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.
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.
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].
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].
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].
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 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 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 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.
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].
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:
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].
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.
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
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-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 1
Start 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 2
Then 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 3
Next, 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 4
Once 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 5
The 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.
T12 Dependency Analysisto 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
Owners know what to look for when animals being treated by LSP
7
LSP access
Previously free services
Availability better – now have LSP phone numbers
7
Beating
Everyone used to beat their animals
No more beating
6
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 1
Start 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 2
Ask 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 3
Ask 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 4
Have 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 5
Once 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 6
The 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:
T21 Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis to identify actions people can take, either individually or collectively, to address gaps in animal husbandry and management to improve animal welfare
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).
Support the identification of behaviours that are feasible for communities to adopt to improve their animals' welfare (refer to Part 2 below).
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 Welfare
Human 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.
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.
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 Animaltool 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.
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 Analysis
Identified 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 analysis
Not 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 walk
n/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 Experiences
Identified Potential Behaviour Change Priorities to Improve Donkey’s Welfare (Feasible and Appropriate within Local Context)
NUTRITION DOMAIN
a. Donkeys feed on small portions and often
Human 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
Most communities may not know how best to apply the Cost-benefit analysis tool (T15) to motivate groups to improve the welfare of their working animals. The animal welfare snakes, and ladder game provide a fun and entertaining way for the communities to apply the cost benefit analysis tool: The tool is adapted from the traditional ‘snakes and ladders’ game.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
To engage the interest of participants and increase their collective knowledge about animal management and motivates them to act on poor welfare practices.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper or a piece of cloth, markers, or other locally available resources, such as cards, photos, bottle tops, leaf’s, stones, etc.
Stages of Behaviour Change: Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Community Change Agents
Figure T16: Illustrated example of original large cloth board of Snakes and ladders game developed by Brooke Egypt, Cairo (2009).
Animal Welfare Snakes and Ladders Game
Step 1
For this game you need to prepare beforehand. The common Snakes and Ladders board game is used for the exercise, either the small size available in the market, or you can make a big version using large sheets of cloth or paper. The game has between 50 and 100 squares in a matrix. Ladders and snakes are drawn or painted on, connecting different squares (see Figure T16b)
To convert the game for animal welfare cost-benefit analysis, two types of information need to be collected before starting:
• Existing animal management or work practices which are positive/good. • Existing animal management or work practices which are negative/bad.
These practices need to be recorded in advance on cards, using words, symbols, or photos. Place one card in the square at the top and bottom of each snake, and one at the top and bottom of each ladder. Snakes are usually associated with cost or loss and ladders with benefit or gain. This cost or loss and benefit or gain can be expressed in both welfare and financial terms. For example, bad hoof care practices can lead to lameness (pain and poor welfare for the animal) as well as three days’ loss of work for the owner, costing them a certain amount of money a day. Alternatively, causes and effects can be put at opposite ends of the snakes and ladders. For example, the card at a snake’s head could show a lame animal, while the one at the tail could show poor hoof care practices (bad quality shoeing or untrimmed feet).
Step 2
Normally six to eight people play the game together using dice. Each participant is represented by a different counter or object (such as a bottle top, leaf, or stone) placed on the first square. Everyone gets a chance to play by rolling the dice in turn. At the beginning somebody must roll a six before the game can start. Then each player moves their counter the same number of squares as he or she rolls on the dice.
Step 3
When a player’s counter lands on a square containing a card or photo, the card is turned and discussed by the players. If a player reaches a square showing the head of a snake, the counter must be moved down to the tail of the snake. When a player reaches a square at the bottom of a ladder, they can climb the ladder to reach the square at the top.
Before moving from a snake’s tail, players must describe a situation that they have experienced which is like the one shown on the card. Encourage the group to discuss this and decide what types of action would turn the cost into a benefit, before moving on to the next player.
Facilitation Notes
Consider using many variations of this game, such as placing question cards about good and bad animal management practices in random squares on the board.
Consider using a large board so that players can walk around it to play.
The game can be used with both adult and children with great success.
Next Steps
The tool can be supplemented with the following tools to determine if there have been any changes in motivation of the community towards improving their animal welfare and the value they place on the animal, as well as their knowledge on how to best take care of the animals:
‘If I were an animal’ is a tool specifically designed to put the animal and its welfare at the centre of community analysis and discussion and is very popular in animal-owning communities. It enables people to experience the point of view of the working animal by asking them to reflect on the question: ‘If I were an animal, what would I expect from my owner or carer?’ This tool is a good follow up to animal body mapping (T20) and animal feeling analysis (T19).
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To raise awareness of animals’ needs and promoting positive welfare states • To understand the effects on animals and humans when animals’ needs are not met • To identify the perceived extent animals’ needs are being met within the community • Can support identification of indicators related to animals’ body and behaviours, husbandry and management practices, and effects of animal’s welfare on people’s lives • To identify perceived animal welfare issues and gaps in knowledge to support intervention planning
1.5 - 2 hours
Materials needed:
Sticks, coloured powder or chart paper, cards, markers, stones, beans, seeds or other locally available materials. Picture of an animal if one is available.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability, Motivation
Stages of Behaviour Change: Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Livelihoods; Compassion / Empathy, Community Change Agents / Resilience
If I were an animal…’
Figure T17 shows the completed ’If I were an animal’ diagram developed by a group of animal owners as one of the first steps in a participatory welfare needs assessment. They identified five expectations that their animals have of them as owners in order to survive and thrive: humane handling (no beating), no over-loading, timely treatment, sufficient feed/fodder and sufficient water. In the second circle they scored their present practices out of ten: they scored lowest on humane handling (no beating) and highest on sufficient food/fodder. Through discussion, the group identified the effects of not meeting their animals’ expectations on the animal, including fear, lameness, weakness and wounds, including where they would look for the specific behavioural and physical signs resulting from not meeting their animals’ expectation. Finally, they identified the effects on the human owners, including loss of income and aggressive/scared animals that are more difficult to handle. These effects were recorded and used by the group to assess their animals during an Animal welfare transect walk (T22).
'If I were an animal'
Step 1
Start by encouraging participants to see the world from their animals’ point of view. Ask what expectations their animals have of them to have a happy and healthy life. If they are struggling with this concept, ask them what they need as humans to be happy and healthy, then extend the question to their animals. At this point, the group should start identifying expectations animals have of their owners. Ask the community helper to write the expectations on cards for everyone to see or use representative drawings.
When participants have finished identifying their animals’ expectations of them, it is the facilitator’s responsibility to ensure that all welfare components have been considered. Use the following guiding questions as needed to facilitate participants to identify their animals’ expectations of them in terms of any of the following domains of welfare which they have not yet considered:
• Health - What do animals need/expect of owners to be healthy? (Disease prevention, timely treatment, proper fitting equipment) • Nutrition - What do animals need/expect of owners for good nutrition? (feeding & watering) • Environment - What do animals need/expect of owners in their environment? (Comfort, rest, temperature, shelter) • Behaviour - What do animals need/expect of owners to express their natural behaviours? (Freedom of movement, social interaction with other animals)
Please note: The facilitator should group/organise similar expectations into one category and explain the reason for the grouping (only if the anticipated effects of the expectation not being met are the same). For example, if the community identified ‘free access to water’ and ‘clean water’, consider consolidating the two examples into one ‘free access to clean water’ category.
Once the list is complete, ask the community helper to record the group-identified expectations on cards using words, symbols, or local materials.
Step 2
Next, ask the community helper to draw a big circle on the ground or on paper and place an animal in the centre. If you carry drawings or models of animals with you, such as the one used for animal body mapping (T20), put one of these in the centre of the circle to represent the animal instead.
Step 3
Once 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 4
Ask 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 5
Once 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 6
The 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 7
Have 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.
Facilitator’s Notes: ‘If I were an animal’
Consider conducting an animal feeling analysis (T19) in a prior session to assess the positive and negative factors that influence how animals feel and behave.
Ideally, this exercise should be carried out with 15-20 participants in order have everyone input into the discussion. If the group is large, consider having a second facilitator and break the group into two.
Encourage everyone to express their own views and avoid using only one person’s examples or contributions for the diagram. Allow enough time to discuss participants’ own beliefs and traditional animal management practices.
