The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is sometimes called a problem tree, in which causes are depicted as roots of the tree and effects as branches. This adapted version of the tool provides a visual representation of the relationship between the causes of specific priority animal welfare issues, and the effects of the issues on both people and animals [48]. This tool has proven to be one of the most important and effective participatory tools in this toolkit, as the improved understanding and awareness that results from discussions and outputs of this activity have effectively motivated participants to take action to prevent animal welfare issues, as well as respond to them when they do occur. In particular, the effect analysis portion of this tool can be a key motivator of behaviour change. Consider conducting a pairwise ranking (T8) or matrix ranking and scoring (T9)prior to this one to identify the priority welfare issues.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify and promote participant understanding of the root causes of a specific priority animal welfare issue and their implications for humans and animals. • To generate participants’ motivation to take action or change their behaviour, either collectively or individually, to prevent or respond to animal welfare issues • To identify root causes of animal welfare issues and potential implications on the livelihoods and well-being of animal-owning households.
1.5 - 2 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards or other locally available materials
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings, and Needs; Livelihoods; Compassion / Empathy
Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (or problem tree)
The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is used to analyze an animal welfare issue or problem by identifying the complex contributing factors and any relationships between the factors, as well as their effects on animal-owning households and animals alike. In the context of working animals, this tool has been used to help identify the causes of priority welfare problems such as wounds and overloading, and to discuss the effects of these welfare issues on animals and the people who depend on them. For example, discussing the causes of wounds on specific parts of a working animal’s body may highlight causal factors such as the size and structure a harness or saddle, or the design of a cart or carriage. Effects on the animal could include pain, weight loss and reduced working capacity. Effects of the animal’s wounds on the owner could include less income (from reduced work and increased expenditure on treatment) or lower status in the community.
T26a Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis diagram for an Animal-Owning Community
The above animal welfare cause and effect analysis was produced by a group of working animal owners in a rural community. They were particularly concerned about reducing and preventing wounds on their animals’ backs. Four major causes were initially identified: whipping by users, beating by children, bad road conditions and improper harness fitting. These causes were then continuously analysed to better understand why they were happening, until the underlying root causes were identified. The effects of back wounds on the animals were then discussed and identified as decreased energy, low appetite, pain and increased risk of infection. The resulting effects on the household were decreased income, increased expenditure on treatment and always feeling stressed and worried about where money would come from and whether the animal would recover.
This activity motivated the group to take action on the root causes that were within their influence.
This included:
Petitioning the local government for road repairs between nearby communities and major transport routes
Promoting more humane handling amongst members of their household to prevent wounds from whipping and beating
Making their own welfare-friendly harnesses from recycled materials
Animal Welfare Cause & Effect Analysis
Step 1
Ask participants to identify the animal welfare issues they feel are a priority and select one issue to explore in depth with this exercise. Consider referring to animal welfare issues and priorities previously identified using T25 Problem Animal,T8 Pairwise Ranking or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring, if available. Make sure that the issue is not broad, such as ‘wounds’ generally.
Step 2
Have the community helper draw a circle on the ground or on a large piece of paper and ask him/her to draw or write the priority welfare issue in the middle of the circle using a symbol, picture, or word.
Step 3
Begin the discussion by asking the group what they perceive to be the major factors that cause this problem. As main causes are identified, each cause is added below the priority issue, using symbols, pictures, or words, and connected to the problem with arrows.
Step 4
Once all initial causal factors have been identified, start with one causal factor, and have participants identify the sub-causal factors by asking them why that causal factor happens? Show this sub-cause below the major cause it is associated with, connecting it with an arrow (see Figure T26). Continue asking why each sub-cause happens and continue adding sub-causes - spreading out like the roots of tree - until the group reaches a stage where no further sub-causes can be found. As a rule, these probing using “why” questions may need to be asked 3-5 times per cause, before the root cause is finally identified.
Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to teach participants about the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 5
Once all the root causes of the welfare issue have been identified, facilitate the same process to analyse the effects of the welfare issue on the animal and the animal-owning household. Start by having the helper add two circles above the welfare issue: one representing the animal and the other representing the animal-owning household.
Step 6
Ask participants to identify the effect of the welfare problem on the animal. As effects on the animal are identified, linkages to the animal-owning household will naturally emerge and the discussion can quickly turn to effects on the household.
Please note: The facilitator should allow the discussion to flow naturally, ensuring full exploration of effects on the animal AND household. It is common for participants to identify only a few main effects on the animal, especially in contexts where animals are not viewed as sentient beings. Here, the facilitator’s role is to ask probing questions to promote discussion around the animal’s feelings and experience of the welfare issue. It may be helpful to frame questions in terms of, “If you had this issue, how would you feel?”
Please note: When discussing the effects on the animal-owning household, encourage participants to consider potential effects on all household members, including men, women, and children. Ask: do the identified household effects effect all household members equally? Make sure effects on different household members are accounted for on the diagram.
Step 7
When the diagram is complete, ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped. Some discussion questions may include: Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 8
Once complete, take a photo or record the outputs on a piece of paper. Ensure that the community has a copy for their records and facilitator has a copy for future reference or planning.
