2.2.1 Understand and prioritise animal welfare issues based on participatory welfare needs assessment
This step brings the community together around a common goal and builds their confidence in their own ability to bring about positive change in their animals’ lives by working together as a group. Develop the community’s key concerns about the welfare of their animals to identify which they would like to address, and to unite them around a common activity or goal (‘entry point’).
The group identified the welfare issues affecting their animals through a participatory animal welfare needs assessment. Their next task is to decide which problems are the most serious or important to change, by ranking issues according to their importance. This helps the group members to set a realistic agenda for their own actions within limited financial and other resources. Remember to appreciate that no group is homogenous, for example there will be gender-based differences in control and access to resources (Gender control analysis (T10)), group dependency on external actors (Dependency analysis (T12)) and differing income/ expenditure to consider (Income, expenditure, and credit analysis (T13)). People will only be motivated to act when they identify such issues themselves and then discuss and formulate them into clearly expressed needs for both animals and people, along with a common vision of the expected improved situation.
You can facilitate the group to rank these welfare issues according to their priorities for acting, by using simple discussion or by writing the issues on separate cards and agreeing an order of preference (also known as Preference ranking). Alternatively, you may use Pair-wise ranking and scoring (T8) or Matrix ranking and scoring (T9). In our experience many groups use a combination of tools e.g. pairwise preference ranking followed by matrix ranking. It is important that issues are prioritized according to the preferences of the animal owning community members themselves, rather than according to the priorities of your supporting agency. If the group does not have ownership of decisions, action will not follow.
The list of animal welfare issues is often a long one and the group cannot act on all of them at the same time. It may be useful to sort the list into problems that need immediate action (within one month) and those that are medium-term goals (action to be taken within about one year) or long-term goals (two years or more).
2.2.2 Identify root causes of prioritised animal welfare issues
To help the community better understand the context in which you are seeking to promote behavioural change to improve animal welfare, facilitate them in undertaking a root cause analysis of identified animal welfare issues to gain an in-depth understanding of the problems using a participatory learning and action tools such as Problem Animal (T25), Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis (T26), and Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis (T21). Conducting a root cause analysis of welfare issues will help the group understand and identify the underlying causes for their priority welfare issues. For example, there might be seasonal variations in capacity of some individuals to earn money, such as migrant workers in brick kilns who may have only occasional work when the brick kiln season ends (six-month periods) which means financial resources are extremely limited throughout much of the year.
It is useful to consider the effects of contributing factors on the owner and their family, as well as on the animal, as this can provide a motivator to act. Through these activity discussions, you will gain deeper insights into the broader context and potential constraints and opportunities communities face in making animal welfare improvements, as well as highlight potential opportunities for undertaking one health or one welfare initiatives.
It is important that you are patient and encourage the group to reflect carefully and to analyze the causes or contributing factors in detail. If the discussion is pushed too fast, people may not have time to come out with the real underlying causes. For example, wounds do not usually resolve if just cleaned, the root cause of the wound may be more complex, but it is important the group are encouraged to work out these more complex root causes together. You as the facilitator can support this process by probing the group to dig deeper to identify the deeper causal factors by repeatedly asking what causes each cause identified, until no further causes can be identified, and they arrive at the underlying root cause. This process also helps us to understand how people view the root causes and their belief system about possibility of behavior change, and it will be important to listen to listen for change talk during this discussion to better understand what stage of change the group may be in. Refer to the facilitator resource 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Behavior Change for further guidance on how to support group members change process. Understanding the root causes may also help identify key stakeholders who need to be engaged with the project and community, or who may need to act or adopt changes for animal welfare to improve. Use the Project Action Tracker resource to keep records of important insights and findings to inform your project planning. For example, communities’ priority issues, their root causes, including any capability, motivation or opportunity related preconditions that need to be in place for communities to be able to address the welfare issue which they/you may have identified through discussions, as well as any potential needs or opportunities to engage other key stakeholders in the project.
2.2.3 Develop shared community vision for improving animal welfare and community action plan to address prioritized issues
The community action plan serves as an open community ‘contract’ for action, it notes who will take which action and when, helping people to take responsibility for addressing problems in a systematic way and building in accountability. It also brings agreement on the support that they need to implement the plan: from you, the project, and other external institutions or stakeholders. This process will be repeated when they decide to work on the next prioritized issue. To ensure accountability, and aid transparency and sustainability of the project, this plan should also cover your withdrawal (where applicable depending on the duration of the project) and hand over of any relevant elements, this is to ensure the process is undertaken effectively and supports the continued success of the community action.
Before undertaking action planning, revisit the group’s agreement on what good animal welfare and husbandry and management practices are considering previous Animal welfare transect walk (T22) results. Encourage consideration of improving welfare across multiple domains because this will have greater cumulative welfare impact than improving welfare in only one domain. Facilitate discussions using Community Animal Welfare Visioning (T30) to identify their collective vision for what they would like the community’s animal welfare to look like in their local context. Use this vision to guide community action planning and the identification of what needs to change for them to achieve their vision.
WHAT ABOUT INCURABLE WELFARE ISSUES?
It is important to appreciate that some welfare issues cannot be improved, such as chronic conditions or incurable disease. In these instances, it would be helpful to discuss with the group what could be done to prevent these welfare issues in the future, and how these conditions may be managed for those animals affected. Consider inviting relevant animal health and welfare experts to these discussions to share relevant information and expertise as needed to promote informed discussion and ensure any preventative measures identified do no harm.
Once the group has agreed on the root causes for each key problem encourage community members to record the specific behaviours which need to change and then develop a community action plan for implementing these changes. Support the group in creating an action for each root cause, encouraging them to think about what practices they need to change for their priority animal welfare issues to be addressed, and what needs to be in place for them to adopt the desired practices. The Animal welfare practice gap analysis (T21) can be helpful to use here, as can the Story Telling: Animal Welfare Before and After Story (T24b) which can help to identify the steps or change in behavior they can take to improve their animals’ welfare. Depending upon the group size and dynamics, everyone may wish to work together or to break into smaller sub-groups to identify possible actions to address their priority animal welfare issues, with sub-groups brought back together to discuss and comment on each other’s’ work and offer suggestions for changes. Check all priority issues have been covered.