It can be helpful to have pictures/diagrams on hand that represent the possible effects on animals when their expectations are not met, which may be used instead of hand writing. This can support sensitization and be used in situations where literacy is low.
Next Steps
Follow up with the T22 Animal welfare transect walk to support the assessment and monitoring of animals’ welfare and identification of common welfare problems to inform action planning.
As a first step, the facilitator should prepare a list of the observable indicators derived from identified expectations and effects which reflect animal-based indicators (body and behavioural related indicators), resources, and management practices. In addition, animal-based welfare indicators identified through T19 ‘Animal feeling analysis’, and/or T20 ‘Animal body mapping’ exercises can be used to inform indicator selection for the transect walk. This list of indicators can then be presented back to the community to agree on the criteria which defines each in terms of good, moderate, bad condition/state (green, yellow, red).
Consider using the ‘effects on humans’ identified in step six to inform human indicator selection if part of the project.
Address any identified gaps in knowledge through sensitization or training sessions. It is recommended to conduct this prior to undertaking any community-based action planning.
Any identified gaps can be examined in more detail using the following tools, especially prior to undertaking any community-based action planning:
T21 Animal welfare practice gap analysisto promote understanding of the drivers of gaps in animal welfare practices, such as lack of motivation, resources, or knowledge that can be used to develop targeted behavioural change strategies.
T25 Problem animal to identify the root causes of the different animal welfare issues observed on the body of the animal and inform action planning to address them.
T26 Animal welfare cause effect analysis to explore the root causes of specific animal welfare issues and promote understanding of the effects of the issue on animals and people as a means to generate improved motivation to take action and inform action planning.
This tool encourages people to think about how their animal(s) feels based on their experience. By mapping animals’ experiences and associated feelings over time, it allows community members to see the cumulative positive and/or negative impact of these experiences. In this way, the tool can provide insights into how communities perceive their animals’ experiences and understand their feelings and needs.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Generate communities’ understanding of how daily activities affect animals’ feelings contribute to animals’ positive or negative welfare states and impact their quality of life. • Improve communities’ compassion for their animals. • Support communities to identify opportunities for providing positive life experiences of their animals. • Motivate communities to increase the provision and frequency of positive life experiences of their animals, as well as other people in their lives. • Help identify gaps in communities’ understanding of animal welfare and animal sentience which can help inform project activity planning
2-2.5 hours
Materials needed:
Facilitator prompt sheets/visual aids including Balance of Life Experiences scale (refer to the animal welfare learning module for example), Five Domains of animal welfare, pens, and paper (not limited to paper, the facilitator can explore different ways the different communities want to document their information)
Stages of Behaviour Change: Pre-contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Training
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services; Compassion/Empathy; Community Change Agents
T18a: A day in the Life of an Animal
“A day in a life of an animal”
Step 1
Form 2-3 small groups of 3-5 people depending on the number of participants. The more groups the longer the activity may take.
Step 2
Ask the groups to think about the animals in their community, and to choose an individual animal that they will explore together. Ask the group for a summary of the individual animal, for example age, name, whether they work. If using pens and paper this animal can be drawn in the middle, or if reporting verbally then the participants can give a quick overview in the introduction to the group in Step 5.
Be prepared to ensure the group focuses on one example (e.g., a horse working in a brick kiln, a chicken providing eggs).
Step 3
Ask each group to draw a clock with 24hrs and briefly describe what the animal is doing over the course of the day (e.g., waking up, eating/drinking, being prepared for work, working, resting) and map these on the 24 clocks. Check to ensure all key periods and activities have been included, asking probing questions if you think anything may be missing.
Step 4
Then ask each group to pick at least 3 time points throughout the day (recommended to choose at least as many time points as people in their group), and consider in more detail what the animal is experiencing at each of these time points including: • What activities are/ is the animal doing/engaged in (e.g., feeding)?
Prompt the group to think in terms of the five domains. Often people will focus on tangible things like food and water. Try to also ensure that other activities are also covered, for example free time, rest, social contact. Refer to the five domains of animal welfare visual aid if available to support their discussion.
• What are the frequency and duration of these activities/experiences? • How does each activity/experience make the animal feel (e.g., experiencing pleasurable tastes) and influence the animal’s mental state?
Some people find it easier to reflect on how they would feel in that situation. So, for example discussing quality rest – you could ask, “how do you feel when you don’t sleep well? Can you sleep when it is very noisy around? Has anyone ever been prevented from sleeping because they were worried about something (that was going to happen to them the next day)?”
Step 5
Next, bring the groups together and ask them to give a short introduction to their chosen animal’s day to the whole group. Each person in the group can present at least one time point so that between them they cover the full day.
Next, facilitate a discussion using the points below as a discussion guide: • Probe for more details on their animals’ daily experiences/activities where appropriate and needed to encourage them to think about and identify the nature of these experiences in terms of whether they may be positive or negative where this may not yet be clear.
For example, with rest, can the animals move freely? Are they restrained up next to someone or something they don’t like or fear? Are they restrained so that they cannot relax properly and achieve good quality rest? Is the environment noisy, preventing them from sleeping? How do their rest patterns align with their natural needs?
• Discuss whether an activity and/or experience is truly positive or whether it reflects an alleviation of a negative experience. For example, providing water to a dehydrated animal is alleviating a negative experience, whereas play is (most likely) a positive experience. - As negative and positive experiences are not always the direct opposite of each other, it is important to discuss them separately e.g., is the experience negative or not; is the experience positive or not.
• Encourage discussion of how the frequency, duration, and intensity of experiences differ, and how this can impact an animal’s quality of life.
For example, if an animal is wounded in an accident, this may be a very intense experience and painful at the time. However, if the animal is in a secure environment and receives prompt and effective treatment, then the negative experience will be lasting. However, if the animal does not receive treatment, then the negative experience will last longer. Even if the injury is minor and the pain experienced is not initially intense, if left untreated the pain will increase, and the animal may need to be active or work with the painful injury or be unable to rest properly if in pain. These experiences will accumulate, making the overall balance of these experiences will be negative, and lower the animals’ resilience to other negative experiences. In this example, a short but high intensity experience may have less impact on the balance of experiences than a less intense but longer lasting experience.
• Ask what opportunities are provided for their animal to experience comfort, pleasure, interest, confidence, and the ability to make choices and feel a sense of being in control? - For example, if they are provided with shelter, do they have the choice about when to enter the shelter and when to remain outside, allowing them to adjust for their thermal comfort and security (e.g., some animals, such as horses, may feel very trapped in a shelter, whereas other animals, such as dogs, may feel a lot safer within a shelter than outside).
• Based on this discussion, where do you believe your animal sits on the balance of life experiences scale and why? (Refer to the balance of life experience visual aid if available)
Once concluded, summarize their discussion in terms of the following points: • Key points in the animal’s day (e.g., rest, work, eat, drink, are tied up (movement restricted), roam freely). • The range of their animals’ experiences and feelings. • How animals’ feelings would change if experiences were very frequent or very prolonged. • Highlight where the animal sits on the balance of life experiences scale and why.
Step 6
Next use the following questions to encourage participants to reflect and learn from the activity:
• Was there anything that surprised you? • What did you learn from this activity? • How representative do you think this is of your other animals/animal in the community? • Is there anything that you think you could do differently in the future to improve your animal’s quality of life based on your learnings from this activity?
Encourage them to identify and/or draw attention to the positive aspects of what they already do as a means to promote reflection and learning and motivation to do more of what is already feasible for them, rather than focusing on what they can’t.
Step 7
Finally, draw the activity to a conclusion using the following points: • Reflect on the original aims and purpose of the activity and draw conclusions relevant to these • Highlight key reflections about what participants learned doing this activity. • Summarize what the group concluded they could do to minimise negative experiences and/or increase positive experiences in their animals’ lives.
T18b: The Life of an Animal
The life of an animal
Step 1
If doing this exercise in a separate session from the day in a life activity, begin with Step 1 and 2 from the “A day in the Life of an Animal” activity above first.
If conducting this activity in the same session following completion of the day in the life activity, skip to step 2 below.
Step 2
Explain they will be mapping their animal’s experiences over the course of the animal’s lifetime and ask them to decide how they wish to represent the lifetime of their animal’s life cycle visually e.g., table, circle, list, timeline.
