing the 8-10 changes which are most important to them.
Step 3Ask the community helper to draw a matrix on the ground or large sheet of chart paper. Label three columns ‘change in project’, ‘before’ and ‘now’. Have the helper place the cards representing the most important changes down the first column under ‘change in project’.

Then, facilitate a discussion on how the present situation has changed since the project started. The past and present situations will be defined by the community through this discussion. As each situation is defined for each of the changes, have the community helper write the results on cards and place the past scenario in the ‘before’ column and the present situation in the ‘now’ column.
Step 4Have the community helper add a fourth column and label it ‘score’. Ask the community to score out of 10 the proportion of the community who meets the ‘now’ criteria. For example, a score of 10 = everyone has changed; 0 = no change.
Step 5Once the matrix is complete, discuss the results of the activity with the group.

Follow the discussion by asking:

• Does everyone agree with the results? If yes, why? If no, why not?
• What needs to change for everyone to achieve the desired result?
- Can you achieve the desired results without our intervention?
- If yes, do you feel that you have skills, knowledge, and resources to continue without the intervention team?

If the group determines that not all the project objectives have been met and wish to continue with the project, have the community helper add any identified priorities to the community action plan for later discussion and further planning.
Step 6The matrix should be documented through photos or recreated on paper. Copies should be made and distributed to the group for their records, future reference and/or action planning. Add a copy to your project action tracker.

Facilitator’s Notes: Before and now analysis

  • If possible, invite 10-15 people to participate in this exercise.
  • If it is not possible or locally appropriate to do the exercise collectively with both sexes, consider conducting the exercise separately with men and women. Each may recall different change criteria due to the impacts that resulted in their lives.
  • Do not lead participants into identifying changes that are not important to them. While asking probing questions, emphasize identifying changes that they perceive to be important. Perceived changes should not be included simply because the facilitator inquiries about them.
  • Have the community’s original shared vision available for reference during the final discussion.

Next Steps

If the community determines it is satisfied with the changes it has achieved:

  • Consider using T28 Group Sustainability Mapping tool to help participants in planning to sustain their welfare improvements independently once support from the facilitating organization has ceased.
  • The facilitating organization may use the qualitative before and now findings of project successes to support project reporting or future funding proposals.  
  • If participants indicate the project activities have not achieved the desired changes, update the community action plan and project action tracker with any new agreed actions. Re-evaluate persistent issues using any or all of the following tools:

Tool adapted from: Participatory Rural Appraisal Manual (Trend Analysis pg. 25)

Link to References Cited


Module 3 | Part 3: Deciding How to Work

QUICK LINKS
3.1 Overview of Communities for Animals Approaches for Working with Communities
3.2 Considerations for Selecting an Approach for Working with Communities
Quiz 9: Approaches for Working with Communities

3.1 Overview of Communities for Animals Approaches for Working with Communities

The communities for animals’ resource provides step by step guidance for three different intensity approaches for working with communities to improve their animals’ welfare based on recommended best practices for promoting behaviour change and the highest level of community participation for lasting change.

The three approaches are further explained below:

Approach 1

INTENSIVE COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT APPROACH

The community development (CD) approach is the most participatory, empowering and intensive approach involving.

The core of this approach is to build the capacity of the animal-owning community to act as a collective for sustainable improvement in the welfare of their animals. It requires time, effort and commitment from you and the community. This approach relies heavily on participatory learning and action (PLA) methods to facilitate an inquiry process whereby group members come to identify, understand, and prioritize their animal welfare issues, and discuss and agree on actions to take to address them. With your support, members of the group can work together to:

  • Improve their understanding of animal welfare and their own animal husbandry and management practices
  • Improve the quality, accessibility and availability of existing service providers in their area
  • Make and/or negotiate collective purchases of animal related resources for improved cost savings
  • Advocate for their needs with a unified voice
  • Improve access and availability of financial resources if group savings and loan initiatives are undertaken

The existence of a strong, cohesive group is essential to achieving the motivation, knowledge and monitoring mechanisms for mutual learning and peer support for improving the lives of animals. These groups could be newly established or existing groups that can mainstream animal welfare issues and work on animal welfare needs improvement. Co-operation between owners also allows the group to do things that its members could not achieve as individuals, such as buying animal feed in bulk, and advocating for their needs, such as holding service-providers to account for the quality of service they provide. Collective action undertaken by groups is not only beneficial to group members but can potentially benefit individuals within the broader community e.g. promoting quality health services, and securing low cost feed. The CD approach relies on participatory learning and action processes and tools, which are well-aligned with supporting community groups’ progress through the stages of change to achieve and sustain animal welfare improvements on their own.

The CD approach can be used to complement the CE approach when:

  • Community groups engaged through the CD approach are utilized to provide cross learning opportunities for CE approach sites e.g. Village-to-village visits, competitions.
  • CE or SOC communities are linked with service providers linked with community groups in CD projects.
  • Group members are encouraged to continue to act as change agents and agenda setters upon project exit, and model and encourage animal welfare improvements to peers.

In addition, this approach can support the societal outreach and campaigns approach, for example when community-based organizations formed through this approach are consulted to inform campaign development, pilot or communicate outreach messaging.

Approach 2

SEMI-INTENSIVE COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT APPROACH

The community engagement (CE) approach is an intermediate approach, which requires you the community engagement facilitator or a trained community change agent to directly engage with individuals or groups to facilitate behaviour change to improve animal welfare, albeit visits may be less frequent than the CD approach.

This approach does not require advanced facilitation skills and can be delivered through trained community change agents and therefore can support broader reach than the community development approach.