ATTENTION!
Involving men, women and children at every stage of the planning process, either together or separately, can ensure better and more sustainable results in the long term. This is because each can often play an integral role in improving their animals' welfare.
The major contributors to the community action plan should be the animal owners’ group (men, women, and children), because the plan is designed to reflect their interests. However, if issues with animal health or resource service provision have been identified as a priority issue/root cause of animal welfare issues during the community action planning process, it can be helpful to meet with local service providers and communities in separate sessions to come up with indicators/criteria of good quality service. Use these sessions to evaluate service providers where service providers self-evaluate themselves, and communities separately also evaluate them. Come back together to review synthesized anonymised results. This process gives an opportunity for assessing present situations, and challenging assumptions and perceptions of the current quality of service. During this process it should be possible to identify potential ways the community can work together to improve. Consider using Community Score Card (T35) tool to support these discussions.
One of the core competencies required for this is to have strong facilitation skills to smooth discussions during joint sessions and enable a secure, productive, transparent, and accountable discussion, reflection, planning and monitoring process. Sometimes a simple plan may be prepared by the group, based on one or two (maximum of three) very urgent issues for immediate action, or those of particular interest to the members. As the group becomes more confident they may wish to produce a more comprehensive action plan. Whatever the size of the plan, it must be specific. The plan should include:
The welfare issue identified.
Change indicators identified and how they will be monitored
The cause(s) of each issue (based on the root cause analysis).
Action to be taken against each root cause – such as identifying what behaviour or practices need to adopt
Who will undertake each action (clear roles and responsibilities)?
When to perform each action (time frame).
Who will monitor that the action is really taken as agreed?
Any resources or support required to implement these actions
Community action planning leads to two types of action:
Individual action by each member of the group to benefit their own animal. These individual actions, or changes in behaviour, are decided collectively by the group and are monitored by the group.
Collective action by the whole group to solution common animal welfare issues that could otherwise not be solved as effectively through individual action, and which benefit all the animals belonging to group members (e.g. organizing vaccinations or bulk feed purchases at reduced costs, advocating for improving access and/or availability of animal related resources and/or services).
While one of the main benefits of group formation is the potential for collection action, motivation to work together to address their shared interests may not be sufficient in the early stages of group formation, particularly if resource investment is required and the group does not know each other well. It is normal for it to take time for community members to form a cohesive group that is willing and able to work together. However, consider using the following tools which can be helpful in identifying the need and motivation for collective action: Dependency analysis (T12), and Income credit and expenditure analysis (T13). Where costs may be high, forming a savings group or working together for collective purchases or production may help lower costs and make resources for accessible/available for caring for their animals.
It is vital to discuss how implementation of the action plan will be measured and monitored. Monitoring is most effective when group members agree to monitor each other. This brings in peer pressure and peer encouragement for action. As each step in the action plan succeeds, the community facilitators can lead a process of action and reflection to generate further incremental steps towards practical, sustainable improvement in animal welfare. Encourage the group to discuss past experiences or previous efforts made to tackle issues, so that their lessons learned can contribute to any new plan.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
2.3.1 Develop a project operating plan informed by community action plan(s)
The community’s members have by this stage prioritised their animal welfare issues and identified the desired changes they wish to make. Utilize all evidence gleaned through this community action planning process, including the results from the community participatory welfare needs assessment, to explore meaningful interventions for addressing any COM-B related barriers and/or motivators to change that your organization may wish to address and monitor. For example, this could include interventions to improve the enabling environment for community animal health workers or undertaking societal level outreach and awareness raising campaigns with the aim of generating improved value of animals and to shift social norms to support the desired changes in practices that have been prioritized by communities. Consider using the following facilitator resources to support your planning process: 12. Behaviour Change Planning Table, 13. Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies. It is important to note that the planning process should include a plan for withdrawal of support and exit and consult with community members about what support they envision will be required to do this effectively.
Refer to any notes taken of key findings and insights identified through PLA activities and discussions undertaken with communities to inform this process, referring to you records within the Project Action Tracker resource if used, adding any additional information as needed.
It is important proper policies and standard operating procedures are in place for the project, including necessary safeguarding measures that protect and create an enabling environment for potentially discriminated and vulnerable groups (e.g. to take on leadership roles within their communities, women as change agents etc.). This includes ensuring sufficient capability within the implementing team to uphold these measures and effectively fulfil their roles and responsibilities to the project without issue.
2.3.2 Develop project monitoring plan and conduct baseline assessment
Identify Indicators of Success
Now that you have identified what the project aims to achieve through its planned activities, you can develop your monitoring plan by first identifying indicators of success. Indicators may be quantitative or qualitative but need to be measurable which you can ensure by designing them so that they are SMART –specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time-bound.
When thinking about what to measure, consider the following:
Impact Indicators: Impact level indicators may be focused on how animal welfare has improved because of the project, or benefits perceived by the community as a result of the project/improving animal welfare. Examples of impact level indicators to consider may include:
- How animal welfare has improved in terms of the five domains, and/or specific indicators of welfare issues you would expect to see resolved because of the adoption of desired behaviours.
- Benefits perceived by communities as a result of improving animal welfare/ the project.
Outcome indicators: outcome indicators enable you to determine the extent to which project activities have achieved the desired result. Examples of outcome level indicators to consider may include:
- The extent to which community group members practice the desired behaviours, such as “XX% men or women animal carers clean their animal’s shelter daily” (refer to Behaviour Change Planning Table step 1 and 2) [20].