Then ask each group to identify the major life cycles/stages/time points of their animal, and plot these in accordance with how they decided to represent the animal’s lifetime. Encourage them to identify at least as many life events as people in their group, ensuring they include consideration of the animal’s life cycle from birth, growth, reproduction, working up to end of life as well.
Step 3
Once the life stages/time points of their animal are identified in step 2, ask each group to explore in more detail what the animal is experiencing at each stage, you can use the following to guide the discussions:
• What activities are some of the activities the animal is doing/engaged in at each stage (e.g., working, breeding)?
Prompt the group to think in terms of the five domains for the life cycle/stage of the animal they have picked to focus on. Often people will focus on tangible things like food and water. Try to also ensure that other activities are also covered, for example free time, rest, social contact. Refer to the five domains of animal welfare visual aid if available to support their discussion. • What are the frequency and duration of these activities/experiences? • How does each activity/experience make the animal feel (e.g., experiencing pleasurable tastes, experiencing positive human-animal interactions, experiencing and exhibiting positive natural behaviours, etc.) and influence the animal’s mental state?
Some people find it easier to reflect on how they would feel in that situation. So, for example discussing quality rest – you could ask, “how do you feel when you don’t sleep well? Can you sleep when it is very noisy around? Has anyone ever been prevented from sleeping because they were worried about something (that was going to happen to them the next day)?”
Explore the different life stages in more detail considering what the animal is experiencing at each stage. Details to be discussed should consider both the activity (e.g., weaning) and the associated mental state (e.g., distress/fear/panic if forcibly weaned and put in isolation). • What are the frequency and duration of these life experiences? • How does each experience make the animal feel (e.g., experiencing pleasurable tastes, experiencing positive human-animal interactions, experiencing and exhibiting positive natural behaviours, etc.) and influence the animal’s mental state?
Some people find it easier to reflect on how they would feel in that situation. So, for example discussing being separated from other animals and kept alone – you could ask, “how do you feel when you are isolated from friends and family? Has anyone ever been prevented from socializing with your network of support?”
Step 4
After discussion, bring the groups together and ask them to present the lifetime of their animals to the whole group. Each person in the groups should present at least one time point/life stage, which between them covers the entire lifespan. Encourage discussion of how the animal’s welfare changes over their lifetime using the guiding questions below, and encourage a process of reflecting on the exercise, generalising, and application. Conclude where this animal sits on the Balance of Life Experiences chart.
Step 5
Once finished, summarize key reflections and learnings from discussions including:
• Key points in the animal’s life (e.g., birth, early life, weaning, working/productive life, ownership changes, end of life). • The range of experiences and feelings, and how these change over time. • How quality of life is impacted by experiences that are very frequent or very long. key reflections and what people discovered by participating in this exercise. • What the group concluded they could do to minimise negative and add more positive experiences, including any immediate actions vs longer term changes needed.
Conclude by reflecting on the original aims and purpose of the exercise and draw conclusions relevant to these, and ensure concluding reflections highlight where the animal sits on the balance of life experiences scale and why.
Facilitator's Notes
Preparatory work (things to consider before the exercise):
It is important that participants have been socialized in the concepts of the five domains of animal welfare and balance of quality life experiences prior to beginning this activity. If they have not yet had an introduction to these concepts, you will need to build in more time to introduce these concepts in advance.
Consider your target audience (community, community facilitators) for this exercise.
Establish your motivations and goals for doing this exercise with that group of participants.
Based on this, decide whether you will run both activities and only run one of the activities.
Establish what species/animals are you are likely to, or need to, discuss and why (consider whether there is benefit of having same species groups e.g., equid owners).
Do you feel confident with the application of this task to those species? Do you feel confident discussing the range of positive and negative experiences for the different animal species that you may be discussing during the exercise? Do you need to seek some further support or clarification?
Consider a manageable group size (too small may produce too little discussion, too big may result in too much variation, debate, or not enabling everyone to participate fully).
Be prepared with information to respond to how a community views the animal experiences. We suggest that in advance of the session you have a list of ‘red flags’ – practices that are very dangerous to welfare and need an immediate response – and an idea of what the ideal situation would look like, so that you are clear on what you can praise/want to see.
Consider how you may capture these results with literate and illiterate groups (use photo to capture if they have used different symbols to represent the life of an animal)
In this tool it is important to focus on increasing opportunities for positive experiences, and not only opportunities for reducing negative experiences.
for “The life of an animal” activity, the following suggestions also apply:
Consider how the community/culture would most likely break down the life of an animal e.g., by age, by life event, and work with them to establish the best way of doing this. Ensure that all the critical stages/life cycles from birth to end of life are captured in the discussion even though the classification might vary.
Be prepared to challenge or fill in gaps of key life stages that may be missed.
Next Steps
This exercise may be used to improve communities understanding of how experiences can impact on an animal, promote understanding of the concept of animal welfare generally, and/or as a precursor to community action planning by helping to generate discussion and ideas about how community members can provide more opportunities for their animals to have more positive life experiences and a greater sense of control choice and feeling of control. Next steps will therefore vary depending on your intended objectives of use of this tool, and in what project phase you are implementing it. Think about how the information or outcomes generated from this activity may be used or help inform your next steps. You may also wish to consider whether they can serve as an indicator of change which you may wish to assess again later. (Although if this uncovers incidents of welfare practices that are unacceptable then the facilitators should explore using the available resources within this guide how to address them).
The animal feelings analysis examines an animal’s experience of its own life. This tool has been developed specifically to help participants understand that their animals are sentient beings, whose emotions can be positively or negatively impacted by their state of health, environment, nutrition, ability to express natural behaviours and through people’s interactions with them. By helping people recognize that animals, like people, are sensitive and have feelings about what is happening to them, this exercise can improve people’s motivation to care more about the effect of their own actions on their animals’ overall welfare. In addition, this tool helps participants to assess whether their animals are experiencing a positive emotional state e.g. high and low energy, such as excitement, pleasure, sociability, choice over environment, comfort, satiety (fullness) and/or calm. This tool can be used either on its own as a sensitization exercise, or incorporated into the T22 Animal Welfare Transect Walk/Participatory Welfare Needs Assessment.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To sensitize animal owners, users and carers to the fact that animals have feelings, which are expressed through their behaviour or ‘body language’. • To raise awareness of the observable signs and symptoms that people can use to assess how their animals are feeling. • To generate discussion around positive and negative factors influencing the feelings and behaviour of animals, and ways animals’ positive emotional state can be improved, and increase people’s motivation to improve it.
2 - 3 hours
Materials needed:
Sticks, coloured powder or chart paper, post-it notes, cards, markers. Animal jigsaw puzzle if available and/or or other visual aides to illustrate positive and negative welfare states.
Stages of Behaviour Change: Pre-Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Compassion / Empathy, Community Change Agents
Animal feeling analysis
Figure T19 Animal feelings analysis by an animal-owning community
As a first step in participatory welfare needs assessment, a group of animal owners identified 15 indicators that they could use to assess happiness and unhappiness in their animals. All animals were scored collectively based on these indicators, with three pebbles for ‘happy’, two pebbles for ‘medium’ and one pebble for ‘sad’. Only one animal scored three pebbles for all the signs assessed. The animal owners discussed why this animal was found to be so happy and most of the other animals were not. Based on the discussion the group agreed on several action points to make the other animals happier.
Animal Feeling Analysis
Step 1
Ask participants “what do their animals expect of their owners to be happy and healthy?” and ask a community helper to list these expectations on a sheet of paper using words or drawings”. Probe participants to think about what animals expect in terms of the following components which contribute to a positive welfare state (Five Domains)
• To be healthy? (prevention & timely treatment of disease, pain) • For good nutrition? (feeding & watering) • For their environment? (Comfort, rest, temperature, shelter) • To express their natural behaviours? (Freedom of movement, social interaction w other animals, positive human-animal interactions)
Please note: If participants are struggling to identify animals’ needs and expectations, ask them what they require for their own (human) wellbeing. How would you feel without regular access to water or time to socialise with your friends or ability to go wherever you want?
Step 2
Next, ask the community helper to draw a matrix with four columns and write ‘happy, ‘neutral’ and ‘unhappy in the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th top columns (see figure T19). If you feel the community will struggle to identify neutral states, make only the columns, with happy and unhappy in the 2nd and 3rd column.