Finally, have the community record any root causes and activities to address the causes in the community action plan. Make sure to include any resources/materials needed to achieve this, including who will monitor it and a realistic timeline. Record the actions, activities, and proposed linkages into your project action tracker, and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
Facilitation Notes
The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas. Participants may ask for advice on actions to address root causes.
Decide the group dynamics ahead of time and whether it would be best carried out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on your rapport with the community, culture and local gender dynamics. This is important when their roles and responsibilities related to animals differ, and/or they use/depend on animals differently, as their perceptions and concerns may differ.
If conducted separately between men and women, consider bringing the two groups back together at the end of the activity to review the results of each chart and resolve any discrepancies if time allows and culturally appropriate.
If it is not appropriate to conduct this activity with men and women together in the local context, or if it could prohibit participation and freedom of discussion, consider conducting this activity separately.
This exercise can take considerable time, so discuss this in advance with the group and agree a suitable time to set aside for doing it.
Avoid using your own examples; encourage everyone to express their individual views.
This exercise requires patience from the facilitator in order for deepest causal factors to emerge from the discussion. Allow time for participants to discuss their experiences.
Next Steps
The cause and effect analysis is useful for action planning, especially when combined with:
Animal welfare transect walk (T22) to monitor changes resulting from actions related to animal body issues, resources and environment, and management practices
If the group is struggling to understand that animals have feelings and identify them as sentient beings, consider conducting the T19 Animal feeling analysis again.
If monitoring identifies that the solutions to root causes are unable to be adopted or behaviours go unchanged, conduct a T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the cost of continuing negative behaviours or practices and benefits of positive behaviour change.
Follow up with resource or service providers needed to help the group carry out their activities. Revisit the activities in the next meeting to monitor progress and if further support is required.
Results may also be useful to informing inform project planning and/or identify potential for partnerships to support:
Identification of community capacity building support to address the root causes of priority animal welfare issues
Addressing priority root causes which may be external to communities’ e.g. changes in policy
Identification of potential livelihood or human wellbeing indicators which could be used in monitoring to assess changes in people’s lives as a result of actions taken to improve animal welfare.
A group sustainability map is a tool for visually representing the cornerstones for successfully achieving sustainable animal welfare improvements. It enables a community group to visualise the key ‘results areas’ that need to be in place to achieve a long-lasting improvement in their animals’ welfare. It is recommended this activity be conducted in the planning or implementation phase of the project, and then its outcomes referred to during monitoring and reflection and learning processes throughout the project, as well as the exit and evaluation phase. In this way, the tool supports assessment of the extent to which the group can sustain its animal welfare improvements independently and help inform the determination of the group’s readiness for withdrawal of external support.
Sustainability mapping is slightly different from vision or dream mapping which involved visualizing broad goals, with vision statements often drawn by participants in the form of pictures [79]. Sustainability mapping on the other hand, focuses on identifying specific results areas needed to achieve sustainability, then breaking down each results area into the specific activities to deliver them, thereby enabling participants to formulate a concrete action plan for achieving lasting change.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Enable community group members to identify specific results areas that will support their achievement of lasting animal welfare improvements without external support. • Support community action planning by identifying activities community groups need to undertake to deliver each result area and achieve lasting animal welfare improvements. • Support evaluation of group readiness for withdraw of project support.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, coloured cards, markers, or other locally available resources, like sticks, stones, straw, beans, seeds, coloured powders or saw dust, etc.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning Phase, Implementation, Exit and Evaluation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Opportunity
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Group formation/strengthening
Group Sustainability Map
An example group sustainability map is provided in figure T28 below. The map illustrates the results areas identified as needing to be in place for a community group to achieve lasting animal welfare improvements.
Figure T28 Group Sustainability map
The following activities were then identified to support achievement of each results area, followed by discussions about opportunities for carrying them out:
Animal owners, carers, and users with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to meet their animals’ welfare needs
Advocate for and secure training for group members on animal husbandry and management best practices from extension service providers
Raise awareness of animal husbandry and management best practices to others in the community
Provide guidance to those who need it on preventing/addressing animal welfare issues as needed
Model best practices in animal husbandry and management and share experiences with other community members to encourage their uptake
Effective and functioning community group governance structures andsavings and loansystem
Group develops and approves constitution with clear vision and purpose to improve animal welfare
Group elects governing body members regularly as per the governance constitution including ensuring women’s and other vulnerable groups genuine participation and leadership
Group has financial system (e.g. records, audit reports, minutes of decisions, etc.) and strong management to ensure efficiency, financial stability and sustainability
All members contribute to group savings as per constitutionally agreed requirements
Group action plan is regularly revisited and adapted as needed based on monitoring results
Secure training for group members in community group governance from extension service providers
Mechanisms for monitoring animals’ welfare needs within the community
Agree on observable indicators of animal welfare within their group and the community at large that the group can monitor
Conduct animal welfare transect walks at regularly agreed intervals
Securing access/availability to/of quality and affordable resources and services necessary to sustaining their animal’s welfare
Establish good working relationships with key animal resource and health service providers to support the community in meeting animals’ welfare needs through quality service provision.