This approach relies heavily on using recommended tools and techniques in effective communication for behaviour change and adult learning theory. This involves consulting communities and listening to understand why they practice behaviours contributing to poor animal welfare and facilitating a process to support building their self-efficacy, knowledge, skills, and motivation to change their behaviours. Ideally, this approach seeks to improve the animal welfare issues and related animal husbandry and management practices prioritized for change by communities, who supports community members’ progress through the stages of change.

On the spectrum of participation, this approach promotes consultation, involvement, and collaboration with communities to support behaviour change for animal welfare improvements. To the extent this approach relies on organized events to raise awareness and build community capacity to improve animal welfare, communities are ideally involved to greatest extent feasible, regardless of whether issues and solutions were collaboratively identified e.g. involving community members in role plays, competitions, or other organized events such as theatre performances etc.

The semi-intensive approach can also be used to make maximum use of the intensive community development initiatives you may be doing, by extending some of benefits of the community development approach to groups in the communities where animals are experiencing poor welfare in areas located nearby groups formed through the community development approach. The aim here would be to create opportunities for cross-site learning between animal owners in intensive and semi-intensive groups, and linking with service providers with whom you are already working in the nearby intensive communities. This is particularly useful when you find you are unable to work intensively with all of the high-risk animals at the same time, either because your organization does not have the capacity or the animal owners are too scattered to initiate group formation for collective action. In particular, the CE approach can be used to complement the CD approach by:

  • Supporting rapport building and sensitization during initiation phase. For example, working through change agents to permit greater understanding of the local context and community dynamics.
  • Support sustainability of behaviour change upon withdrawal of project support by the facilitating organization, for example if community change agents continue to provide light touch support to peers to motivate and sustain animal welfare improvements.
  • Tools and techniques common to this approach can be used by facilitators to support group members through the stages of change.
Approach 3

EXTENSIVE SOCIETAL OUTREACH AND CAMPAIGNS APPROACH

The social outreach and campaigns (SOC) approach is the least intensive approach and involves using persuasive communication techniques and/or demonstrations to provide information and raise awareness of animal welfare issues and best practices amongst the target population.

The extensive approach is best used where there are limits or constraints on the ability of you or your organization to work intensively with communities. This approach reaches target populations using broadcast media (TV, radio), outdoor media (billboards, posters), print media (leaflets/other written materials, newspapers), digital media (internet, mobile phone application) [21], or outreach campaigns and organized events e.g. community fairs, competitions, theatre performances, puppet shows. This approach can also be used to influence target groups indirectly by incorporating animal welfare improvement messages into the work of existing organizations in the area such as schools, religious groups, cooperatives, unions. The extensive approach may be used in areas with high or low animal density. However, welfare messaging is less effective than group formation in changing people’s behaviour towards their animals, so it is most suitable for situations where the risks to animal welfare and the livelihood vulnerability of owners are lower. While this approach typically falls at the lower end of the spectrum of participation with a goal of consulting to involving, participation can be improved by ensuring the animal owning community is involved beyond simply informing them, and ensuring they are consulted or collaborated with when designing and/or implementing such initiatives.

The SOC approach can also be used to complement the CE and CD approaches to:

  • Rapport building and sensitization during the initiation phase.
  • Promoting social norms to support desired behaviour change.

The aim when working with communities to improve animal welfare is to do so using the most participatory and empowering approach feasible, in recognition that the promotion of self-efficacy is essential to behaviour change and achieving and sustaining animal welfare improvements. As such, whenever feasible, the general recommendation for making the maximum welfare improvement to the animals in most need (or at highest risk of poor welfare), is to adopt a community development approach as it more participatory, empowering, and likely to result in lasting behavioural change and animal welfare improvements. While our recommendations are based on our experience across several countries and in many environments and livelihoods contexts, there will always be exceptions. For example, a change in local government policy or its implementation following a mass media campaign may have a significant impact on the welfare of animals in high-risk groups. In this case, it is possible for an extensive, indirect societal campaign to lead to improvement in the welfare of high-risk animals.

It should also be noted that in one geographical area, you can work with different groups of animals and their owners using different approaches. In addition, the approaches are not mutually exclusive, and can be used together to complement each other to enhance behaviour change and related animal welfare improvements. The decision on whether and how to work with a group of animal owners should be based on your best judgement and the strategic direction and capacity of your organization.
Each approach varies in terms of level of intensity of investment, level of community participation and potential for empowerment, as well as in their ability to successfully address the different drivers of behaviour. It is therefore important to carefully consider which approach is most appropriate for a given context, given the level of risk for poor welfare and potential livelihood vulnerability of the animal owning communities where applicable.

The following table provides an overview of the 3 approaches:

General CharacteristicsExtensive Societal Outreach and Campaigns
Semi-Intensive Community Engagement
Intensive Community Development
Potential ReachSupports broader reach at societal levelTargets individuals at community level, reach dependent on project resourcesTargets groups of individuals at reach dependent on project resources
Agenda SettingAgenda may be set by implementing organization, ideally informed through consultationBest practice is to focus on animal welfare issues/ behaviour changes most relevant to the community.
Tools and techniques common to this approach may however also be used to facilitate improvements in welfare issues identified by the implementing organization
Most participatory and empowering approach that enables the community itself to dictate the agenda, identify their priority issues and solutions, and work together to address them.
Potential likelihood of lasting behaviour change and welfare improvementsLow: typically works best when target communities already have the pre-existing motivation to voluntarily adopt desired behavioural change/improve animal welfareModerate-High: typically works best when:

• Communities inform decision making and drive desired changes.
• seeks to strengthen the self-reliance and problem-solving capacity of animal owners, carers and/or users
• Makes positive use of existing local knowledge, practices and locally available resources
• Works through and strengthens existing local service providers as appropriate
Social opportunity and/or physical opportunity constraints do not hinder the adoption of desired behaviours (these are not explicitly addressed by this approach).
High: typically works best when the following cornerstones are put in place:

• strong cohesive group structures
• community-based welfare monitoring mechanisms
• work through and strengthen existing local service and resource providers to ensure availability of quality, affordable local services and resources
• motivated and knowledgeable animal owners, carers, and/or users
Stages of Change supportedPre-contemplation: to raise awareness of welfare issues
Contemplation: raise awareness and influence social norms/pressure
Preparation: provide information about how to change
Maintenance: provide reminders to practice already existing changes needed
Pre-contemplation: through awareness raising about welfare issues
• Contemplation: raise awareness of benefits of desired behaviours, increase social pressure
• Preparation: model desired behaviours, and provide information and skills training
Action: support people to solution their own problems, provide feedback on results, facilitate social support and networking
• Maintenance: provide positive reinforcement and reminders
Group members naturally progress through the stages of behavioural change as a result of the facilitated participatory learning and action (PLA) activities
• Formation of groups provide opportunity for peer to peer support, and in monitoring of behaviours by others thus contribute to behaviour maintenance.
General Competency Level for Implementing AgentsSkilled community educators and communicatorsSkilled trainers and influential communicatorsCommunity facilitators skilled in participatory learning and action methods
Level of Investment (time, resources & capacity)Low
(average: 1 year)
Moderate – High
(average: 2-3 years)
High
(average: 3-5 years)
COM-B Drivers of Behaviour Typically Addressed by ApproachCapability: psychological (Knowledge)
Opportunity: Social opportunity (social norms at societal level
Motivation: Reflective
Capability: psychological (knowledge) and physical (skills)
• Motivation: Automatic and reflective
• Opportunity: Social opportunity (norms at community level and peer support)
Capability: psychological (knowledge) and physical (skills)
• Motivation: automatic and reflective
• Opportunity: social opportunity and physical opportunity
Community participation goals most likely to be supportedConsult-InvolveConsult - Involve - Collaborate-EmpowerEmpower

Table 4: Overview of Community-Based Welfare Intervention Approaches

3.2 Considerations for Selecting an Approach for Working with Communities

Once you have identified the animal populations and areas you wish to target, it is useful to understand the local context when how intensively you are able to engage with communities. The following table provides a sample of key considerations to consider in choosing the appropriate approach. If you’re unsure of which approach is right for you, this resource also includes a quiz to help you decide.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS FOR CHOOSING YOUR APPROACH

Extensive Societal Outreach and Campaigns
Semi-Intensive Community Engagement
Intensive Community Development
• Communities can be reached either directly or only remotely e.g. communities may be geographically spread, there may be organization constraints to reach communities/work intensively.
• Low willingness or ability of community to meet regularly.
• Insufficient social cohesion/trust to work together for collective action.
• Does not require a high level of facilitation skills.
• Requires lowest estimated time investment to implement (1 year)
• Recommended approach for animals at low risk of poor welfare and amongst populations whose livelihoods are not highly vulnerable.
• Targets large amounts of people/broad reach.
• Communities can be reached to meet with them directly.
• Moderate-High willingness or ability of community members to meet regularly.
• Insufficient social cohesion/trust to work together for collective action.
• Requires moderately skilled facilitators and/or trained community change agents.
• Requires moderately low time investment to implement (2-3 years)
• Recommended approach for animals at low -moderate risk of poor welfare and amongst populations whose livelihoods are not highly vulnerable.
• Permits somewhat broad reach through targeted engagement with specific groups/individuals (reach dependent on capacity and resources available)
• Communities can be reached to meet with them directly.
• Community members are willing and able to meet regularly, and there is sufficient social cohesion/trust to work together for collective action (e.g. not geographically spread, non-migratory)
• Requires a high level of facilitation skills to support the participatory learning and action process.
• Requires highest investment of support/time to implement (3-5 years)
• Recommended approach when working with highly vulnerable people and animals (animal at high risk of poor welfare)
• Due to higher support investment, and targeted engagement of groups - may not permit broad reach (depends on capacity of resources of implementing organization)

Table 5: Overview of Key Considerations for Choosing an Approach for Working with Communities

Link to References Cited

Quiz 9: Approaches for Working with Communities


9. Example of the Five Domains of Animal Welfare For Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Planning Phase, Implementation Phase

Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Capability

Stages of Behaviour Change:
Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation

Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training

Specific Topics:  Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Community Change Agents

This resource has been developed to provide an illustrative example of how the five domains of animal welfare framework [4] can be used to:

  1. Generate discussion and awareness amongst community members about their animals’ welfare needs and the animal husbandry and management practices that can meet them (refer to Part 1 below).
  2. Support the identification of behaviours that are feasible for communities to adopt to improve their animals' welfare (refer to Part 2 below).
  3. Identify actions communities can take to improve their animals welfare even when they are unable to address identified welfare issues due to barriers they/the project faces in resolving these issues’ root causes (refer to Part 3 below).

This resource demonstrates how the five domains of animal welfare framework can be linked with human behaviours using donkeys as an example. It illustrates its use as a discussion tool in promoting understanding of donkey’s welfare needs, and for identifying behaviours feasible for community members to adopt to improve their donkeys’ welfare.  Refer to this illustrative example to support your development of a five domains framework linked with human behaviours that is relevant to the context of your work.  The Animals and Communities Learning Module is also a recommended foundational reading for understanding animal welfare and the five domains of animal welfare discussed in this resource.