- Indicators that enable assessing the extent to which pre-conditions/barriers to practicing and sustaining the desired behaviours have been addressed e.g. access to and/or availability of quality animal health services, cognitive variables such as attitude and knowledge change (refer to Behaviour Change Planning Table step 4 [20].
- Indicators of the self-sufficiency and effective governance of the community group e.g. savings and loan repayments, peer-peer support, and ability to work together on collective actions and/or advocate to meet their needs.
- In addition to the indicators above, it is also helpful to consider assessing the following [20]:
• Why people practice the promoted behaviours? Such findings provide extremely useful lessons for further promotion of these behaviours in the existing or planned projects.
• Why do people not practice the promoted behaviours? Such findings are crucial for re-designing your strategy to address the factors which prevent people from practicing the behaviours
Output indicators: indicators related to output should enable your project to assess how well project activities were implemented, as opposed to measure the resultant changes that emerge because of activities. Refer to the activities you plan to implement and develop indicators for each activity (step 4 of the Behaviour Change Planning Table). Examples of output level indicators include:
- Total number of male/female community members attending educational or training event.
- Total number of trainings provided on animal welfare.
- Total number of educational posters or murals displayed publicly.
Once monitoring indicators are identified, the next step is to select the method of data collection (e.g. KIIs, FGDs, Surveys, secondary sources of data, photos etc.), and develop appropriate data collection tools as needed, as well as define your sampling parameters. Consider the following when selecting your data collection methods and tools:
Think about where you may be able to rely on existing data sources or use participatory monitoring methods (e.g. Animal Welfare Transect Walk, records of treatments or observations of animal health service providers), and where the project will be responsible for monitoring.
Feedback from members of the target audience can be used for monitoring and evaluation purposes. Consider establishing feedback mechanisms or proactively reaching out to different demographics within your target audience or engaging a small group of proactive engaged target audience for their opinions and suggestions about the content and value of communications, and effectiveness of the project and whether it has affected their animal care and management practices.
If considering self-reporting methods for capturing attitudes and attitudinal change (i.e. members of the target audience report on change), responses may be distorted by the respondents’ wish to give socially acceptable or desirable answers. To overcome this, you can triangulate data by obtaining information from 2 or 3 sources and use observation to give a broad perspective of the effectiveness of the programme.
Ensure whatever monitoring methods and tools you select will enable you to collect data from/about relevant demographics within the target audience so you can assess the extent to which your outreach activities have equally reached and been effective proportionately across demographics. This is particularly important to assess to ensure your project has effectively understood and tailored its approach to address the different realities of target group demographics, and does not further contributed to the marginalization of potentially vulnerable groups.
It is important to strike a balance between sufficient sample size to evaluate project success, ensuring inclusion of relevant representative demographics within the target audience (e.g. men, women, or other marginalized groups), and not overburdening the project. Think about how data will be used and by whom and aim to sample sufficiently to suite your purposes. For example, the understanding needed by your project requires a differently level of data reliability and certainty than would publishing results in a scientific paper.
Applying a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods of data collection gives a more in depth understanding for evaluating project success.
Figure 39: Examples of Triangulating Data Sources to Assess Project Success
Determine Monitoring Timelines and Responsibilities
Once you have identified your monitoring methods and tools, decide how often you are going to collect data on the different indicators, who is responsible for collecting and analysing it, and how will the results be shared, including both unexpected and undesirable outcomes. Consider the following recommendations when deciding when to collect data [20]:
At the project’s start: conduct a baseline survey of the projects’ selected impact and outcome indicators
Throughout the project: consider assessing relevant outcome and output indicators to monitor the progress of activity implementation and achievement of results
At the end of the project: conduct an end line assessment to measure impact and outcome indicators and compare this to the results of your baseline assessments. It is recommended the end line assessment also assess the main reasons why people (did not) adopt the promoted behaviours.
6 months- 2 years after the project: replicate the end line assessment of impact and outcome indicators to assess the extent to which changes have been sustained after the project.
It is important to ensure that whatever monitoring indicators, methods, and frequencies are selected, that results can be used to promote reflection, learning and adaptive management for both community members and the project throughout the course of the project cycle. Collective reflection and experience are a powerful tool for learning and change, and effective learning and reflection processes can foster motivation and a sense of self-efficacy and ownership of change amongst community members. It is therefore helpful to create opportunities for community groups to review monitoring results to:
Support their reflection, learning about successes and challenges, and changing trends.
Promote transparency and accountability in terms of what the project is achieving.
Improve motivation for change through a celebration of successes and identify where more effort or adaptations in action plans are needed.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
The purpose of the implementation phase is to help community members either build on existing community-based organizations (CBOs) or start to build their own CBOs to implement their community action plan, monitor it regularly and reflect on their findings and experiences together.
3.1.1 Community Based Organisation Formation and strengthening
At this point you will have found several people with shared interests in improving their animals’ welfare who have taken part in activities together. Ideally it is easier to facilitate and encourage already functioning CBOs as they have already developed their own systems of working together towards the achievement of a shared goal, and their relationships and procedures will already be in place. Group stabilisation and strengthening is an ongoing process using the resources 14. Overview of community group formation process, and common challenges and factors influencing group success, and 15. Templates for supporting community group governance can aid development of community groups as they contain useful templates and checklists for guidance. The use of facilitation resource T28 Group sustainability mapping can be used to support group strengthening.
It is recommended that CBOs show the following:
Fair leadership
Good governance
Are inclusive both in terms of promoting gender equality, and not discriminating against marginalised community groups
If CBOs exist which do not meet the above criteria, you may wish to explore opportunities for strengthening these groups to address any identified gaps. If no functioning CBOs exist amongst the community members you are working with, you will need to facilitate the formation of new CBOs, this a crucial step, which needs your support and experience. The CBO can be composed of men, women and children, or separate groups may be formed as appropriate.