Facilitate collective bargaining and purchases from animal resource and service providers at reduced cost to support group members and others in the community in meeting their animals’ welfare needs
Advocate for and secure water point maintenance training for group members from extension service providers
Establish, maintain or provide support to a water point management committee to maintain water points or other community-led natural resource management important to the community and their animals
Group Sustainability Mapping
Step 1
Invite community group members to identify what they need to put/have in place (sometimes called results areas) in order to maintain good working animal welfare on their own to sustain lasting improvements in their animal’s welfare without external support. Give the participants coloured cards and ask them to draw or write down their thoughts. Some areas to consider are suggested under Step 2.
It is important to ensure that different community members are invited and have a safe enabling space for them to share their views on what sustainability looks like from their point of view.
Step 2
Next, ask participants to analyse what is on each card and sort them into categories, facilitating their debate until they come to a consensus on the ‘results areas’ which they believe need to be in place for them to achieve a long-lasting improvement in their/their community’s animals’ welfare. Once results areas are agreed and paste the cards comprising each area onto a big piece of chart paper and ask participants to develop a results statement on each area.
Some examples of possible results are provided below for reference: • Animal owners, carers, and users with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to meet their animals’ welfare needs • Effective and functioning community group governance structures and savings and loan system • Mechanisms for monitoring animals’ welfare needs within the community • Securing access/availability to/of key resources and services necessary to sustaining their animal’s welfare
Step 3
Once results statements have been created, ask group members to identify activities which they would need to undertake to achieve each result statement. Ask them to draw or write each activity on the chart under the result area which it contributes to, and discuss the opportunities for carrying out these activities. Once completed, encourage the group to incorporate their identified activities within their community action plan.
Step 4
Document results by either transferring it to a piece of paper or by taking a photo of the completed outputs. Ensure a copy of the sustainability map produced is retained by the community. Record any relevant insights from the community’s analysis in your project action tracker. Follow up with the community to further support their action planning and implementation of identified activities as needed.
Facilitation Notes
Note what different sustainability aspects are identified as priorities by different community members considering their lived experiences.
It is also important to identify what form of group formation and structure is relevant for the intended group sustainability.
Community visioning tools aid animal owning community members in brainstorming and agreeing on what they desire to achieve in the future within their community. Through a facilitated series of meetings, workshops, surveys, and growth-scenario comparisons, the animal owning community members can create a community vision—a written statement that reflects the community’s goals and priorities and describes how the community should look and feel in years to come with regards to how they treat their working animals.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To generate ideas from the community on how the future should look like for them, with regards to working animals’ welfare. • To cultivate a sense of community ownership and buy-in on a shared animal welfare vision for future actions, decisions and regulations around animal welfare in a community.
2.5 - 3 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards, or other locally available materials.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Initiation Phase, Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Group Formation/Strengthening, Community Change Agent
Community animal welfare visioning
Step 1
Before embarking on a community visioning process, it is crucial to define the geographic boundary of the community and the key stakeholders who are relevant to improving animals’ welfare within the community including those who may be impacted by or influence the project and decisions made by animal owning community members/community group or their ability to improve their animal’s welfare. It is critically important to ensure the inclusion of people who are marginalised for various reasons (e.g. gender, disability, socio-economic status, etc.) and acknowledge the different lived experiences of animal owning communities and ensure their participation through the processes to be used, the discussions and decisions to be made. It is equally important to create an understanding why community animal welfare visioning needs to be done.
Step 2
After defining the geographic community, the next step is to form a vision committee. The committee should include representatives from the animal owning community members, animal health and resource providers, local government extension agents among others to ensure diverse and inclusive representation as well as participation of men, women, and animal owning community members facing marginalization. This committee or a similar nature can further be maintained in the future as a sounding board for the programme/project implementation area; and membership can be rotated. The aim of establishing the committee is to have a representative body and point of contact for the project who can help encourage community participation, organize, and lead meetings, and draft actions that would put the community towards realizing their animal welfare agenda. The wider community can be facilitated to vote for members to serve in the committee from the different groups that need representation. There can be a quota or reserving of seats/spaces to such committee membership roles to ensure representation of diverse community members. See 1 Gender Mainstreaming Checklist for ideas to consider and create a safe space for participants to share their views].
Along with ensuring inclusivity and diversity of animal owning communities, it is important to craft clear questions that will inspire communities and stakeholders what the future could be for themselves and their animals’ welfare including exploring the resources they have to support their animals’ welfare improvement. See 4 on Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change.
Some illustrative open questions that can be asked are
• Why are working animals important to you and your families/communities? Why do you care about your animals’ welfare? • What do you wish to see happen after 10 years in your community regarding working animals’ welfare, animal owning communities and related services? What would make your locality a better place for working animals and their owners? What has worked well and how? Who are the key people/stakeholders or resources making it work? • What opportunities currently exist in your locality to help you realize those visions come to life? What do you think will make the greater animal welfare improvement in your locality? How can you create change to realize the vision? What opportunities do you see?
When facilitating such discussions, it is important to actively listen (3 Guidance on Listening to Change Talks) to help you bring the positive forward looking aspirations and the change talks from the animal owners, service providers and local government agents who partake in the committee initial conversations.