PART 1: Developing a Five Domains of Welfare Linked to Human Behaviours Discussion Tool

Table 9a provides an illustrative example of a five domains of welfare framework for donkeys, linked with identified potential human behaviours for meeting donkeys’ welfare needs. It is recommended to populate the five domains framework with animal welfare experts knowledgeable in the target species, and then brainstorm a list of human behaviours in consultation with representative members of the animal owning community to ensure they reflect locally appropriate and acceptable behaviours. In addition, animal welfare experts must work hand in hand with community development/engagement teams for these discussions to ensure any potential behaviours identified for meeting animals’ welfare needs support positive life experiences and do not adversely cause harm to animals. Developing a species specific five domains framework linked to the potential human behaviours for meeting an animals’ welfare needs within the domains of nutrition, health, environment and behaviour can support community discussions and awareness raising about animals’ welfare needs and the animal husbandry and management practices recommended to meet them.

Donkey Welfare Needs Associated with Domains of WelfareHuman Behaviours Associated with Meeting Donkey’s Welfare Needs
(Ideal Best Practices Appropriate within Local Context)
NUTRITION DOMAIN
a.  Food Quantity and Quality
·   Donkey’s nutritional requirements are met by eating a sufficient quantity and variety of nutritional feeds (e.g. fibre based feeds) for taste and pleasure.
·   Donkeys feed on small potions and very often. This is essential for health. In a natural situation donkeys eat for 12-16 hours a day to maintain health. With work they likely need additional energy (e.g. feed during rest breaks during work).
b.  Water Quantity and Quality:
·   Donkeys have access to and drink sufficient quantity of water while working and at home
a.  Human Behaviours Related to Food Quantity and Quality
·   Provide sufficient quantities of predominantly fibre based feeds (grass/hay) and other suitable locally available forages including straw (e.g. from oat, barley, wheat), and/or soya meal as local availability permits based on recommended proportions for their animals’ size and workload, at intervals throughout their working day (every 3 hours or /2-3 times/day).
·   Provide donkeys with opportunities to graze on natural forage when they are not working as often as possible when locally available and provide forage (e.g. straw/hay) when they are not working if there is no or limited natural vegetation available to graze.
b.  Human Behaviours Related to Water Quantity and Quality
·   Provide freely available clean water to donkeys whenever they are at home not working.
·   Provide clean water to donkeys throughout their working day (every 3 hours or /2-3 times/day).
·   Provide more clean water during hot seasons/conditions and adjust working hours to avoid strong heat time
HEALTH DOMAIN
a.  Absence of Disease
b.  Absence of Lameness
c.  Absence of Preventable Injuries e.g. wounds
d.  Provide Timely Treatment and Pain Management
a.  Human Behaviours Promoting Absence of Disease
· Seek yearly health checks from qualified animal health service providers.
· Check donkey’s general health and well-being on daily basis.
· Take preventative measures against preventable diseases at recommended treatment intervals (e.g. yearly vaccines, parasite control).
· Clean manure from donkey resting areas at home on a daily basis to mitigate parasitic diseases spread by flies, and hoof health issues.
b. Human Behaviours Promoting Absence of Lameness
·  Load donkey carts in a balanced way within the reasonable maximum load to prevent lameness
·  Pick/clean donkey’s hooves daily before and after working to maintain hoof health and comfort during working.
· Seek qualified farriery service providers to trim donkey’s hooves at the regularly recommended frequency to promote hoof health and mitigate lameness.
· Clean donkey resting areas on a daily basis to ensure substrate is clean and doesn’t accumulate pools of water/urine to mitigate hoof health issues.
· Allow the donkey to go more slowly and choose their route if the ground surface is uneven. If an alternative less uneven route is available, select this route.
· Allow the donkey to go more slowly and choose their route if the ground surface is uneven. If an alternative less uneven route is available, select this route.
c.  Human Behaviours Promoting Absence of Preventable Injuries e.g. wounds
· Clean equipment which comes into direct contact with donkey’s skin to remove accumulation of dust and prevent painful rubbing and wounds (e.g. pads and harnesses).
· Load donkey carts in a balanced way to prevent equipment rubbing from causing wounds.
· Use body and verbal communication to guide donkeys instead of whipping to prevent wounds and stress.
· Groom animals to remove dust from skin before they work to prevent equipment rubbing and causing wounds.
· Use properly fitting, quality equipment purchased from welfare friendly equipment suppliers (e.g. cart, harness, bit makers), and/or made from locally available materials in accordance with recommendations for promoting welfare (e.g. padding made with straw).
· Clean donkey’s eyes daily to remove discharge and debris and check for abnormalities to help mitigate eye problems.
· Load donkeys with no more than the recommended weight appropriate for the animals’ size to prevent injury.
d.  Human Behaviours Promoting Timely Treatment and Pain Management 
· Clean any skin wounds in accordance with recommended guidance as soon as wounds are observed.
· Provide rest for donkey to recover from the injury or until wound recovers
· Seek timely treatment from qualified animal health service providers when animal is sick or injured.
· Donkeys pain and suffering is managed as needed when injuries or illnesses occur through administration of pain medications prescribed and administered as needed by a qualified animal health service professional
ENVIRONMENT DOMAIN
a.  Thermal Comfort/Weather Protection
· Prevention of adverse physiological reactions from sun/heat and adverse weather conditions
b.  Safe Environment
· Environment where donkey lives/works is safe and does not pose a risk of injury/harm e.g. traffic, edible rubbish, sharp objects, pooling water where animal stands etc.
· Environment permits escape/safety from predation
c.  Space for Exhibiting Natural Behaviours
· Sufficient available space for donkeys to freely socialize with others within shelter or outside the shelter, and also to allow them to move away from other animals as needed e.g. to avoid conflict