While the community helper is creating the matrix, ask participants how they observe/know whether their animal is happy or sad. Where do they look or what do they observe to know this? List the general body parts, expressions, or behaviours they identify using words or drawings in the first column of matrix.
For example: several communities advised that their animals use the position and movement of their ears, eyes, head, and neck to show if they are in their ‘best’, ‘better’ or ‘bad’ emotional state.
Step 3
Next ask participants to detail the combination of behaviours or expressions that indicate an animal that is feeling happy, those that indicate that the animal is feeling unhappy, and those that indicate a neutral state for each of the identified signs in the first column.
Step 4
Once the matrix is complete, facilitate the group to reflect on what they learned from this activity. Encourage them to think about the importance of observing these signs and indicators and how this can help them to understand what their animals are feeling and enable them to better respond and meet their animal’s needs. Summarize the exercise by reflecting that animal have feelings like people, and they can use these signs and indicators to help them be sensitive to their animals’ feelings and understand what is happening to them at any moment and reflect on how their own actions have an impact on what they are observing in their animals.
Step 5
Summarize the results of the activity and have the community helper add any actions and activities to the community action plan. Agree on a date and time for the next session.
The matrix should be left with the community. Make a copy or take a photograph for your reference for future discussions and further action planning. Add a copy to your project action tracker. If they have not already performed one, agree a time when they will assess their animals by doing an animal welfare transect walk (T22) together.
If part of T22 Transect Walk
Step 6
If this exercise is part of the transect walk, first carry out steps 1-4 above. Then, develop a matrix with the agreed behavioural signs written along the top and the names of owners and their animals written down the side. You can use either numerical scoring (2 = happy; 1 = neutral; 0 = sad) or traffic lights to indicate best (green), better (orange) and bad (red). Go with the group on a transect walk to visit individual animals and assess their behaviour and surroundings. Discuss the body language of each animal in detail and associated factors that contribute to a positive mental state to build consensus among all the participants about how each animal truly feels.n tracker.
Step 7
At the end of the transect walk, sit together, and discuss which factors cause or influence the feelings of animals, both positively and negatively and reasons for this. Summarize the results of the activity and agree on action points that individuals and/or the group can take to make their animals feel happier. Have the community helper add any actions and activities to the community action plan. Agree on a date to repeat the exercise and monitor changes in animal feelings.
Facilitator's Notes: Animal Feelings Analysis
The animal feelings analysis is best carried out in small or medium-sized groups, as crowding around an animal may change its behaviour.
Participants should have a general understanding of animal welfare prior to conducting this exercise.
Behavioural expressions or body language may be different for different species of animal. There may be more than one type of behavioural expression for the same feeling. Encourage participants to discuss this.
It may be helpful to prepare visual aides of examples of positive and negative expressions of animals’ feelings to enable participants to understand the signs and symptoms of positive and negative emotional states.
Next Steps
Follow up with the T22 Animal welfare transect walkto support the assessment and monitoring of animals’ welfare and identification of common welfare problems to inform action planning.
As a first step, the facilitator should prepare a list of the observable indicators derived from identified expectations and effects which reflect animal-based indicators (body and behavioural related indicators), resources, and management practices. In addition, animal-based welfare indicators identified through T17 ‘If I were an animal’ and/or T20 ‘Animal body mapping’ exercises can be used to inform indicator selection for the transect walk. This list of indicators can then be presented back to the community to agree on the criteria which defines each in terms of good, moderate, bad condition/state (green, yellow, red).
Consider using other tools such as T17‘If I were an animal’ and T21‘Practice gap analysis’to look at the physical aspects of welfare such as food, water, shelter, disease and injury and their effects on the animal’s behaviour.
Animal body parts map, animal body issues map and animal-based welfare indicators map
A body map is a picture an animal showing the parts of its body, their functions, and the body areas affected by wounds or diseases. The map depicts either the whole body, or part of the body, as it is perceived by individuals or a community group. This tool can be used to map animal body parts and wounds or disease symptoms on the body, which can be useful in the concept of a project to gain an understanding of how people understand their animals’ bodies, and their perception of common welfare issues on animals’ bodies. It can also be used in the planning phase to map animal-based indictors of good and bad welfare status, which can help inform indicators used in participatory welfare assessments.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
Body part mapping • To identify local names for parts of an animal’s body. • To uncover and discuss traditional beliefs about animal body parts. • To explore the different perceptions that people have about their animals’ body parts and their associated roles and functions. • To act as an educational tool that introduces participants to the roles and importance of different body parts.
Animal body issues map • To identify problems on animals’ bodies which they perceive as issues and their believed causes.
Animal-based welfare indicators map • To understand what people perceive to be good and bad indicators of welfare.
2 - 3 hours
Materials needed:
Sticks, coloured powder, chart paper, markers. Broken horse or donkey puzzle if available.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Initiation Phase, Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Capability
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs
T20a: Animal Body Parts Map
This basic animal body parts map allows participants to identify their animals’ body parts, providing an indication of how participants perceive their animals’ bodies.
Figure T20a Simple animal body parts map of a working horse
Ten members of working animal owning households produced the simple animal body map above. The animal owners named all known parts of the animal and provided the local names for each part.
T20b: Animal Body Issues Map
The animal body issues map is a natural follow-up activity to the body part and is useful for understanding what participants perceive as normal versus unhealthy. For example, in places where animals have similar welfare problems, such as being thin, owners often perceive thinness to be normal and do not identify it as a problem. In the example below, participants were encouraged to describe the issues - or problems - that affect each body part. The group drew the identified issues on the animal body map (T20b). They indicated their believed causes (when known) and added them to the map next to the associated issue.
Figure T20b Animal body issue map, indicating body issues and causes on a working horse
Through this exercise, the group identified the following wounds:
Nose due to nostrils being slit
Mouth due to where the bit rests
Eyes due to uncleanliness and dirt
Ears due to cutting
Back due to saddle wounds
Barrel due to friction from cart rope
Pastern/fetlock (above hoof) due to hobbling
Knee due to fall
Dock (tail area) due to cart ties
Rump from use of whip
T20c: Animal-based welfare indicators Map
The animal-based welfare indicators map is a useful follow up activity to the animal body parts map. This activity identifies what the animal-owning households perceive to be good and bad indicators of welfare on an animal’s body.
Figure T20C Animal body indicators map of a working horse
Figure T20C is an example of an animal-based welfare indicator map that was created by members of a working animal-owning community. Participants identified characteristics of what they believed a normal, healthy working animal should look like and wrote the identified healthy indicators next to the associated body parts identified in the first animal body mapping activity. They were then asked to identify unhealthy indicators of the same characteristics, and included those on the map. When participants initially completed the map, they only identified a few indicators associated with poor welfare. At this early phase of community engagement, participants had not yet been introduced to concepts of animal welfare, and the activity identified gaps in their knowledge; for example, they incorrectly identified the presence of frog in their working donkeys’ hoof as a poor indicator of health.
This exercise can be repeated and Figure 20c updated and revised to correct any inaccurate indicators after participants’ complete their first participatory animal welfare needs assessment (PWNA) (see recommended next steps T22 Animal Welfare Transect Walk), where they will learn how to identify good and bad animal welfare states related indicators. Once updated and accurate, this animal body map of welfare issues and indicators can then be used to inform action planning.
Animal Body Parts
Step 1
If the animal parts puzzle is available use this and ask participants to put it together, or alternatively ask them to sketch the body of their animal on the ground or on paper, and to identify the different body parts and the local names used for each body part.
Step 2
Once participants have identified all body parts, initiate a discussion on their perceptions of the role and function of each part. This discussion often creates an opportunity for facilitators to sensitize participants about which body parts are important to animals’ function, which is particularly relevant in relation to working animals.
Animal body issue map
Step 3
Follow step one above, then ask the group to identify issues they commonly perceive on the body of their animals. This may include wounds, symptoms of disease, or other problems with animal health or function which they observe. It is important to allow participants to identify what they perceive to be issues, rather than identify issues you as the facilitator perceive. Encourage participants to draw these issues on the body map or represent those using symbols next to the appropriate body part.