Step 3
The next step involves facilitating a visioning process where community members develop a vision of their equine/working animals’ welfare in their community as they imagine 10 years into the future. This process can be made through a series of community meetings if the geographic scope is wider or if separate sessions are required to create an enabling safe space.
The idea is to freely vision what communities wish to see happen 10 years into the future that will enable both the community and animals to enjoy a better/good life. To probe into this, ask the community to identify their strengths, opportunities, aspirations (e.g., what the community is deeply passionate about), and desired results in relation to meeting their animals' welfare and their animal husbandry and management practices. Once results have been identified, then ask community participants to identify impacts of achieving these results, building different scenarios for both the animal owning community as well as their animals.
Examples of potential result scenarios could include allocation of a certain number of water points, expansion of grazing area land, availability of animal feed throughout the year etc.
Once all ideas are compiled as the group starts to develop distinct results visions taking into consideration the community’s identified strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results, and impact. Explain these will then be shared in a public meeting with the broader animal owning community to gain broader community agreement on a preferred vision for animal welfare for their community. Note that this is not about the majority’s views but also valuing the visions of minorities by valuing diversity and their different lived experiences.
If holding a series of community meetings is not possible, the other option is to use the identified diverse and inclusive steering committee to do the visioning exercise and bring it to the wider group for consultation(stated in Step. 5) and validation after undertaking step 4.
Step 4
Next step is to take inventory of the resources in the community. Then identify among the list of the resources, which ones are important to supporting animal welfare, such as veterinary services, land for grazing or animal feed production, water points, shelter for animals, animal resource providers such as feed and equipment sellers for the identified vision. The vision steering committee will play the role of documenting the community discussions and promote participation of all actors, so that everyone’s voice is heard, and their views captured. This discussion should strive to encourage community members to list resources they like, dislike, or want to change, as well as resources the community lacks. They could also identify areas for potential development.
Once created, the community can then vote on the list to rank the priorities, choosing the top 3 priorities to focus on. The community can use 1- 3 dots to vote on the top 3 priorities. The inventory serves as the basis for discussion about animal welfare improvement priorities and provides a framework for which the vision committee can track progress, report to the bigger community, and support the community with taking on board the next priorities (after addressing the first priorities).
Convene a public workshop including the broader animal owning community where the steering committee will present different scenarios of potential visions for animal welfare in 10 years within their community that are collected from the different community group discussions. In discussing these different visions, it is helpful to share the rationale for how they came to be – e.g., what community strengths and opportunities could be harnessed, which community aspirations they speak to, and results and impacts they are likely to achieve, to gives community members the opportunity to choose a preferred scenario. Graphical representation of the scenarios is helpful where feasible to develop and provide.
Once presented, ask community participants to select their preferred vision for animal welfare, for which the steering committee will then draft a community vision statement that identifies and explains specific community goals and expands upon how the preferred scenario satisfies those goals. If there are some modifications required, it is good to facilitate the discussion to ensure a buy-in by all. Good to note that this is not about the majority's views but also valuing the visions of minorities by valuing diversity and their different lived experiences. The statement should also include a description of the existing animal welfare situation, as well as details about how the visioning process unfolded. The vision statement should be broad in scope and clear in vision. This needs to be written as well as read out loud considering the different needs of participants (catering to illiterate or people with different disabilities).
The steering committee should present the draft statement to the community for review; after comments and feedback are incorporated, then it will be adopted as the community vision. Ideally, other key institutions within the community such as school and business associations will also adopt the statement, helping ensure that all major community entities follow the same guidelines when making animal welfare decisions.
Step 6
The visioning process and vision statement allow a community to clearly articulate its values—however, without proper implementation, they are generally ineffective. Once developed, the vision statement can then be used to identify members of the community who are interested in working to improve their animal’s welfare in accordance with the vision, serving as a basis for community group formation around this shared vision and for working with the project to take collective action to achieve their vision. In addition, it can inform discussions, planning future next steps and identification of potential stakeholders that need to be engaged to support realization of the visions e.g., non-profits, business associations, and other key entities (e.g. veterinary service providers). Document key insights and interest to engage with the project within the Project Action Tracker to help inform project planning.
Facilitation Notes
A steering committee should represent a diverse range of stakeholder groups from all segments of the community to help keep the committee accountable to the community, ensures that no voices are left out of the visioning process as this boosts community participation and buy-in.
Encourage aspiration, communication and open sharing; the participants should not go into the visioning process with a defined outcome.
Community participation is critical for a successful visioning process; after all, the goal of the process is to create a vision that reflects the priorities and concerns of people in the community, and that cannot happen if they do not speak up.
As the community visioning discussion might become more than animal welfare, facilitator needs to refocus the discussion on animal welfare.
The tool supports discussions with community members about their animals’ welfare needs, the challenges they have in meeting them, and potential actions that may improve their animals’ welfare.