Following the four-stage plan for CBO formation will aid the group development process, as outlined in Figure 40 below:
Figure 40: Stages of Group Development [70]
Key Characteristics of Community-based Organizations:
A CBO is not just any collection of community members. It is those who come together with commitment to improving animal welfare, with shared objectives, goals or purpose and a plan.
Members work together to design plans for collective action to improve welfare.
Communication between members is open, supportive and all voices are heard.
All members are aware about the membership criteria, the rules, procedures, rights, and responsibilities of members.
Regular meetings are held with active participation from members.
The size of the CBO allows all members to participate actively, small enough to not overwhelm and large enough to ensure effectiveness of any collective actions and sustainability of the group. As a rule of thumb, 15-30 members should be considered the maximum membership range for group functioning.
All members understand the reason for the CBO and have a shared sense of responsibility.
There is identified leadership, the members recognise the leadership and the leader/s lead actively.
Leadership is accountable, transparent and is on a rotational or election process.
Promote representativeness (including the leadership) of different CBOs to ensure they are not gender blind/gender exploitative and are inclusive of all people within the community, including those known to be marginalised. The groups must not promote existing systems of discrimination and must uphold safeguarding protection by ensuring they do not promote or engage in any forms of harm to people or the environment. Safeguarding needs to be considered by the project in terms of how they organize meetings and to ensure safety and security of members. Any activities must do no harm, it is essential to ensure there is due diligence so that when encouraging participation and empowering members they are not put at risk. Initial steps may involve working to promote equality and acceptance to mitigate harm that could be caused by sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment and bullying because of their work with the project. Sometimes it can be difficult to initiate collective action by some genders or social groups, in which case organizing CBOs with the opposite gender or other social groups may be easier, as other CBOs will often come together after seeing the success of the first. In some cases, it might be necessary to meet with the men or community leaders before forming CBOs with women or other traditionally marginalized groups, to be sensitive to cultural protocols, and explain the benefits that working with such groups can bring to families and/or the community.
If the experiences or interests of interested members are very mixed, they may not form a strong CBO. In this case, forming smaller groups of similar people) may be more effective than larger mixed groups. These smaller groups can then decide how to associate and network with others to form a larger organization, when they wish to manage broader issues of common interest.
Ask CBO members to select individuals to be ‘animal welfare advocates’ and encourage them to ensure representation of marginalized and vulnerable groups within these key leadership roles, potentially through the adoption of gender quotas as needed to ensure women’s’ representation in leadership roles. ‘Animal welfare advocates can then form a link between the CBO and service providers such as local animal health or resource service providers and may also be trained through the project as change agents, promoting understanding of animal welfare best practices amongst the broader community, and/or to provide basic animal first aid as appropriate. They can also stimulate enthusiasm and action by the group and lead processes such as participatory welfare needs assessments. As time goes on, ‘animal friends can take over some of the roles of the facilitator, which makes the process of withdrawal easier.
This community-led collective action will enable the CBO to sustain animal welfare interventions over long periods of time. A well-organized CBO will continue to function even after the withdrawal of your supporting agency and will provide a strong, stable institutional base from which to meet the requirements of the community and its animals.
Encourage the CBO to frame and review their own set of norms, rules, or by-laws. We find that these usually include:
Membership: who may join the CBO, what the CBO size should be and what happens when a member leaves or their membership is terminated.
CBO structure: how will the CBO be arranged such as chairperson, vice-chairperson, committee and their accountability level, general assembly, board and chairperson accountability and transparency levels.
Meetings: what is a quorum for the CBO, what happens if people are absent from meetings or turn up late to meetings.
Representatives: who represents the CBO, how representatives are chosen, whether they are rotated periodically and if so, how often this occurs?
Sanctions: what sanctions are needed for violation of the rules, and when exceptions may be made?
Common contribution: if membership of the CBO involves a common contribution or savings fund, what is the minimum amount to be contributed, whether withdrawal of savings is permitted, whether and how interest is paid on savings?
Loans: if loans can be taken from the CBO savings fund, how these are prioritised, what interest rate is charged, how the use of loans is monitored, and how defaulters are penalised for overdue loans.
Formalization of the group: when feasible it is recommended as formalization or legal registration of a CBO can enable it to advocate for its rights and needs, and potentially improve access to resources and/or services for the benefit their CBO or members.
It will take several meetings over a period of two or three months for the CBO to have a definite membership and up to a year for a strong and stable group to be established. By sticking to the agreed rules or norms, making collective decisions on a common action plan, and carrying out these actions either individually or together, the CBO becomes increasingly strong and effective.
3.1.2 Empower community based organisations to improve their capability, motivation and opportunity (COM-B) to achieve their vision of improved animal welfare
You should support CBOs to develop their capability, motivation, and opportunity (COM-B) to improve animal welfare. Your role as the facilitator is to contribute to the creation of an enthusiastic atmosphere and enabling environment where the CBO members can help each other with their agreed actions.
This includes:
Regular meetings to review individual and collective activities against the community action plan.
Generation of the resources needed to support their actions, for example through regular contribution of money to a common fund, or by creating links with other agencies, resource providers and government support schemes.
Generation of other external forms of support to implement their activities, if needed
Maintenance of a record or register by the group in which they record all their decisions. At the beginning you might need to initiate this process of recording and gradually hand it over to the group representatives. Where none of the group members are literate, they may decide to ask for help from a literate person or from school children in the village.
It is important to remember that change is a process, and that people can progress and relapse through the stages of change for any desired behaviour at any time. As a facilitator you will need to gauge the CBO’s stage of change with every interaction by listening for change talk, asking open ended questions, using reflective listening, and supporting the change process throughout the implementation phase. Refer to the recommended facilitator resource 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change for guidance.
Figure 41: Mechanisms for Supporting Behaviour Change
Harness Commitment to Change
Encourage CBOs to set small, incremental, and achievable goals for action. It is more effective to set short term objectives for action that lead to results rather than setting objectives for achieving the results themselves [71].