Animal-based welfare indicators map
Step 4
Using the animal body parts map (steps 1 and 2), ask participants how a normal, healthy animal should look. Starting the discussion with the question ‘What parts of the body do you look at when purchasing/adopting an animal?’ can be useful. Through this question, participants will typically start to identify what they perceive as indicators of good animal health or welfare as observed on an animal’s body. Ask them to write or draw symbols representing the indicator next to the associated body part on the map.
As a follow up question, ask participants what poor animal health or welfare would look like, or what they consider to be an indication of poor health or condition when purchasing an animal.
Through the discussion, differences in ideas about indicators will emerge and they will sensitize one another to reach agreement. At this stage, it is common for only a few indicators to be identified, especially related to poor animal welfare conditions. Some identified animal-based indicators may be incorrect, highlighting gaps in knowledge, perception about the animal body part and misguided beliefs of welfare. This is gives rise to opportunities for future sensitization on good and bad welfare states.
Step 5
The animal-based welfare indicators mapping activity may be revisited after conducting an initial participatory animal welfare needs assessment (PWNA) in the initiation/planning phase of the community project cycle (T22 Animal Transect Walk). Through the PWNA exercise, participants gain greater understanding of good and bad welfare states and associated animal-based indicators, which they can use to update, add to, and/or correct the indicators on their initial animal-based welfare indicators map (see figure T20c above).
At this time, the facilitator may ask probing questions about different body parts related to what was observed and learned through the transect walk in terms of indicators of problems and good welfare states. Encourage participants to create a comprehensive body map of animal-based parameters for assessing animal welfare relevant to their local context. These can then later be used to inform indicator selection for future transect walks to support monitor community-based action plans/for individual personal action plan and monitoring.
Facilitator's Notes
This tool has been adapted into a ‘Broken Horse’ jigsaw puzzle, where animal body parts are discussed by reconstructing a wooden jigsaw of an animal. This puzzle version of the exercise is good for starting discussions about animal welfare with children.
Next Steps
Issues and related causes identified through this exercise can provide a preliminary indication of perceived animal welfare issues during the initiation phase. Deeper analysis of root causes can be explored during the community action planning using T25 Problem animal and/or T26 Cause and effect analysis.
Ground truth animal welfare issues identified by participants during the mapping exercise, with animals’ actual observed body condition, which can highlight potential gaps in participants’ understanding of welfare issues.
Sensitize participants on good and bad welfare states and associated animal-based indicators.
Identify the most commonly observed animal welfare issues including animal-based indicators, resource related issues and environmental issues.
This resource is to support project teams in structuring their regular meetings with animal owning community members/change agents so as to promote reflection and learning, generate motivation for change, support community members’ progress through the stages of change, and generate opportunities for peer-peer learning.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Implementation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
To maximize on the meetings with the community, the community change agents can follow the following ideas and adapt as they go along.
For meetings involving community change agents:
Start the meeting with each person having a chance to talk about what is going well – this starts you out with a positive tone.
Have people pair up and spend 5 mins each talking about 1) what goal they set for last period and status of achievement, and 2) about their experiences and critical learnings over the past month without being interrupted and without being given advice (This provides people a period to follow their own train of thought from beginning to end). Each person who listened must summarize interesting points to share with group when finished (1 minute summary, use timer for cut off) (good for promoting listening).
Use the following questions to guide group discussion:
What have you accomplished in the last month? / What’s happened since we last met regarding…
What has worked for you in terms of motivating people to change their practices/adopt new behaviours?
What is the status of your target peers? – Stage of change, what are they succeeding with – why?/where are they facing challenges - why?
What things have you been asked that you don’t know answer to or have found challenging in carrying out your role?
What support or knowledge/skills would support you in being able to address this?
Where do you experience difficulties affecting change? - greet failure as an opportunity to build understanding, and focus on affirming the effort rather than the result
“If we consider failure to be unacceptable, then learning is not possible – and then failures will continue.”
Ask for group input on how they have dealt with similar challenges successfully
Discuss solutions to trial
Negotiated behaviour change – what are things people are resistant to changing despite your/their best efforts? – why do you think this is?
If no change is believed possible, discuss potential alternative behaviours that could be promoted/adopted instead to meet their animals’ welfare
Discuss skills/capacity building need requests for next meeting – vote on priority
After trainings - make action plan for applying lessons learned.
In follow up meetings, reflect on the experience of applying previous training to address specific issues/challenges discussed, and
Set action plan and goals for next month – can do as group and/or individually if different, ensuring they share back to group if done individuals.
The figure below provides key areas that the community facilitators can harness to engage the community and promote lasting behaviour change.
For meetings involving change agents + their peer groups:
Start by asking for community members to share testimonials about their/others behaviour change experience. Consider focussing on sharing one or more of the following topics:
RELATIVE ADVANTAGE: how advantageous/disadvantageous is new behaviour
COMPATIBILITY: how is this ask/new behaviour compatible with personal or societal values and beliefs, availability of resources (time/fits w/in routing, money, equipment)
COMPLEXITY: what is the level of real or perceived difficulty - how overcome?
TESTABILITY or OBSERVABILITY: provide first-person experiences or first-hand knowledge/experiences have you observed
Compare results of Animal welfare transect walk (T22) – highlight most significant change, no change – discuss why successful, why no change, and identify motivation/barriers to adoption if not known (consider brainstorming activity). If this tools is not used by all but other tools have been commonly used, alternatively depending on the specific welfare issues/owner’s behaviour they have been following up, compare results using that.
Discuss solutions – what can people change, set new goals as group
If no change is believed possible, discuss potential alternative behaviours that could be adopted instead to meet their animals’ welfare needs (refer to the five domains)
Prioritize new indicators for action if some already addressed
Individual changes – changes in level of awareness, attitudes, behaviour
Societal level changes – aggregate changes, most significant change, less outbreaks of disease, infrastructure installed/improved/managed, collective actions
Below is an overview of the community action planning process covered by steps within the planning phase of the community development approach:
Figure 37: Overview of the Community Action Planning Process
Beginning with a participatory welfare needs assessment (PWNA) helps put the animal itself to the centre of the group’s analysis by looking at the present welfare status of their animal/s. This process sensitizes owners to their animals’ needs and feelings and the ways in which these are expressed through an animal’s behaviour or body language.
Use the methods in this section to conduct and record data for a baseline assessment to determine:
The percentage of people who (do not) practice the promoted behaviours.
The existing pre-conditions (identified barriers/motivators) for practicing the desired behaviour (e.g. people’s knowledge, availability of resources).
Animal welfare indicators if an animal welfare assessment was not conducted at the start of the project initiation phase.
Having recorded a baseline of where animal welfare and associated husbandry and management practices are before any intervention enables assessment of the extent of behaviour change during monitoring and evaluation.
2.1.1 Analyse animal welfare needs and identify indicators for assessing the extent their needs are being met
The focus of this step is to support the group in building a common understanding of welfare based on the five domains. It will also enable them to recognize how aspects of good welfare and poor welfare are expressed by animals’ appearance and behaviour by facilitating the group’s analysis of how animals feel and what they need for their well-being.
In this section you will facilitate the group to:
Identify the needs of animals.
Analyse how far the animals’ needs are being met by everyone involved with their care regime.
Analyse the effects on animals when their basic needs are not fulfilled.
Identify the physical and behavioural signs of each need.
Organize a group meeting and facilitate the group to identify animal welfare needs and what it looks like when these needs are not met. To start the process of discussing animal needs, consider using Animal body mapping (T20) where the group identify welfare issues and their perceived causes on a drawing of their animals’ bodies and discuss what they perceive to be good and bad indicators of welfare. The Thriving not surviving (T18), and Animal feeling analysis (T19) tools can help to examine how the animal may experience life and how people can influence those emotions both positively and negatively. ‘If I were an animal’ (T17) may then help the community to determine to what extent animal needs are being met within the community and can support identification of welfare issues, indicators they can use and any knowledge gaps.
A list of an animal’s welfare needs will be developed by the group during these exercises and information to assist this process can also be found in the Animal Welfare and Communities Learning Module Part 1: Understanding animal welfare. These tools help to move people from looking at solely animal-related resources and services to observing the animal directly and seeing what animals can tell them about their own needs. They put the animal at the centre of analysis. Support group members in coming to common agreement on what they perceive to be good animal welfare and animal husbandry and management practices within their local context.