The tool enables the community to identify specific animal welfare issues, and the constraints they may experience when addressing these. Animal welfare issues are ranked in terms of their importance, to enable the community to decide on actions to be taken to address them. This tool builds upon initial discussions introducing animal welfare, which can be facilitated by tools such as the T32 Community Animal Welfare Conversation Tool and T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities. The tools is also a precursor to community animal welfare action planning (T34) tool as it provides the platform/ a pathway to planning to take action to improve animal welfare.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify resource constraints influencing the welfare of their animals, the issues it causes, and how this affects both animal welfare and households. • To help with prioritizing the most important issues affecting animals and households in terms of severity and frequency, disaggregated by gender. • To understand the similarities and differences in gender perceptions of priority welfare issues. • To Promote understanding of the animal welfare domains.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Different counters, e.g., beans and corn, graphic of animal welfare needs (e.g., T32b/or five domains of welfare graphic, flip chart or clear ground, marker pens.
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services; Community Change Agents
An example is provided below of a sample of community identified responsibilities related to animal welfare (Table T33a) and an example of community prioritization ranking (Table T33 b).If you have done T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities, T8 Pairwise Ranking and Scoring or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring, you can also remind the community participants to the findings of the discussions and the priorities identified by them provided they want to continue to work on those priorities.
Animal Welfare Need
Who is responsible for meeting the need
Comments
Adult Men
Adult Women
Young Men
Young Women
Feed and Water
○○
○○○
○○○
○○
Adult women and young do most of the feeding responsibility
Providing Shelter
○○○
○○
○○
○○
Adult men are mostly responsible for providing Water
Wound care and seeking medical services
○○
○○○
○○
○○
Adult women do most wound care related issues
Allow the animals to be free and express their natural behaviour
○○
○○○
○○
○○
Adult women tend to be responsible for taking care of behavioural issues
Table T33a. Example of animal welfare needs and who is responsible for meeting them
Welfare issue
Men
Women
Comments /reasons
Feed shortage
○○○○○○
○○○○○○
Water shortage
○○○○○
○○○○○
Lack of veterinary services
○○○○
○○○
Poor shelter
○○
○
Diseases
○○○
○○○○○
Table T33 b. Example Animal Welfare Issue Prioritization Ranking
Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis
Step 1
Explain the purpose of the activity is to discuss the needs of participants’ animals, the challenges they face in meeting their animals’ needs, and who in their households is responsible to meeting these challenges/animal needs. Depending on the number of equine participants in the meeting, divide them into sub groups of 3-4 and have them discuss at least the priority 3 animal needs that have been identified and share the discussions in plenary. This should allow the rest of the participants to input into the presentations of the smaller sub groups.
Begin by asking participants: ‘What problems do your animals experience?’ Probe further to ask why this is a problem for them and their animals. If the challenges identified are many, let the community members prioritize the most common animal need by the community. Pick this to discuss the following discussions.
Examples of probing questions could include:
• Does the problem cause their animals to stop working? • Does the problem take a long time for their animals to recover from? • Could this problem cause their animals to die? • Does this problem change their animals' behaviour? • Is the problem challenging or expensive to manage, or do they find it unpleasant?
Step 2
Then, ask participants, ‘Who in your household cares for your animals’ needs?’
Draw a matrix, and list all given household members along the top row, or if conducting this activity with a large group instead of a household, list categories of household members e.g. women, youth, men etc.
Next, ask participants ‘What do your animals need to be happy and healthy?’
Encourage them to consider their animals’ needs in terms of their health, nutrition, environment, and behaviour. List their ideas in the matrix in the first column.
Then ask: 'Who in your household is responsible for meeting these animals’ welfare needs?’
Encourage responses from both men, women, and youth (see facilitator notes below on who to conduct this session with). Explain that to see how much each household member contributes to meeting the households’ animal welfare needs, you will use scores. Use different counters to represent men's, women’s, and youth's scoring. For example:
• A score of 3 means most of the time. • A score of 2 means sometimes. • A score of 1 means occasionally. • A score of O means not at all.
Refer to the table T33a above for an example of how this can be done.
Step 3
Ask participants:
'How well do you think you're meeting the needs of your animals right now?'
Ask for a show of hands to demonstrate ’poor’, ‘OK’ and ‘very well’. Ask a few men, women, and youth participants to give examples of good animal welfare actions that they have undertaken.
Record responses on a flip chart. Probe further and encourage a discussion around what good and poor animal welfare examples they see in the community. Find out differences among the participants.
Step 4
Then, ask participants:
'What is preventing you from meeting your animal's needs?'
Invite men, women, and youth to share their challenges in meeting the needs of their animals. Write responses on a flip chart. Possible responses could include resource limitations, lack of awareness, attitudes about animal welfare etc.
Encourage a focus on good handling, feed, water, and wound care if needed.
Step 5
Extend the discussion further to specifically cover the issues and constraints participants face in the areas of:
• Health/disease • Feed/Water • Footcare and lameness • Shelter and shade • Wound care and injuries (E.g. from tethering, etc.) • Harnessing, compassionate handling and training • Veterinary services and euthanasia • Time/need, etc.
Capture the commonly given issues and constraints within each of these themes. As issues of nutrition, water access and wound care come up, share extra information with the group as needed.