Communicate the vision for change in terms of what the community members’ value frequently and consistently to help erode resistance to change [71].
Provide Positive Reinforcement
Develop social networks amongst stakeholder groups as geography permits, or within or between households, by helping them see how their interests and needs are interconnected and encourage them to provide support and encouragement to each other. By putting peers in a position of being accountable for one another, they reinforce their own progress through helping others [71].
Set up a system whereby members compete against a target achievement, and all those who achieve the target “win”. People are more likely to help one another win when they are competing against their own progress as opposed to competing against one another in a system where there is one “winner”, which can generate a lack of cooperation [71]. For example, set a target for individuals to improve their individual animal welfare results when the Animal Welfare Transect Walk (T22) is repeated. Consider providing households with a monitoring results tracker that they can keep, ideally posted someplace they will see it, to provide them with feedback on the impact of their behaviours and enable them to track their progress over time and serve as a motivating reminder for them to continue making progress.
Provide frequent, encouraging feedback to let the CBO members know how they are doing, ensuring people feel praised, supported, and encouraged.
Promote Self-efficacy
Elevate self-esteem by recognizing their attempts and celebrating their efforts to change even if unsuccessful, and ensure they are never made to feel less than or bad.
Role model behaviours helps demonstrate what is possible and helps them to believe they can make the desired changes. In addition, it is helpful to get members to encourage and support each other to harness social diffusion [31].
Draw Attention to the Feeling of Change
Draw their attention to the benefits and positive impacts of the adoption of desired behaviours over the behaviours it replaces based on their direct experiences [71]. Consider using the before and now analysis (T11b) tool to support this process.
Help members to feel change in terms of intrinsic satisfaction by connecting changes with what individuals’ value [71].
Help people connect with the consequences of their choices by telling meaningful stories. Consider using the Closed Ended Story Telling (T24a) tool to promote the adoption of desired behaviours.
It is important to remember that in almost all successful change efforts, emotions rather than facts are the most effective agents of change [20]. It is therefore important that reflection and learning opportunities are created to enable group members to feel something about the changes they are making and experience the benefits that the adoption of desired behaviours brings to their lives and the lives of their animals [20]. We recommend using the adult learning cycle whenever feasible as it focuses on facilitating processes for reflection and learning by focusing on:
Direct Experiences: drawing on participants personal experiences related to animal welfare improvements and behaviour change, and/or by conducting participatory learning and action activities, participatory demonstrations or presentations through which participants experience/feel new information for discussion and learning.
Facilitating Reflection: helping participants think about how experiences make them feel, analyse new information, and develop their own ideas about the specific topic or issue.
Generating Conclusions: encouraging participants to generalize lessons learned to draw broad conclusions for themselves about their experiences.
Promoting Application: enabling participants to visualize how they may apply their experience/new knowledge in their own lives in the future.
Figure 42: Reflection and Learning Process [7]
Incorporating reflection and learning through periodic meetings with the group/s to discuss and reflect on progress and monitoring results is useful for the following reasons:
Promotes accountability and improves community members’ commitment to adopting desired changes. Specifically, seeking voluntary commitments in these public forums and/or seeking group commitments can improve adoption of desired behaviours [31].
Generates peer pressure and peer motivation to influence individual actions, as well as opportunities for building social networks amongst peers to support change.
Generates increased knowledge about actions that work or don’t work in their action plans, leading to corrective action or improvement.
Better understand the barriers and motivators to adopting desired behaviours, and identify additional resources, support, and/or capacity building needs to address them.
Creates a sense of shared responsibility for dealing with challenges.
Promotes greater understanding of their animals’ welfare and their related behaviours that support or hinder its improvement.
3.1.3 Facilitate tiered organization of community groups to support collective action where appropriate
Depending on the number of CBOs, consider facilitating the formation of associations from amongst multiple community groups. This can be particularly helpful to supporting larger collective action, enabling better access to resources and resource providers, greater sustainability of change, and the ability of animal owning communities to advocate for their needs and rights more effectively through a broader unified voice. In some circumstances, a further level of organization may be helpful, with the formation of federations formed from amongst several associations. However, associations and larger federations are only effective when there is sufficient motivation and need to address collective issues of concern, otherwise they can become directionless and inactive and perceived to be a waste of time due to lack of utility.
Brooke Pakistan partners Sindh Rural Support Organization model of group organizing uses a tiered approach to social mobilization around human development priorities. In this approach “Local Support Organization” (LSO) acts much like a federation comprised of smaller “Village Organizations” (VO), which act as associations comprised of smaller Community Organizations (CO) acting as self-help groups. They are effective as they seek to address priority issues of communities, which is not always the case in the context of focusing on animal welfare issues.
Figure 43: Example of Sindh Rural Support Organizations Three Tiered Social Mobilization Approach
In a project in South-East Asia, a community identified that a key reason why their pony carts kept losing wheels, which in turn caused animal welfare issues, was that a key road through their community developed dangerous potholes after each rainy season. A group formed to work together to address this issue. The group organised their members, and others in the community, to each fill the holes in the road outside their dwellings so that all together the road was repaired. This group is convened after each rainy season to coordinate the road repair activities.
There are many examples worldwide where groups of people who give tourists rides in horses and carts have formed groups. Examples of activities of such groups include working together to negotiate the authorities to provide amenities such as shelter for their animals while waiting for customers and water points to allow their animals to drink; and working together to create rules that promote fair competition regarding attracting customers, for example, a queuing system.