· Donkeys have space to roam and  carry out normal grazing/foraging behaviours without competition
· Donkeys have space to roll in the dirt and scratch when not working. 
d.  Substrate/Floor Comfort
· Substrate where animals rest and stand is free from excrement and/or pooling water
a.  Human Behaviours Related to Thermal Comfort/Weather Protection
· Provide donkeys with shelter during hot and wet/rainy weather.
· Rest donkeys in shade or shelter with appropriate ventilation while on breaks during working hours to protect them from the heat of the sun and other adverse weather conditions.
· Provide shelter large enough to accommodate all animals made of locally available and appropriate materials to remain at optimal temperatures that protect their animals from the heat and other adverse weather conditions (e.g. physical building, wall or other man made or natural structure that is appropriately ventilated.)
b.  Human Behaviours Promoting a Safe Environment for Donkeys
· Remove harmful items/hazards from locations where donkeys are left to rest, graze, and in their shelter areas (e.g. edible plastics, sharp objects etc.) to prevent risk of harm.
· Use shelter materials which are safe and do not pose a risk to donkey’s safety
· When allowing donkeys to freely graze 
     iv.         Keep an eye on their movements and ensure they do not wander to rubbish heaps and ingest plastics and/or
      v.         Tether donkeys using recommended welfare promoting methods and equipment to ensure their safety and prevent their ingestion of harmful materials, and change their location frequently so as not to limit the quantity of feed they are able to graze. 
· Keep to sides of roads to mitigate potential traffic collisions while transporting goods/people. 
· Equip donkey carts with reflectors to ensure they are visible to traffic while working.
· Equip donkey carts with breaking systems to help manoeuvre effectively in traffic while working.
· Ensure donkeys are safe from potential theft, predation and road traffic at night by keeping them in their shelters or other designated safe space close to home where they can be heard if distressed. 
· Ensure donkeys are safe from road traffic accidents at night by using carts with reflectors.
c.  Human Behaviours Promoting Space for Donkeys to Exhibit Natural Behaviours
· Provide daily opportunities for donkeys to freely roam/carry out normal grazing/foraging behaviours without competition whenever safe to do so.
· Allocate adequate space as available and daily opportunities while donkeys are not working to:
1)  to freely move their limbs in a natural state,
2) rest, access feed, and avoid excrement,
3) socialize with other donkeys if present/feasible, and
4) move away from other animals as needed for their safety/mitigate conflict/competition and/or predation, 
5) Roll and scratch without hindrance of equipment.
d.  Human Behaviours Promoting Substrate/Floor Comfort
· Clean donkey shelters/rest area’s at home daily of excrement and any and excess pooling water
· Provide deep, soft substrate for comfort and effective rest/sleep.
BEHAVIOUR DOMAIN
a.  Ability/agency to interact with other animals
· Donkeys can choose to interact and socialize with other donkeys or other species animals (e.g. touch/mutual grooming, play) or remove themselves from the presence of others.
b.  Ability/agency to Interact with Environment/Exhibit Natural Behaviours
· Donkeys carry out normal behaviours such as rolling, lying down/resting, and resting during non-work periods without restriction.
· Donkeys choose and carry out to graze, scratch, shelter, roll or explore their physical environment.
c.  Donkeys Respond Positively to Interactions with Humans e.g. alertness, interest, engagement with people, calm, no fear or stress response, or remove themselves from interacting with humans
a.  Human Behaviours Promoting Donkey Agency
· Provide donkeys with an ability to choose to move around freely without restriction/restraint while at rest at home.
· Allow donkeys to interact with other animals (touch/mutual grooming), and move away from other donkeys if they choose too, including during their work day whenever feasible without hindering their work.
· Use a halter when it is necessary to restrict a donkey’s movement.
b.  Human Behaviours Promoting Donkeys Exhibition of Natural Behaviours
· Use recommended welfare friendly methods of restricting donkey’s movement when it necessary to so as to enable them to maintain as  much natural movement as possible  (e.g. use of harness and rope rather than hobbling)
· Allow donkey foals stay with their mothers as much as possible, and provide them with opportunities to socialize and play with other foals if feasible.
· Provide donkeys with intervals of rest throughout the day when they are working, and a day of rest at home without working them after lengthy work days to enable them to recuperate.
· Provide donkeys with daily opportunities to freely carry out normal behaviours such as rolling, scratching, grazing, and interacting/playing with other donkeys if available while at home and not working.
c. Human Behaviours Supporting Positive Interactions with Donkeys
· Calmly approach and speak with donkeys to keep them calm and prevent stressful human interactions which cause them to exhibit fear or aggression.
· Use body language communication or sound cues and/or as a ‘firefighting’ immediate option only, the presence of soft sticks which are unable to inflict pain can be used as a visual encouragement or light tap to inspire Donkeys to move as needed rather than whipping them which can cause them fear and stress.
· Provide information to a handler or any third party how their donkeys are trained and respond to cues
· Owners seek to develop owns skill to train and communicate with their donkeys in a compassionate way or ask for support from animal welfare organizations to build their own skills.
¯  DONKEY’S MENTAL STATE WHEN NEEDS MET/HUMAN BEHAVIOURS ADOPTED ¯

Free from fear, distress, anxiety
Feels comfortable
Expresses happiness and enjoys pleasure
Feels Secure, Protected and Confident
Table 9a. Example Five Domains of Welfare Framework for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours

PART 2: Using Root Cause Analysis and Five Domains Framework linked with Human Behaviours to Identify Feasible Animal Welfare Issues and Actions for Addressing Them

The steps below outline a process which can be used or adapted to support the identification of behaviours that are feasible for communities to adopt to improve their animals welfare through use of a root cause analysis and species specific five domains of welfare linked with human behaviours.