Step 6
From the discussion, create a list of the commonly given animal welfare issues and constraints, and collate these into their overarching topics/categories such as health, feed/water, shelter/housing, wound care, handling etc. You will use this list to help the community to prioritize their welfare issues. The example provided in T33b above illustrates what this may look like. To conduct the prioritization, divide the participants into groups of men and women. Explain and demonstrate the ranking exercise before starting, and ask participants if they have any questions. Follow the steps below:
• On clear ground or on a flip chart, draw a matrix with the common animal welfare issues topics/categories identified during the previous discussion written on the vertical axis. • Community members in the meeting must agree on a maximum of seven issues – ensure that both men and women have participated in this discussion and agreement. • Write ‘men’ and ‘women’ on the horizontal axis, as indicated in the example T33b above. • Split men and women into two groups and give each group 20 counters. Ask each group to distribute the counters across the issues. The group should agree on the relative importance of each animal welfare issue, and allocate counters to the issues to represent this importance. • When each group has given their scores, probe for reasons for the highest scores and the lowest scores. Take note of the groups' justifications for their scoring. Probe if their prioritization is affected by resources or seasonality. • This tool will reveal similarities and differences in gender perceptions of priority welfare issues.
Step 7
Discuss the importance and relevance of the issues prioritized. Some issues may not be identified by participants as the most serious, but they are likely to affect a very high number of animals, are relatively easy to manage and will affect both welfare and productivity. However, ask about the scenario in this village as resources or seasonality may affect how common or severe these issues are and how they can be addressed. Make sure to reflect back if such factors were not considered so that they are considered in the ranking activity.
Discussion questions:
• Which issues affect the most animals/are most common? • Which issues are the most severe (not necessarily for the greatest number of animals, but which conditions cause the most suffering)? For example, disease outbreak may cause mortality in a per cent of the herd, but undernutrition may affect more animals for a longer period. In this scenario, disease outbreak may be uncommon but severe, whereas undernutrition may be more common but less severe.
From the ranking exercise, encourage a discussion about important welfare issues that cause suffering for animals. This will invite a discussion amongst community members which can help motivate and inform their development of action plans to improve the welfare of their animals (e.g., using T34 Community Animal Welfare Action Planning).
Step 8
Finally, record the community discussions on the prioritization and the justification given along the different gender perspectives into the actions plan into your project action tracker, and support the community by supporting them to develop action plans using T34 Community Animal Welfare Action Planning to linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
During this session, reinforce the learning points of prior conversations on animal welfare e.g., T32 Animal Welfare Conversations Tool, Be sure to ask questions and prompt for the impact the issues have on an animal's behaviour or their feelings.
Provided you have the time to frequently meet with the community groups or households, once they have identified and prioritized issues, you can do step 4 to 8 for different issues in subsequent meetings. E.g. if you have done the first meeting on Health/disease focused issues provided it is prioritized by community members or households, then you can follow up with the second prioritized issue in another meeting
It is important that this conversation is presented in a way that encourages and supports community members to improve their animals’ welfare, but not solve all problems at once. To accomplish this, focus on activities that community members are doing well, highlighting positive examples of animal welfare that they gave. Ask probing questions when these are identified e.g. How common are these to the community? If it is not common, how easy would it be for more community members to adopt activities that have resulted in better animal welfare?
Ideally, conduct this activity at the household level, and with men, women, and youth present – as they may have different roles, perspectives and priorities which it is important to capture. If it is not possible to conduct this activity at the household level, you may wish to consider conducting the exercise with separate groups of men, women, and youth, as they may influence each other’s responses if the activity is conducted as a large community group. If you are conducting this at a group level, ensure that you have divided the large group into smaller groups to enable everyone contribute to the discussion. If not possible to do together as a group or household, then consider doing it separately at different time convenient to respective groups.
Next Steps
Continue to build on these discussions and support community members to address identified priority animal welfare issues by conducting community action planning using the T34 Community Animal Welfare Action Planning tool.
This community action planning tool supports communities in developing actions to address their priority animal welfare issues and has been adapted from Community conversation on animal welfare: A guide to facilitators [71]. This tool can be informed by outcomes from other tools such as:
Once animal welfare issues are prioritised, this tool can be used to facilitate discussions with community members to identify strategies and actions to address priority animal welfare issues, and help them identify knowledge, skills, and/or resource they required to enable them to take action to improve their animals’ welfare.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Support community to reflect on their identified priority animals’ welfare issues and identify actions they can take to address them. • Identify the knowledge, skills and resources communities need to take action to improve their animals’ welfare.
1.5 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, note cards, markers, or other locally available resources, pre-printed pictures, or visual aids of priority animal welfare issues (optional), pre-printed pictures or visual aids on improved animal welfare practices relevant to identified animal welfare issues (optional).
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Engagement Approach; Community Development Approach
Stages of Change: Preparation Stage, Action Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Documentation and Reporting
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services Community Change Agents
Community Animal Welfare Action Plan
Table T34 below shows an example of a community welfare action plan developed to address priority animal welfare issues identified through discussions using T33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis.
Priority Animal Welfare Issues
Actions to be Taken (Household and / or community level)
ExpectedChanges /Indicators of Success
Resources / Support Required to implement planned actions
Who Monitors / When?
Feed shortage
Community grow fodder for donkeys
Owners then feed the donkeys the recommended portions as needed throughout the day (as donkeys do not feed a lot at once)
Improved donkey health indicators: • Increased feed volume available • Feed available in all seasons • Improved body score condition • Happy and productive animals
Fodder production requires seeds.