In Kenya, Brooke East Africa (BEA), works with partners to engage the community. At the community level, BEA support the communities to form animal welfare groups. The community animal welfare groups then elect a representative to a county/or sub county umbrella group. Kenya is currently divided into 47 administrative areas (called counties). The county umbrella groups engage the county government to ensure county by laws support animal welfare, and resources are also allocated at the county level for improving animal welfare. From the county umbrella groups each county elects a representative to a national coalition (from the 47 counties), which is referred to as the Association of Donkey Owners of Kenya (ADOK). ADOK is responsible for engaging national government, including successfully petitioning the national government to ban donkey slaughter in Kenya.
Creating associations of groups of animals owning community members at levels beyond their immediate locale is an important method of sustaining momentum after you (the facilitator), your organization, or other external forms of support are withdrawn. However, it is important not to wait until the exit phase to begin work in establishing such associations as they will require time and capacity building to establish and are most sustainable when they are linked to supporting prioritized collective action or benefits for all.
3.2.1 Participatory monitoring of animal welfare and human behaviour change
Getting communities to monitor their progress is important to show tangible results for their efforts which in turn will encourage further support and effort for future improvements. This process helps indicate whether a community has all the resources it needs, how effectively the group/s are working together and whether they have something important they should share with other communities to disseminate information learned.
It is important to understand all the stages of change, anticipating that groups may be in pre-contemplation regarding some issues, and are likely to be in contemplation and preparation stages of change early on, developing into action and maintenance at the later stages of this process. Be aware though that behaviour can relapse backwards at any stage so refer to the facilitator resource 6. Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change for support with this.
Participatory monitoring of animal welfare and behaviour change enables group members to feel proud and good about themselves, therefore more likely to maintain the changes they’ve adopted. Repeating the Animal welfare transect walk (T22), at intervals of one, two or three months, enables the group to monitor changes in the welfare of their animals. Their scores for each animal welfare issue are recorded on the same monitoring chart each time.
Group members then sit together again to reflect on their findings, both positive and negative. Improvement in scores shows the effect of the actions they have taken to improve management of their animals and to prevent welfare problems from occurring. If there is no improvement, or if scores decrease, possible reasons for this need to be discussed. They may identify gaps in their current practices, decide if further actions or closer monitoring are needed and record all relevant details to refer to as they progress.
3.2.2 Participatory review and reflection on monitoring results, community action plans, and lessons learned, adapting as needed
It is essential for the group to critically appraise the performance of both the individual members and the group collectively, for the animal welfare interventions to succeed. These positive, constructive appraisals translate action into learning which in turn translates into further action. The depth of reflection has a major effect on the quality of the action that follows.
Periodic tracking of progress can help group members to:
Build their interest in the intervention and their commitment to making it work.
Assess the roles of different stakeholders.
Understand the changing dynamics in their environment.
Generate increasing knowledge about actions that work or that are not effective in their community action plan, leading to corrective action or improvement.
Share responsibility for dealing with challenges.
Bring peer pressure and peer motivation to influence individual actions.
Trigger greater understanding, sensitivity, and care for their animals.
This will also enable you and your project to understand their situations and constraints more clearly. Two types of participatory monitoring are essential for the success of the action and reflection process:
Monitoring of group activities to check that group members and other stakeholders are doing what they agreed to do in their action plan. It is recommended this be a regular activity conducted every group meeting.
Monitoring of changes in animal welfare and related husbandry and management practices, which can be achieved by repeating the Animal welfare transect walk (T22).
During this process:
Organize regular group meetings to review individual and collective efforts towards welfare improvement.
Check and record the activities agreed in the community action plan to ensure that they are carried out.
Generate resources needed for implementation of the plan, through collective contribution and by forming links with other resource providers.
Initiate support for implementation of those activities that need external support.
Analyse the results of the Animal welfare transect walk recording chart.
Take corrective action to keep the plan on track and/ or to develop new action points.
We have found when refinement of community action plans occurs, it commonly occurs in two ways. First, as the group increases its sensitivity towards its animals, the members choose to use a longer list of welfare changes that they want to measure, and they create more detailed scoring systems for these. They will do these themselves in time. If they do not, you should not introduce more complexity because it is important that the community decides what they feel is useful to measure. Both the animal-based indicators and those relating to resources or management practices increase in number and complexity. Second, group members start to come up with more root causes and the associated welfare-promoting actions that need to be encouraged, and they include these in their community action plan and recording system.
Holding meetings for reflection and learning, lead the group in collectively looking at their activities, to find out whether they were carried out as agreed and whether they led to the desired change in a welfare issue. Have group members sit together to reflect on findings from their participatory monitoring, both positive and negative. The group will find that some issues can be resolved quickly (e.g. within three months), while others take longer, and some will not change despite the group’s action. This stimulates further discussion, which can be further supported through root cause analysis on these specific issues, using the Problem animal tool (T25) or Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (T26). This second level of root cause analysis is an essential step in the process of solving the more difficult or long-term welfare problems facing animals. In addition, the Animal Welfare Practice Gap Analysis (T21) may be useful to use here as it can enable the group to assess its’ progress against initial results of activity if previously conducted, explore the extent to which they have been able to change their animal care practices to meet their animals’ needs, and highlight potential constraints they may be facing in adopting these new practices.
If improving the quality of animal health service providers was an issue the group prioritized to address, implementing the Community Score Card (T35) activity anew and comparing results can help inform the group’s reflection and learning as it will enable them to evaluate changes from initial results. To aid reflection and learning and development of collective actions the following facilitator resources are useful: Dependency Analysis (T12), Income, expenditure, and credit analysis (T13), Group inter-loaning analysis (T14). In addition, the Cost Benefit analysis (T15) can generate motivation to act by enabling communities to weigh the costs and benefits of action vs inaction for both animals and people.