To support this process, consider populating a five domains framework with their animals’ needs and the equivalent human behaviours that would support meeting them, like the example provided in the facilitator resource 9. Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours. It is important to support the group in defining a list that represents all aspects of animal welfare not just those signs of physical welfare. Ask probing questions to encourage them to think about observable indicators of their animals’ welfare in terms of the five domains of animal welfare (e.g. nutrition, health, environment, behaviour, and mental state).
Next the group need to agree on how these animal- and resource or behaviour-based indicators will be scored to enable assessment of animal welfare and monitoring of changes. Participants write or draw the indicators as a list that can be used for assessing their own animals. The group then comes to a consensus on how each indicator will be scored and decide the exact definition for each score. Refer to the Animal Welfare Transect Walk (T22) instructions for determining scoring. The simplest scoring uses a traffic light system, over time communities will often shift to a more complex numerical system as the group builds experience and confidence assessing their animals’ welfare.
2.1.2 Conduct participatory welfare needs assessment to understand the welfare status of animals within the community
Facilitate the group to assess the welfare status of an animal, by looking at the physical condition of its body and observation of its behaviour. The Animal feeling analysis (T19) and Animal body mapping (T20) tools are helpful here. Identify things that may directly or indirectly affect the welfare of their animals (also refer to previous community needs assessment section 1.2). These include management practices, owner behaviour, resources, stakeholders and the environment, the Animal welfare practice gap analysis (T21) will assist here.
With the group, assess the level or severity of various welfare problems and their contributing factors. Conduct another Animal welfare transect walk (T22) now the community has greater awareness of how to assess animal welfare. This transect can be undertaken by men, women or both together, this process allows exploration of animal welfare conditions and assesses the realities of resources available within the community. The process of joint analysis leads to individual as well as collective action and increases understanding of the need for change and helps support people’s progress through the stages of change from pre-contemplation to the preparation stage.
Once completed, convene the group to sit together and summarise the findings on a chart to draw conclusions. If the walk has been carried out on more than one day, it is useful to hold a group discussion at the end of each day, with a final meeting on the last day of the exercise. The group summarizes the findings for each individual animal and for all the animals together. In particular, the group draws out the indicators that scored red (bad condition), for individual animals and for the village all together. This will generate a list of welfare issues for prioritizing during the next step of community action planning. As community members score themselves during the participatory welfare needs assessment, community facilitators can probe and listen for change talk to gauge different individual’s stages of change.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
Storytelling and guided testimonials can be used to connect with communities and encourage individuals to act. Stories are entertaining, are easy to remember, and allow people to identify with the characters. Stories can move people to action by inspiring and showing solutions to a problem. For the purposes of this guide, this tool has been adapted to animal welfare related stories.
T24a: Closed-Ended Story
A closed-Ended Story is an account of an event (true or imaginary) that is intended to promote a specific animal welfare behaviour to solve a particular animal welfare problem.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To support communities to act on animal welfare issues, by promoting a specific behaviour. • Provide communities with solutions to different animal welfare issues they face in the community.
1.5 - 2 hours.
Materials needed:
pre-preparation of a closed ended story, handouts of the story, flip chart paper
Stages of Behaviour Change: Contemplation Stage, Preparation
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Community Change Agents
The following are examples of closed ended stories which were created to encourage donkey owners to adopt the desired behaviours of cleaning and drying their animals’ pack saddles before using them with animals (Example 1) and cleaning their donkey’s hooves after work (Example 2). Refer to steps below for instructions on crafting closed ended stories relevant to your own context, using these example stories for reference.
Closed Ended Story Example 1: Caring for animal equipment before use
Bibek was the owner of a donkey who carried bricks by pack in the brick kilns in Nepal. Each day, Bibek would prepare the animal for work. First offering some food and water. Next, looking over his animal and brushing off the excess dust from its body. One day Bibek noticed his donkey flinching in response to the brushing. When Bibek looked more closely at his animal, he noticed a few red, raw wounds. The hairs around those wounds were dirty and matted. It took a few attempts to get the pack saddle on his donkey. Bibek could tell his donkey did not want to wear the saddle, it kept moving away. But they had to go now or risk losing money!
Bibek felt pressure and forced the saddle on. He wished it were not so hard! During a tea break, Bibek asked other workers whether their animals had wounds. They all said yes. The wounds were hard to see during work because they were hidden by the pack saddles. At the end of the day, Bibek took off the sweaty pack saddle and dropped it to the dusty earth. The donkey was left to wander, flies swarming around the sweat and open wounds.
Bibek went to the local shop. Other men were having tea outside the shop, with their donkeys tied up nearby. Bibek noticed these donkeys did not have any wounds. Yet, everyone in this area of Nepal must work in the brick kilns. How did their donkeys not have wounds, when all the donkeys in his village did? He greeted the men and said, 'your donkeys look very good, they have no wounds.' The men explained that there was a time when all their animals had wounds. One day, Hari, a man in their village, made changes to the pack saddles they all used. Hari was also trained in first aid and because of this he understood the importance of keeping the pack saddle clean and dry each day and keeping the donkey's coat clean too. This kept away the flies and reduced any infection.
Because of this, Bibek said 'wow, I would like to meet Hari!' And so, they arranged to meet. After their meeting, Hari supported Bibek's community to make changes to the pack saddles. And why it is important to keep clean the sweaty saddles and animals. Slowly the wounds reduced and went from all the donkeys. Ever since seeing that change, Bibek felt so happy to realise he had helped his whole community and their animals all because he started a discussion about why other donkeys did not have wounds.
Closed Ended Story Example 2: Hoof Cleaning
Amina lives in rural Kenya. She is married and has two daughters. Amina recently began working as a water vendor in the nearby market and entirely relies on her two donkeys for her livelihood. Amina is part of a women's group. Everyone in the group uses donkeys to make an income. Amina looks forward to their meetings. It is so nice to talk about life with others! Her daughters, Neema and Zawadi are responsible for the donkeys before and after the market trips. Neema did not like the donkeys. To her, they are big and strong. Neema had seen the donkeys together. Sometimes the donkeys were calm but sometimes they look to be fighting! It made Lela afraid. Neema is happy to clean the stable, fetch food and water when the donkeys are away but because she is scared, she does not want to go near the donkeys.
Amina had learned at her recent group meeting the importance of picking the dirt and debris out of her donkey’s hooves 1-2 times per day, especially after journeys. Excited with her new knowledge, she told Neema to clean out their donkey’s hooves twice a day, especially after journeys. This made Neema feel very bad. She thought ‘how can I do this when I am afraid of our donkeys?’ Neema told her mother how she felt. Amina then realised she was not sure how to do this new task either and it made her nervous too. Amina knew a man, Baraka who always talked about his donkeys. He values them, they look in great condition and are easy to work with. Shani wondered what his secret was. She asked Baraka to join one of her woman’s group meetings and demonstrate how to clean out her donkey’s hooves so that everyone was able, and nobody was afraid. She brought Neema and Zawadi to the meeting.
Baraka demonstrated how to safely approach the donkey and how to gently ask the donkey to lift its leg. ‘Who would like to try now?’ Baraka asked. He knew from Amina that Neema was afraid. Baraka wanted to show Neema how to work with a donkey gently, safely, and confidently. Baraka said, ‘how about you Neema? I can help you learn that donkeys are very nice and can be easy to work with – you just need to learn how.’ Neema thought to herself that Baraka had made cleaning out the hooves look so easy! Maybe he was a magician! She found the courage to try. Baraka explained how donkeys like to be approached and how to restrain them safely for husbandry tasks. He shows Neema how to ask the animal to lift its leg. Then he showed her how to clean out the hooves. First the front legs, then the back. Baraka explained to Neema that it was perfectly normal to be nervous around donkeys. Once you learn how to move around them and ask them gently to do things, working with a donkey can be very nice.
Baraka checked in on Amina’s family a few weeks later. Ever since his demonstration and mentoring, everyone in the family can gently, safely, and confidently lift the legs and clean out the hooves of the family’s donkeys twice a day. However, Neema always wants to be the one to clean the hooves. She is not afraid anymore and feels proud doing the task and of her donkeys.