Training on fodder production and storage
Improved understanding of donkey feeding best practices e.g. what types of feed, when/frequency of feeding, and how much to feed
Owners do the monitoring monthly
Animal welfare team assessing body score condition quarterly
No access to veterinary services (for preventative treatment and prevention)
Community mobilization based on scheduled vaccination/ deworming programs.
Owners supported by each other to seek veterinary services whenever their donkeys are sick.
Owners vaccinate donkeys on recommended schedule
Improved Health Indicators: • Reduced incidence of donkey’s sickness • Reduced time lost by owners due to animals being unable to work
Animal health providers have access to vaccinations.
Information on how to identify illness in donkeys and when they should not be worked
Owners assessing how their animal is feeling if it is sick or not daily, while ensuring that the animals are vaccinated yearly
Donkeys have access to water
Owners provide their donkeys with water at regular intervals during the day
Improved donkeys’ health indicators: • Improve body score condition/ health • Improve hydration
Access to safe drinking water for donkeys
Daily monitoring of donkeys status, if its thirsty or okay by the owners.
Table T34a: Example of Completed Community Animal Welfare Action Plan
Work with the community to rank 2-3 of the most important issues one by one. T8 Pairwise Ranking and Scoringor T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring can be used to support identification of priorities, or results from these activities may be used if previously conducted.
You can prompt the discussion with prep-prepared outreach materials if you have developed them to discuss possible actions for improvement and benefits of acting. An example is provided in figure T34(a) of how to go about manging wounds that you can refer to develop any other animal welfare issues you need to help the community to plan to address (refer to the steps for cleaning wounds in figure T34a as an example).
Step 2
Hand out the pre-prepared outreach materials (pictures or illustrations), illustrating the selected priority animal welfare issues, and ask community members to discuss them. Ask: what do you think about and what feelings do you have when you think about taking steps to improving these animal welfare issues? If communities struggle to answer this, you can use the steps below to prompt this conversation if helpful:
• Step 1 - Observe: Look at the animal shown and identify the welfare issue it is facing. (For example, the image illustrates an animal with wounds.) • Step 2 – Question: Ask yourself, what could an animal in that condition be feeling or experiencing? (E.g. Anxiety, confusion, struggle, pain, distress.) • Step 3 – Reflect: What do you think needs to be done to address the animal welfare issue shown? Do you currently have all the things you need to address the welfare issue? Do you need assistance in sourcing something to help address this animal welfare issue from somewhere else? • Step 4 – Discuss action: What could you try doing to address this animal welfare issue? (Such as cleaning the wounds using the available material within the household, such as salt and water). If these actions turn out to be successful – great. If they don’t – you will reflect and adjust the plan.
If you have prepared outreach materials on solutions to the animal welfare issues in advance, hand them out and discuss them for consideration (refer to the example on Figure T34a on wound management).
Step 3
Ask community members to share what they would do to manage the wound issues in step one in their animals. Or you can remind participants of the first prioritised animal welfare issue from the ranking exercise the community previously completed duringT33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis .
Ask community members to share what they could do to address/respond to this priority animal welfare issue. Probing questions to guide this conversation include:
• Is there someone in the community who already responds to this animal welfare issue well? What do they do, to do this well? • What can be done at the household and community level to respond to this animal welfare issue? • What are the challenges that people face to solve this issue? • What are the benefits of acting on this animal welfare issue? • What are the potential costs or constraints to acting on this animal welfare issue?
Make notes of responses onto flipchart paper. Repeat Step 3 for each of the priority animal welfare issues previously identified by the community
Step 4
Use community reflections from Step 3 as prompts to facilitate completion of a community animal welfare action plan. Facilitate a discussion to identify the following key elements:
• Which prioritised animal welfare issues are community members committed to addressing at this point in time? (Not every animal welfare issue needs to make it onto the community action plan, if community members are not committed to addressing it yet). • What are the actions they realistically commit to taking (at both household and community level) to respond to the selected animal welfare issues? • What are the expected changes (indicators of success) that the community would like to see from their actions? • What resources and support do they require to implement these actions? • How/who will monitor whether these actions have been taken and when?
Document the plan into the community animal welfare action plan table (see example in Table T34a). Ensure that the community are left with copies of the plan in a language/format appropriate and requested by them. Finally, record the community discussions and their agreed actions into your Project Action Tracker
Facilitator's Notes
Ensure that as a minimum the following key elements of a community animal welfare plan are agreed by the community during this exercise, using participatory and gender aware facilitation:
What are the priority animal welfare issues community members are committed to addressing? E.g. some priority issues might have been identified, but there isn’t true commitment from the community yet for addressing these.
What are the actions that participants can realistically commit to taking (at both household level and community/group level) to address selected priority issues?
What are the expected changes/indicators of success of their actions?
What resources and support to they require to implement these actions?
How/who will monitor whether these actions have been taken and when? Be realistic.
Communities will likely require further support and input from you/other organisations in order to implement their action plans. It is vitally important that during the community action planning session you are clear with community participants about what it is realistic and appropriate for you and other organisations to provide, and that you ensure these provisions are sustainable. If a request doesn’t fit these requirements, explain this to the participants and help them to develop a more suitable request.