In addition, it can also be useful to the group’s reflection and learning to ask the group to look back further, comparing the situation before they started to implement their community action plan with the situation now. Using the Before and Now Analysis (T11b) tool can support this process. The group analyses which actions have been most effective and which less effective and the reasons why. This helps participants to learn, to change their interventions if necessary and to plan for continuing action. Matrix ranking (T9) can be used to compare the relative success of the activities taken up. During this part of the analysis, it is also useful to discuss the achievements and difficulties faced while working together as a group, with reasons for these, and how any difficulties were overcome. The resource 14. Overview of Community Group Formation Process, Challenges, and Factors Influencing Group Success has a section on Common Challenges and Solutions Related to Community-based Organizations/ Governance which can support this process. When groups are faced with complex problems, they have yet to be able to solution, consider using Open Ended Story Telling (T24c) to help them to brainstorm possible solutions to the complex issue they are facing.
Community groups will go through an iterative planning process adapting their action plans throughout the course of the project. Upon achievement of desired results, encourage the group to decide whether to initiate community action planning to address new priorities or issues. In this case, support the group to identify new priorities and enable all participants to progress through the stages of change for any new behaviours they decide they wish to adopt to improve welfare issues. This is one of the key measures that can show that a group has become successful in institutionalizing behaviour change and taking collective and individual actions to see improvement in animal welfare in their communities/members. When groups add new issues and behaviours to their plan this is also an indicator of a successful group.
You are likely to find that in the early stages the animal-owning group needs a lot of support and capacity-building, which relies heavily on your skill as a facilitator. As the group becomes more familiar with animal welfare issues and confident in solving them, they will drive this action-reflection-action cycle themselves. This is a sure sign of the success of your work. This is also the stage where you start to discuss how long they will need your support as a facilitator and over what period you should withdraw from the group. Planning for your eventual withdrawal is essential to support the growth of a self-reliant group and not increase its dependency on you. In our experience it takes the group 12 months to reach this stage, and a further 12 to 18 months of strengthening until you finally withdraw.
Throughout these discussions, record any key insights in your Project Action Tracker for use in reflecting and adapting your own project plans and strategies as needed to support the group’s continued progress. Update your Behaviour Change Planning Table and refer to Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies as appropriate to supporting your adaptive management process based on lessons learned from these monitoring, learning and reflection processes.
4.1.1 Project end line monitoring to assess achievement of project
An overview of the exit and evaluation phase supported by the steps that follow are outlined in Figure 44 below:
Figure 44: Overview of Process for Assessing Whether to Exit Project
To help inform determination of whether to exit and withdraw support, final end-line monitoring of indicators in accordance with the monitoring plan is an essential first step. It is also important to assess where the community are in terms of the stages of change and facilitate whether they feel they can maintain the behavioural changes to sustain their animal welfare improvements. It is also useful for you as the facilitator to listen for change talk, and assess their progression, or the progression of others they sought to influence (e.g. animal health service providers), into the maintenance phase for the behaviours they sought to promote.
Once collected, analyse data, and compare end line results with results from the baseline assessment to determine the extent to which project objectives were achieved and preconditions for adopting and maintaining the desired behaviours have been addressed (e.g. barriers and motivators to desired behaviours). Identify successes as well as underperforming outcomes, for further follow-up discussion, reflection and learning with communities. Providing opportunities for such collective reflection and experience sharing can be powerful tools for learning and change, help inform adaptive management, and can foster motivation and a sense of self-efficacy and ownership of change amongst the community.
In addition, it is helpful to share the lessons learned more widely. They may be shared with the whole community to which the animal owners’ group belongs, and through workshops where different CBOs or communities come together from across a wider geographic area. This can generate motivation amongst others to support or take part in similar activities and helps to increase the reach and effectiveness of your programme.
4.1.2 Community Self-evaluation
The purpose of this step is to assess the longer-term impact of the group’s efforts to improve the welfare of their animals, to enable community group members to understand the positive changing trends in animal welfare and reflect on any issues that might need further action and identify potential needs for external support. Your job is to determine whether the group can stand on its own feet before the project withdraws support and exits.
For this step you will need to gather community members together to perform end-line monitoring to review the effectiveness of their community action plan and decide future objectives. You will need to plan this meeting in advance because it will take longer than a regular group meeting. Some groups decide to hold a two-day meeting, whereas others plan to spend two hours every day for three to four days on the self-evaluation process. It is very useful to involve local stakeholders and service providers identified during the initiation and planning phases. Their involvement will help to strengthen the community action plan by encouraging them to continue working closely with the group on improving service provision for animals.
During these discussions, two main areas will be evaluated:
1. Success and failures of the community action plan
Facilitate the group to look together at their activities to investigate how well they were carried out and whether they led to the desired change in the welfare issue and refer to any monitoring results collected from their Animal Welfare transect Walks and results available from the project’s monitoring. The group analyses which actions have been most effective and which less effective and the reasons why. This helps participants to learn, to change their interventions if necessary and to plan for continuing action.
Start by asking the group to remember what happened right at the beginning when their interventions started. Conduct a Before and Now Analysis (T11b) and/or compile a Historical timeline (T7) of the events and challenges that occurred throughout the period since they began to work together. If changes in the quality of animal health service providers was an aim of the group, reviewing any recent results from the Community Score Card (T35) activity, or conducting the activity anew to evaluate changes from initial results can be helpful. Such activities will set the climate for in-depth discussion. During this part of the analysis, it is also useful to discuss the achievements and difficulties faced while working together as a group, with reasons for these, and how any difficulties were overcome.
2. Evaluating sustainability
Once the community action plan and resultant changes in animal welfare and related impacts have been evaluated, it is important to evaluate whether improvements in animal welfare can be sustained, both in terms of the group’s functioning and members’ maintenance of new behaviours.
Facilitate the community group to reflect on whether their plan has achieved the desired results and agree on any areas that may still require continued action and/or support. If the community finds that at least most of them can sustain their changes in behaviour without any support (are at the at maintenance stage of change) and, if possible, that performing these new behaviours have become part of their norms/values or habits, then it can be said that these changes have become sustainable.