  1. First identify the animal welfare issues prevalent in the community. Consider using a participatory animal welfare assessment process, ideally involves members of the animal owning community whenever feasible to do so. The T22 Animal Welfare Transect Walk tool can be used to support this process. 
  2. Next, seek to understand the root causes of identified animal welfare issues in collaboration with community members or representative key informants from the animal owning community.  Consider using the T25 Problem Animal tool to support undertaking a participatory root cause analysis of identified animal welfare issues. An example of root cause analysis for animal welfare issues identified through a participatory animal welfare assessment are illustrated in Figure 9a below.
  3. Once a root cause analysis of welfare issues has been conducted, facilitate a discussion with community members or representative key informants from the animal owning community to the animal welfare issues which may be feasible and of interest for community members and the project to work together to address based on an understanding of their root causes. Seek agreement on the welfare issues which will be prioritized for improvement, and use a species specific five domains framework linked with potential human behaviours (refer to example in Table 9A above) to further discuss and identify the behaviours feasible for community members to adopt to address these welfare issues. Consider inviting animal welfare experts to the discussion to ensure any behaviours identified do not adversely harm animals and are likely to result in desired animal welfare improvements. Refer to the following considerations to help the selection of target behaviours:
    • How likely it is the behaviour can be changed (when considering the likelihood of change being achieved, think about the barriers and motivators to change in terms of capability, opportunity, and motivation to change of those who perform the behaviour)
    • How much of an impact adopting the behaviour would have on improving the overall welfare state of the animal in terms of the five domains.
    • How likely it is that the behaviour (or group of behaviours) will have a positive or negative impact on other, related behaviours.
    • How easy it will be to measure the behaviour.
    • Can the project support communities in adopting this behaviour given its available   resources and implementation capacity e.g. if the project is being implemented through trained community change agents, can they effectively support communities in adopting this behaviour as needed?
Figure 9a. Example Root Cause Analysis of Donkey Welfare Issues

Table 9b below is an example of the target donkey welfare issues and behaviours identified as feasible for a community and project to address based on the results of the root cause analysis in Figure 9a. These discussions included representative community key informants and change agents, as well as animal welfare experts who helped ensure any behaviours identified support animal welfare improvements and do no harm.

Identified Donkey Welfare Issues Feasible to Address Based on Root Cause AnalysisIdentified Behaviour Change Priorities for Addressing Priority Donkey Welfare Issues

(Feasible and Appropriate within Local Context)
NUTRITION DOMAIN
a. Donkey is malnourished/skinny due to insufficient provision of quality and quantity of feed - Not feasible to address based on root cause analysisNot feasible to address at this stage.
HEALTH DOMAIN
a. Excessive eye discharge
b. Back Wounds
c. Hindquarter wounds
d. Overgrown hooves
- Not feasible to address based on root cause analysis
a. Human Behaviours for Addressing Eye Discharge
· Clean donkey’s eyes daily to remove discharge and debris and check for abnormalities to help mitigate eye problems.
· Avoid as far as possible environments with air contamination e.g. during rest if it is not possible to avoid during work
· Contact animal health practitioner if one eye is being different to the other eye, swelling, closed eye, thick and have coloured discharge and there is obvious change to the colour of the eye.
· Avoid using blinkers and decorative items that dangle around the eyes
b. Human Behaviours for Addressing Back Wounds
· Wipe down and/or shake out any equipment to remove any accumulated mud or dirt before or after each use to prevent excess accumulation of dirt causing rubbing.
· Groom animals carefully to remove dirt and dust from skin before they work to prevent equipment rubbing and causing wounds.
· Use back padding under any loads whenever donkeys are using packs or to prevent carts from rubbing, in accordance with welfare promoting instructions for making such back pads using locally available materials (instructions to be provided by project).
· Gentle cleaning with clean cloth to clean the wound.
· Give the donkey to rest to recover from the wound
c. Human Behaviours for Addressing Hindquarter Wounds
· Rest animals from work to enable wounds to heal.
· Use body and verbal communication or sound cues and/or as a ‘firefighting’ immediate option only and once wounds are healed use soft sticks which are unable to inflict pain as a visual encouragement or a light tap to inspire donkey’s to move as needed rather than whipping them which can cause them fear and stress (Request for a Compassionate Handling training to be provided by an animal welfare organization).
ENVIRONMENT DOMAIN
n/a – no issues identified from transect walkn/a – no issues identified from transect walk
BEHAVIOUR DOMAIN
n/a – no issues identified from transect walk· n/a
Table 9b: Priority Animal Welfare Issues and Actions for Addressing Them

PART 3: Using a Five Domains of Animal Welfare Framework Linked with Human Behaviours to Improve Animal Welfare When Unable to Address Root Causes of Animal Welfare Issues

While identifying existing animal welfare issues is a recommended step in community animal welfare improvement projects, it is not uncommon for community members or a project to be constrained in their ability to address the root causes of such issues. For example, it may not be feasible to resolve animal welfare issues whose root cause is communities’ lack of access or availability of financial resources using a Community Engagement Approach where trained community change agents are the primary implementing agents tasked with supporting community behaviour change at the individual household level. When resolving identified animal welfare issues is not feasible, opportunities to increase animals’ positive life experiences nevertheless exist.