Next Steps
To support community members in implementing their action plans, it will be important to resources and support identified by community members as needed to implement their action plan are secured, and you may need to consider holding meetings with other relevant stakeholder e.g., local government officials, animal health and resource providers to secure their support as needed.
3.1.1 Implement action plans and support community members’ progress through stages of change
During the implementation phase, CCAs are focused on implementing their personal action plans to support their peer groups and ensure proper safeguarding measures are in place to support CCAs and their peers in participating in planned activities.
Remember that change is a process, and that people can progress and relapse through the stages of change for any desired behaviour at any time. Thus, while CCA’s personal action plans provide a general roadmap for activity implementation, CCAs should always be working to gauge their target peers’ stage of change with every interaction by listening for change talk, asking open ended questions, using reflective listening, and tailoring their communications with their peers accordingly to support the change process throughout the implementation phase. Refer to the recommended facilitator resource Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change for guidance.
At the start of the implementation stage, members of CCA’s peer group are likely to be in the contemplation or preparation stage of behaviour change given they have already agreed to engage with the project and were ideally involved in the identification of priority welfare issues and actions to address them. However, some targeted community members may still be in the pre-contemplation phase, especially if the project prioritized animal welfare issues and behavioural change priorities itself.
Motivating people to change is most difficult when they are in the pre-contemplation and contemplation stages of change and using motivational interviewing principles outlined in the recommended facilitator resources section is particularly useful during these stages.
In addition to using their core competencies related to the above-mentioned facilitator resources, other key considerations and recommendations to support CCAs in being successful as influencers in changing their peers’ mind-sets and behaviours include:
Figure 47: Mechanisms for Supporting Behaviour Change
Harness Commitment to Change
Encourage peers to set small, incremental, and achievable goals for action in accordance with the frequency of CCA visits. It is more effective to set short term objectives for action that lead to results rather than setting objectives for achieving the results themselves [66].
Communicate the vision for change in terms of what individuals’ value frequently and consistently to help erode resistance to change [66].
Provide Positive Reinforcement
Develop social networks amongst target peer groups as geography permits, or within or between households, by helping them see how their interests and needs are interconnected and encourage them to provide support and encouragement to each other. Identify early adopters and engage them in providing peer support and positive role modelling to their peers to increase the willingness of others to try the new behaviour. By putting peers in a position of being accountable for one another, they reinforce their own progress through helping others [66].
Set up a system whereby target peers compete against a target achievement, and all those who achieve the target “win”. People are more likely to help one another win when they are competing against their own progress as opposed to competing against one another in a system where there is one “winner” which can generate a lack of cooperation [66]. For example, set a target for individuals to improve their individual animal welfare results in when the Animal welfare transect walk is repeated. Consider provide households with a monitoring results tracker which they can keep, ideally posted someplace they will see it, to provide them with feedback on the impact of their behaviours and enable them to track their progress over time and serve as a motivating reminder for them to continue making progress.
Provide frequent encouraging feedback to let their target peers know how they are doing, ensuring people feel praised, supported, and encouraged throughout the course of the project.
Promote Self-efficacy
Elevate peers’ self-esteem by recognizing their attempts and celebrating their efforts to change even if unsuccessful, and ensure they are never made to feel less than or bad.
Role model behaviours helps demonstrate what is possible to target peers and helps them to believe they can make the desired changes. In addition, it is helpful to gain commitments from early adopters to speak to other peers whenever feasible to harness social diffusion [31].
Draw Attention to the Feeling of Change
Draw their attention to the benefits and positive impacts of the adoption of desired behaviours over the behaviours it replaces based on their direct experiences [66].
Help peers to feel change in terms of intrinsic satisfaction by connecting changes with what individuals’ value [66].
Help people connect with the consequences of their choices by telling meaningful stories. Consider using the Closed Ended Story Telling (T24a) tool to promote the adoption of desired behaviours.
3.1.2 Expand Reach
If results from ongoing monitoring (discussed in the following step) indicate that the adoption of desired behaviours and related animal welfare improvements have been achieved before the project’s time and resources have expired, consider expanding the project’s reach to harness the momentum of change, either in terms of one or both of the following:
Identify additional animal welfare improvements and associated behaviours to change amongst CCAs’ existing target peers who are likely to be motivated to build on their initial successes. Identify new priorities for change using the action planning process outlined in previous steps, reminding CCA’s and their peers that animals will experience greater welfare improvements when their welfare is improved.
Identify new target peers’ groups who are motivated to make changes because of having observed the successes of the initial target peer group. Consider holding broader community outreach activities to share targeted peers’ experiences, results, and perceived benefits of engaging with project to generate motivation and interest amongst other animal owning households to adopt desired behaviours and improve animal welfare.
Be sure to follow the process previously outlined and update the Behaviour Change Planning Table, monitoring indicators and sampling plan as appropriate. Recognizing behaviour change is a process, continued monitoring of initial target groups and indicators is recommended to assess whether changes in animal welfare and behaviour are maintained, and enable appropriate action to be taken should relapse occur.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