Closed-Ended Story
Step 1
You need to prepare a story beforehand. Refer to the closed ended story examples provided above for ideas when adapting your own to suit the context and issues relevant to the community. Consider the following guidelines in developing their own context specific story:
• A closed ended story should aim to identify animal welfare issue and associated problem behaviour. • Highlight the impacts on the animal and its feelings because of the problem, consider including elements about societal perceptions of the problem (and these could be framed positively to encourage desired behaviour (e.g., neighbours’ frown on the poor condition of animal and judge owner), or be reflective of the reflect reality even if negative and a barrier to change), • The Story should link to the consequences for people/owners/target actors whenever feasible, and include the subject identifying problem/developing awareness, reflecting on problem and their role in it, weighing pros and cons of change which should reflect local perceptions. • The story could be crafted in a way that it is used to raise doubts about current beliefs/practices which are hindering willingness to act, and then contemplating potential solutions, deciding, and preparing a course of action, and reflecting on benefits of having made the change. • The story should have a final verdict at the end where all the details are wrapped up and leave the reader knowing how it ends.
Step 2
Ask participants how many of them have recently heard or told a story. What kinds of stories? Where did they hear or tell them? Then explain that in this session, they will talk about one type of story, the closed-ended story, sharing the definition of a closed-ended story with community participants so they are clear on what it is.
Explain to the participants that you will now read a closed-ended story. You may wish to distribute handouts of the story if helpful.
Step 3
Discuss the story in small groups or in plenary by posing questions that promote reflection, learning and action in relation to the story you read. The following questions are provided for general guidance; however, you are encouraged to adapt them and create your own to ensure relevance to your story:
• What was the main problem in the story? • What happened to animal in this story? What symptoms did the animal have? • What did the subject(s) think cause the problem/symptoms? • What did others in the story think about the issue and/or express about tissue? • What was the solution to the problem? • What did we learn from this story? • Do you know anyone who has ever had a similar problem? And how did they solve it? • How could this issue be prevented or resolved in your context? • Could the problem be addressed by doing something like what was done in this story? • What would you do in this scenario? • What commitments to action can you make from the lessons gathered from this story?
Step 4
Record any key insights from the community’s analysis and responses in your project action trackerwhich may be relevant to your project planning and implementation (e.g., community members’ stages of change and identified to support their progress, potential barriers, and motivators to change etc.), and consider adding any key actions communities identify to take within theircommunity action plan as appropriate.
Facilitation Notes
You are encouraged to craft a story that is relevant to your context and which community members can easily relate with and refer to the example stories provided for ideas on how to design a story that promotes reflection, learning and action.
It is recommended to review the example reflection and learning questions provided within the steps and adapt them as needed to ensure they reflect your own story prior to undertaking this activity to save time and ensure the activity runs smoothly and generates effective discussion when implemented.
Consider asking both men and women, and other relevant social or marginalized groups to provide their reflections on stories separately. Different participants may draw different conclusions from the same story that is ok as this reflects their different views and lived experiences of the topic discussed. This is important as it will provide insights on different groups perspectives which can help you better understand these groups and how best to work different groups and tailor your interventions to support them in improving their animals’ welfare.
Next Steps
The tool can be supplemented with T24b. Animal Welfare Before and After Story, to support with determining the next steps to take in addressing the animal welfare situation.
T24b: Animal Welfare Before and After Story
This tool uses a ‘before and after’ story to stimulate discussion about how to change from a situation of poor animal welfare to a situation where welfare is improved.
The Animal welfare story with a gap uses a pair of pictures, to show a ‘before’ situation relating to a working animal and the other showing an ‘after’ scenario where the animal’s welfare has improved.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To elicit discussions on animal welfare issues; showing the situation as it was and how it has improved. • To Understand the Steps to a Desired Change • To help the community come up with strategies for improving animal welfare issues by identifying the steps that would need to be taken to achieve what is represented in the improved picture.
2 hours.
Materials needed:
large paper, note cards, markers, and pre-prepared pictures of animals before and after welfare issue has been resolved.
Stages of Behaviour Change: Contemplation Stage, Preparation
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Community Change Agents
The illustration below shows a community engaging using the animal welfare before and after story. The discussions include comparison of two different set of welfare situations presented in pictures. The participants are discussing both drawings and filling in the gap in the story by identifying the steps that would need to be taken to achieve what is represented in the improved picture.
Figure T24b Community members discussing welfare.
Animal Welfare Before and After Story
Step 1
For this exercise you need to prepare the pictures beforehand: use drawings or photographs of existing animal management situations or practices in the community.
Step 2
Divide the participants into several small groups and give each group the same set of ‘before’ and ‘after’ pictures. Ask each group to begin by considering the ‘before’ picture, such as a picture of a animal with wounds, and to discuss why the situation has occurred. Next, ask each group to discuss the ‘after’ scene of the improved situation, such as an animal with fewer or no wounds. Then ask the groups what steps they think they might take to get from the ‘before’ to the ‘after’ scenario (in other words how they would fill the gap in the story), what obstacles they might have in their way, and what resources they would need to do this.
Step 3
Bring the different groups together and ask each group to tell the stories they have created. Encourage the groups to weigh the benefits of each suggestion for improving animal welfare and discuss more ways to overcome the obstacles. Use the following questions provided as a general guide during the discussions, however you are encouraged to adapt them and create your own to ensure relevance to your story:
• What steps would you need to act and make this change a reality in your context? • What resources or support exist to support you in taking these steps? If necessary, resources or support are lacking, what alternatives exist or how could you investigate or learn more about how others have overcome this issue or go about securing these resources/support?
Step 4
Record the community’s analysis and responses in your project action tracker and follow up with the community later if/when you start action planning together.
Facilitation Notes
You are encouraged to consider asking both men and women, and other relevant social or marginalized groups to provide their reflections separately.
Facilitate the discussion of ‘before’ and ‘after’ scenarios by ensuring that the animal welfare context is clearly shown.
More interpretations and suggestions can be gathered by dividing the participants into several small focus groups (for example of women and men, young and old people, or other categories) and giving each the same set of pictures. After analysing the drawings, the focus groups can come together to report on their discussions and compare their views.
Ensure to document the experiences of different community groups views as it may be unique to their intersecting identities and lived experiences.
T24c: Open-Ended Story Telling
Open-Ended Story is an account of an event (true or imaginary) that talks about a problem but does not explain what to do about it. In an open-ended story, listeners are asked to generate as many as possible solutions to a complex problem. In the context of animal welfare, the community may be asked to suggest as many as possible solutions to an animal welfare related story.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To promote discussion and support identification of ideas for solution to a complex issue or problem for which no clear strategy has been identified.
1.5 -2 hours.
Materials needed:
pre-preparation of an open-ended story, handouts of the story, large paper, note cards, markers.
The following are example of an open-ended story were created to help communities identify solutions for addressing heat stress in their animals. Refer to steps below for instructions on crafting an open-ended story relevant to your own context, using this example for reference.
Open-ended Story Example: Providing water to animals
Heat stressed animals — all species [behaviour — immediate: cool the animal down; longer-term: provide animals with free access to water without interruption, disturbance, or distraction]
Temperatures are starting to rise. Nobody looked forward to this time of year when temperatures would reach 40 Celsius / 100 Fahrenheit in the day. It is not comfortable for people and animals alike — especially when there are market trips to do. Abha and his wife Kanti set out in the early morning to reach the market by 6am. The trip would take 3 hours in each direction. They travelled by cart, pulled by their horse, who had recently given birth. Her foal either ran alongside or joined the family on the cart.
The marketplace was very busy. There were many families, with livestock and things to sell. The goods for sale were organised in different sections. Abha was selling grain. The marketplace was hot, open without any natural shade. Some families were clever! They brought poles and material to create their own shade. Water was available at a few locations around the market. When Abha and Kanti arrived at the market and began preparations to sell their grain, Kanti noticed their horse breathing very heavy. Her nostrils were flaring/widening, her head was held very low, and her stomach was moving in and out very fast. Kanti also noticed her foal was trying to nurse and struggling. Kanti got distracted by an interested buyer.
An hour later, Kanti noticed their horse was still breathing very heavy. Kanti then remembered seeing bullocks in the village doing the same thing and the local healer insisted the animals were cooled down. It was dangerous the animals were so hot that they were no longer sweating. They needed to recover from the heat outside and heat generated from working. Abha and Kanti wondered what options they had to cool down their horse. They worried they would not be able to travel home if their horse was sick.