Using a species specific five domains framework linked with associated human behaviours, you can facilitate discussions with community members and encourage them to identify and adopt other feasible actions/behaviours to improve the overall net gain in animals’ welfare even when identified welfare issues cannot be addressed. Using this resource can support flexible, solution oriented discussions with communities for improving animal welfare which are cognizant of contextual constraints, and mitigate promotion of unobtainable welfare standards that are not feasible to achieve. Improving animal welfare is more about creating positive change in animals’ welfare status through increasing animals’ positive life experiences so as to tip the balance between negative and positive life experiences. While addressing identified animal welfare issues is always a goal, you can still achieve an overall net gain in animal welfare even when such issues remain unaddressed.  Figure 9b below illustrates the concept of this balance of life experiences.

Figure 9b: Balance of Life Experiences (adapted from [2])

To improve animal welfare it is important to seek to understand and assess animals both positive AND negative experiences within each domain and consider how an animal’s experiences within each of the four domains may be contributing to its mental state AND influencing its overall welfare. Thus, in addition to the identified donkey welfare issues (negative experiences) and associated human behaviours that can be adopted to address them which were identified in Table 9b above, Table 9c below provides examples of additional feasible actions identified in discussion with community members to improve their donkeys’ overall positive life experiences identified by using table 9a to generate awareness and discussion amongst community members. This demonstrates how this facilitator resource can be used to promote animal welfare improvements through focusing on ways to promote positive life experience rather than solely focus on addressing welfare issues. Without it, these opportunities for improving donkeys welfare through enhancing positive life experiences would not have been identified through the transect walk alone, which focussed more on assessing animals’ welfare to identify issues. It is recommended to prioritize elements within each of the domains instead of focussing on all efforts for improving an animals’ welfare within fewer domains   to the extent feasible. As such, for this exercise, communities were encouraged to identify ways they could improve their animals’ positive life experiences within the domains of environment, behaviour and nutrition since all of their previously identified issues and behaviours were associated within the one domain of health.

Donkey Welfare Needs/Positive Life ExperiencesIdentified Potential Behaviour Change Priorities to Improve Donkey’s Welfare

(Feasible and Appropriate within Local Context)
NUTRITION DOMAIN
a.  Donkeys feed on small portions and oftenHuman Behaviours Promoting Improved Donkey Feeding
a. Provide donkeys with feed and water 2-3 times a day throughout their working day (every 3 hours or 2-3 times/day).
HEALTH DOMAIN
N/A – priority donkey welfare issues already identified for health domain (refer to table 9b)N/A - human behaviours to address priority donkey health issues already identified (refer to table 9b)
ENVIRONMENT DOMAIN
a. Thermal Comfort/Weather Protection
· Prevention of adverse physiological reactions from sun/heat and adverse weather conditions
b. Space for Exhibiting Natural Behaviours
· Donkeys have space to roll in the dirt and scratch when not working.
a. Human Behaviours Related to Thermal Comfort/Weather Protection
· Rest donkeys in shade or shelter while on breaks during working hours to protect them from the heat of the sun and other adverse weather conditions.
b. Human Behaviours Promoting Space for Donkeys to Exhibit Natural Behaviours
· Provide adequate accessible space for donkeys to roll, scratch, and lay down without hindrance of equipment when not working.
BEHAVIOUR DOMAIN
a.  Ability/agency to exhibit natural behaviours/interact with other animals
· Donkeys can choose to interact with other animals of their species (e.g. touch/mutual grooming, play) or remove themselves from the presence of other animals.
· Donkeys can choose to carry out normal behaviours such as rolling, lying down/resting, and resting during non-work periods.
b.  Donkeys Respond Positively to Interactions with Humans
a.  Human Behaviours Supporting Donkeys Exhibition of Natural Behaviours
· Provide donkeys with daily opportunities to freely carry out normal behaviours such as rolling, scratching, grazing, and interacting/playing with other donkeys (if present) while at home and not working.
b.    Human Behaviours Supporting Positive Interactions with Donkeys
· Use communication or sound cues and/or the presence of soft tipped sticks which can be used as a visual encouragement or light tap to inspire Donkey’s to move as needed rather than whipping them which can cause them fear and stress (also supports addressing whipping wounds under health domain).
Table 9c: Additional Actions for Increasing Positive Life Experiences of Donkeys to Improve their Overall Welfare Status

[4], [2] Link to References Cited


10. Resources Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments

QUICK LINKS
10a. Overview of Useful Information to Collect During Initiation Phase
10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments

Introduction 

The initiation phase is about building rapport within the target community, understanding the local context, animal welfare issues and community interests and dynamics, as well as gauging interest and motivation in engaging with your animal welfare intervention project.

Purpose:

The purpose of this to provide the practitioners with the direction in terms of the information needed for the initiation phase; and where to collect the information. Including the tools that can assist with collecting the information.  

Keyword Search Tags

Project Phase:
Initiation 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

Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Needs Analysis, Gender Analysis

10a. Overview of Useful Information to Collect During Initiation Phase

The initiation phase is about building rapport within the target community, understanding the local context, animal welfare issues and community interests and dynamics, as well as gauging interest and motivation in engaging with your animal welfare intervention project. The following table provides an overview of key understandings you should seek through activities implemented during the initiation phase, as well as potential sources for obtaining relevant information.

Useful InformationWhy ImportantSources of Information
Demographic Features: gender, age, literacy, income, social status, religion, population density People’s circumstances can shape their behaviours, as well as inform which strategies may be most effective for engaging them. Information collected during initial scoping phase
Daily Routines: where and when most animal owners, carers, and users (of working animals) spend their time during the days How people spend their time can provide insights on what influences their behaviour and the welfare of their animals, as well as indicate their availability for engagement.Observations, key Informant interviews, focus group discussions (FGD), survey

Potential Supporting PLA tools: T4 Daily Activity Schedule

Potential Supporting Facilitator Resources: 10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments
Common Desires/Priority Motivations: What are men and women’s common desires for their lives and the lives of their animals/what motivates them? Are there key concerns or issues which preoccupy their thinking? e.g. good income, health, having good community status, been seen as good according to their religion, or ensuring children’s education, having productive animals? And what benefits do they feel their animals contribute to their lives?  This can help us understand people's value, or issues they face, as these are likely to influence people’s motivations and behaviours [72].  Understanding this is useful to framing communications in ways that motivate and support behavioural change to improve animal welfare. In depth focus group discussions, survey

Potential Supporting Facilitator Resources: 10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments
Existing Behaviour: What are men and women’s existing animal use, care, and management practices and what do they like/dislike about them? What animal related resources and services do men and women rely on? What are their priority challenges or concerns related to their animals, and animal related services and resources?Understanding people’s current animal related practices/behaviours can help us understand what may be leading to observed animal welfare issues and who may be responsible. It is also helpful to understand what people appreciate and don’t about their current practices, so we can gauge perceived benefits and potential barriers to change.  This is helpful to understanding whether and how the desired behaviours the project may promote could be perceived as more beneficial and worth practicing by target groups and enable communications to be framed accordingly where possible. In addition, understanding their priority animal welfare concerns, can help you gauge issues people may be more highly motivated to address and indicate potential useful starting points. Observations, key Informant interviews, in depth focus group discussions, surveys

Supporting PLA Tools: T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities

Supporting Facilitator Resources: 10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments
Animal Related Resources and Service Providers: What animal related resource and services providers exist within the community and what are the available resources and services they can provide? Understanding what animal related resource and service providers exist within the community can be useful to understanding who you can potentially work with, what resources and services are available, and enable you to understand which may be underutilized based on insights from communities about those which they rely on. Understanding what animal related resources and services are available may be helpful to understanding possible solutions to animal welfare issues Observations, key Informant interviews, in depth focus group discussions, survey

Potential Supporting Facilitator Resources: 10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments
Influential People/Groups: what people influence men and women’s animal husbandry and management practices? Whose opinions and knowledge do they value and are likely to listen to generally, as well as in relation to their animals?  Helpful to identifying potential partners, groups, and individuals influential within the community who the project can engage as respected leaders or messengers or modellers of change, and/or whose support can be harnessed to promote change. May also help you to understand whose opinions or influence may pose a challenge to people’s adoption of desired changes.   In depth focus group discussions

Supporting PLA Tools: T1 Mapping,  T3b Venn diagram – social network

Potential Supporting Tools and Resources10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments
Community Dynamics: what are different members of the animal owning community’s expected social roles, how do they interact and collaborate or don’t amongst and between groups, who is perceived to hold power, and which individual or groups experience discrimination and/or greater opportunities or hardships because of their social status or other demographic characteristics, Communities are not homogeneous, and it’s important to understand different members of the animal owning community in terms of their expected social roles, how they interact and collaborate, or don’t, amongst and between groups, who is perceived to hold power, and which individual or groups experience discrimination and greater opportunities or hardships because of their social status or other demographic characteristics. This will enable you to better understand intersectionality, and plan and design your project in ways that seeks to promote equality and mitigate the potential of your project to engage in exploitative practices which reinforce discrimination, as well as which may elicit mistrust in the project. This will also help your project allocate appropriate resources (human, financial, etc.) for your project in a strategic way. Observations, key Informant interviews with organizations operating in the area or other knowledgeable stakeholders/potential change agents. 

Supporting PLA Tools: T11a Changing Trend Analysis 
Table adapted from [20]

10b. Example Focus Group Discussion Questions Supporting Initiation Phase Assessments

A focus group discussion (or FGD) is a qualitative research method in the social sciences that employs the use of semi-structured interview led by a skilled moderator to elicit responses and generate discussion among the participants about a subject of interest within a given time.

Focus group discussions should be used when you need to understand an issue at a deeper level than you can access with a survey. They are helpful for adding meaning and understanding to existing knowledge or getting at the “why” and “how” of a topic.

Important guide to follow when designing your FGD questions. 

  • Keep the number of questions reasonable (under 10, if possible). This prevents the participants from getting confused or worn out by a long discussion.
  • Keep the questions simple and short. FGD participants won’t get the chance to see the questions like in a survey.
  • Ensure that the wording on questions is clear. Otherwise, participants will end up discussing the question itself, rather than what the question was trying to ask.
  • Be careful that questions about sensitive issues or topics are asked carefully. Otherwise, the FGD will stop just because people are too embarrassed to answer.
  • Make sure that questions are worded in a way that cannot be answered with a simple “Yes” or “No” answer. Using words like “Why” and “How” will help elicit better responses from participants.

Question Types

There should be three types of questions in a focus group discussion:

  1. Probe questions: these introduce participants to the discussion topic and make them feel more comfortable sharing their opinion with the group.
  2. Follow-up questions: delve further into the discussion topic and the participants’ opinions.
  3. Exit question: check to ensure that you didn’t miss anything.

Example

Say that you run two different animal welfare programs and you’d like to know why programme A sees better attendance than Program B. You could use the following questions to explore this issue:

Probe Questions:

  • How familiar are you with our programs?
  • How often do you attend our programs?
  • What is your favourite program?

Follow-Up Questions:

  • What is your favourite and least favourite aspects of Program A?
  • What is your favourite and least favourite aspects of Program B?
  • What influences whether you attend a program?
  • What influences whether your friends attend a program?
  • If we were to close a program, which one should we close and why?

Exit Question:

  • Is there anything else you’d like to say about our programs?

Tool adapted from [128]

Link to References Cited