Open-Ended Story
Step 1
You need to prepare a story beforehand. Refer to the open ended story example provided above for ideas when adapting your own. An open-ended story should include: • A story should aim to identify animal welfare issue and associated problem behaviour. • Highlight the impacts on the animal and its feelings because of the problem, consider including elements about societal perceptions of the problem (and these could be framed positively to encourage desired behaviour (e.g., neighbours’ frown on the poor condition of animal and judge owner), or be reflective of the reality even if negative and a barrier to change), • The Story should link to the consequences for people/owners/target actors whenever feasible, and include the subject identifying problem/developing awareness, reflecting on problem and their role in it, weighing pros and cons of change which should reflect local perceptions. • The story should not have a final verdict at the end, and allow the listeners to provide what the imagine should be the end of the story and well as opportunity to suggest what needs to be done Once you have the story ready, ask participants how many of them have recently heard or told a story. What kinds of stories? Where did they hear or tell them? Then explain that in this session, they will talk about one type of story, the open-ended story. Then share with the community the definition you prepared in advance of what an open-ended story is and explain the definition. An Open-Ended Story is an account of an event (true or imaginary) that talks about a problem but does not explain what to do about it.
Step 2
Explain to the participants that you will now read an open-ended story. See an example of the story in figure T24c below. Distribute the story Handout: Open-Ended Story. Read the story with the participants. Discuss the story in small groups or in plenary by posing the questions for the story you read:
Step 3
The discussions can be guided by the following questions. • What were the main problems in the story? What went wrong? • How could these problems have been prevented? • Have people in your community ever had these kinds of problems? • How can we prevent this problem?
Step 4
Ask participants when they might want to use a closed-ended story and when might they want to use an open-ended story. Allow participants time to answer. Summarize the discussion in your project action tracker and follow up with the community later if/when you start action planning together.
Facilitation Notes
The stories provided are examples, and you are encouraged to craft a story that is relevant to your context and which community members can easily relate with. You may refer to the example stories provided for ideas on how to design a story that promotes reflection, learning and action.
It is recommended to review the example reflection and learning questions provided within the steps and adapt them as needed to ensure they reflect your own story prior to undertaking this activity to save time and ensure the activity runs smoothly and generates effective discussion when implemented.
Consider asking both men and women, and other relevant social or marginalized groups to provide their reflections on stories separately. Different participants may draw different conclusions from the same story that is ok as this reflects their different views and lived experiences of the topic discussed. This is important as it will provide insights on different groups perspectives which can help you better understand these groups and how best to work different groups and tailor your interventions to support them in improving their animals’ welfare.
The problem animal tool supports identifying and exploring the underlying causes of perceived animal welfare issues through an in depth root cause analysis. This activity can be revisited when planned actions have resulted in desired welfare improvements to promote evaluation and reflection on unidentified or unaddressed root causes. Please note that the first step in this exercise is the same as that ofAnimal welfare body mapping (T20).
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To raise awareness of the root causes of welfare issues affecting different parts of an animal’s body and possible actions to be taken to address them, either collectively or individually • To inform organisational planning based on root cause analysis of animal welfare issues
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, cards, sticky notes, coloured markers, tape, and scissors
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs
Problem Animal
Figure T25a Problem animal diagram
Exploring the complexities of need and demand for farriery service.
This diagram was made by a group of animal owners. First, the group discussed the problems affecting each part of the animal’s body, then they analysed the problems in depth to find their root causes. The group found that wounds on different parts of the body have different causes, but there are also causal factors (sub causes) which are common to more than one body area, such as bad road conditions and the way that ropes are tied. Wounds on the belly, breast and tail base were found to be inter-related. The group created a community action plan to address some of the root causes identified during this exercise.
Figure T25b Problem animal – causes of identified animal welfare problems
Animal body mapping PLEASE NOTE: Steps 1-3 are the same as in T20 Animal body mapping and should be completed prior to carrying out T25 Problem animal.
Animal body parts map
Step 1
If the broken animal jigsaw puzzle is available, start by playing the game. Then, ask participants to sketch the body of their animal on the ground or on paper and to identify the different body parts and the local names used for each body part.
Step 2
Once participants have identified all body parts, initiate a discussion on their perceptions of the role and function of each part. This discussion often creates an opportunity for facilitators to sensitize participants about which body parts are important to animals’ function, which is particularly relevant in relation to working animals.
Animal body issue map
Step 3
Follow step one above, then ask the group to identify issues they commonly perceive on the body of their animals. This may include wounds, symptoms of disease, or other problems with animal health or function which they observe. It is important to allow participants to identify what they perceive to be issues, rather than identify issues you as the facilitator perceive. Encourage participants to draw these issues on the body map or represent those using symbols next to the appropriate body part.
Problem animal
Step 4
Then, ask the community which 2 or 3 of the issues identified in step 3 are the biggest problems and focus on those for the rest of the activity. Start with those most common to everyone.
Have participants discuss the causes of the problems and draw or write the causes near the relevant part of the animal’s body. Analyse each welfare issue in depth by repeatedly asking ‘why?’ questions.
For example:
‘Why does the animal get that wound?’ – ‘Because of the leather belt on the harness’
‘Why does the leather belt cause the wound?’ – ‘Because it is not cleaned and oiled’
‘Why is the belt not cleaned and oiled?’ – ‘Because we don’t have the time’
‘Why don’t you have the time?’
…and so on, until the group reaches the deepest root causes of the welfare problem and cannot go any further.
When one welfare problem is complete, take up the next one and repeat the questions until root causes are drawn or written next to all the problems shown on the body of the animal. If time permits, add additional issues, and repeat the same process with participants.
Step 5
As the discussion progresses and all the causes are identified, analyse any links or relationships between different causes and show these using lines or arrows (see Figure T25).
Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to guide participants to the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 6
Ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped.
Discussion questions may include:
• What have they realized or learned because of doing this activity? • What are possible solutions for addressing the root causes of priority animal welfare issues? • Are there opportunities to take collective action to address the root causes the issues? • Referring to the identified root causes, what are the implications or consequences for owners or animal-owning households if not addressed?
Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 7
Have the community helper record the root causes and any specific actions and activities in the community action plan, including who will monitor, a realistic timeline and any help needed from external stakeholders. Record the root causes and actions to be taken by the team to your project action tracker and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders
Facilitator’s notes: Problem animal
The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas.
Men, women, owners, users and carers all have different roles and responsibilities related to their animals and may have different knowledge to contribute to understanding the root causes of welfare issues. Decide who best to include in this activity and whether to carry it out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on group dynamics, your rapport with the community and the local context.
The in-depth problem analysis explores socially and traditionally induced inequality related issues as root causes from different people’s lived experiences depending on their position within a society e.g. gender inequality, caste systems, migratory status, race, etc. might uniquely affect owners/users/carers understanding in living within and dealing with root causes. Therefore, the importance of creating safe and enabling environment during such discussion is a high priority as part of a ground rule when leading such sensitive areas. It is also important to acknowledge people’s realties/lived experiences; rather than being dismissive.
This exercise needs a lot of patience and questioning in order to enable the deepest causal factors to come out of the discussion. Keep asking “why” until all root causes are identified.
Consider using cards or sticky notes to document the causes and sub-causes, as participants may change their mind about the causes and either move or remove them.
It is important for the facilitator to end such meetings on a positive note by doing Step 6 and 7 focusing on the potential solutions. Doing this helps with reflective motivation for people to be more motivated to continue to engage and work with us (rather than leaving them pondering about all the magnitude of the problems they have to tackle).
If the animal body mapping (T20)exercise was performed by the group in the recent past, it should not be necessary to repeat steps 1-3. In this case, review and summarize the issues identified with the group, then move to root cause identification in step 4.
T26 Animal welfare cause and effect analysis to explore the root causes of an individual welfare issue identified during this Problem Animal activity in greater depth along with the related effects on animals and people. This tool is great for fostering motivation to improve animal welfare, as it explores the consequences of inaction for both animal and humans.
T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the risks and opportunities of action and inaction on both animals and humans, including potential solutions for reducing costs and increasing benefits to both. This tool is useful if previously agreed community actions are not being adopted due to lack of motivation or high perceived costs.
Undertaking the root causes analysis using T25 tool paves the way to do COM-B behavioural diagnosisto further support the kind of substantive intervention needed to address the desired behaviour change.