In addition, conduct or revisit results from the Group sustainability mapping (T27), along with the Group Governance Self-Assessment (T31), and Group Inter-loaning Analysis (T14), for CBOs with savings and loaning function, as appropriate. Review results with the CBO and support them to self-evaluate the sustainable functioning of the group and/or association if this has been feasible to organize in terms of the extent to which the necessary elements are in place to enable them to maintain their results and continue functioning without support from the project.
4.1.3 Project Process Evaluation
In addition to end line monitoring, it is recommended the project conduct an evaluation of the project using internal or external evaluators, with preference for using impartial third-party evaluators whenever feasible. These process evaluations are particularly essential if desired changes in animal welfare were not achieved as it will enable you to assess opportunities for the project to improve its implementation strategy or processes to improve outcomes, as well as help inform the determination of whether to continue the project using a different strategy. Evaluations should seek to assess the following in consultation with relevant stakeholders:
The appropriateness and effectiveness of the processes employed to: - improve and sustain animal welfare and the adoption of desired behaviour change, - promote participatory engagement and empowerment of communities, and - promote gender equality and safeguarding of vulnerable groups.
Stakeholder satisfaction with the project: - assess stakeholder perceptions related to the benefits and value of the plan both in terms of animals and people, - satisfaction with the project/implementing organization - recommendations for improvement
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
Based on results of monitoring and evaluation and community self-assessment, and related discussions sharing results, determine which of the following options is most appropriate and feasible. It is important that any decision to exit the project and withdraw support should be based, as far as possible, on the CBO members’ assessment of their own self-reliance, readiness for withdrawal, and desire to continue to act on improving animal welfare.
Withdrawal Support and Exit - this option is recommended when: a. The desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have been achieved, or b. When the desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have not been achieved/seem unlikely to be sustained and feasibility of achieving them is unlikely.
Continue Support and Do Not Exit: this option is recommended when desired behavioural change and related animal welfare improvements have not been achieved or are unlikely to be sustained due to issues with strategy, community capacity, or unexpected circumstances, and your project has the necessary resources to continue supporting the project. In such cases, it is recommended you build the necessary capacity and/or adapt the community development strategy and re-plan in collaboration with the community to continue working to achieve desired results.
Any determination to exit and gradually withdraw support, and the projects’ ability and desire to continue support should be shared and discussed with the animal owning community and other relevant stakeholders for full transparency and accountability.
4.2.2 Gradual phase out of project support and exit
The aim of this period is for the community to become gradually independent of regular facilitation while maintaining animal welfare improvements and reacting rapidly and effectively to any threats or downturns in welfare.
Develop plan for withdrawal of regular support with the group. During this stage you should come to an agreement with the group about how much of your support that they will need in the future. The group needs to agree on a transition from your facilitation to a situation where they continue to meet and take action to improve animal welfare without your regular support. This will involve careful planning. Long-term support may include holding an annual meeting, helping to overcome specific problems or crises, and/or linking the group with other relevant agencies and federating local community groups.
Get the community to discuss how they will plan, who will be the representative for the group, whether this will change over time and how new representatives will be decided. Encourage the group to reach out to other resource or service providers for collaboration, find out what further support they might need from the project, agree a timeframe, establish criteria of how group will measure self-reliance and enable identification of their own self-reliance based on criteria.
Prepare an action plan to continue welfare improvement based on the self-evaluation analysis:
Discuss the process of continuing improvement in animal welfare with the group when they develop their new action plan.
Agree what support is needed from you and the project to implement their action plan.
Agree a time frame for giving this support and implementing the plan.
Get the group to decide who their representative will be, whether this will change over time and if so, what will guide decisions about employing new representatives in the future.
Establish criteria with the group for measuring their self-reliance and enable them to identify their current level of self-reliance based on these criteria.
Encourage the group to reach out to other resource- and service- providers
Withdraw your regular facilitation from the group according to the agreed time frame. Provide active support only in response to the group members’ request and only in a crisis, which they cannot resolve on their own.
Gradually withdrawing support will enable you to extend your facilitation into other communities where animals are in need and enable you to support improving the lives of more animals over a larger area in the long term than would be possible if you stayed closely involved with one group or community.
4.2.3 Conduct follow-up monitoring to assess sustainability of change and consider follow up action as needed
Animal welfare improvements are only truly a success if the desired behaviours continue to be practiced by the community and the related improvements in animal welfare are sustained over the long term. As such, it is essential to conduct follow-up monitoring for a period after all support has been withdrawn. This will enable the project to use learnings from results to adapt its implementation strategies as needed, and potentially re-engage the community to support maintenance of desired change. Consider continuing monitoring activities on a yearly basis for up to two to three years before determining the extent to which the project has been a success.
It is recommended you develop post-exit re-entry criteria for providing spot interventions to address underperforming indicators identified through monitoring. For example, you may consider providing additional project support if results show two or three indicators are not being maintained, or if any indicator falls below a certain limit of acceptance. Continue periodic monitoring to assess improvement in underperforming indicators due to any re-entry activities.
Community Score Card is a widely used citizen’s led accountability tool. It is a highly participatory tool that allows community members and the service providers or local government agents who have a duty to provide services to collaboratively assess the quality of service provision. There are various services animal owning communities may rely on to support them in meeting their animals’ welfare needs, including: animal health services, equipment makers, feed sellers, extension agents etc. This tool can be used to promote constructive dialogue and joint action amongst communities and respective service providers to improve services important to meeting animals’ welfare needs. The tool is designed to be used with a specific service provider and one issue at a time so as to enable meaningful discussion and action.
This tool can be used to further support discussions about animal service and resource providers including as a follow-up to activities such as: T1A: Mapping Resources and Services, T3A. Local Animal Service Provider Venn Diagram, and T9 Matrix ranking & scoring, or T9B Matrix Ranking and Scoring of Animal Service Providers. Through these activities, community members will have identified the local animal health or resource service providers they rely on, discussed their satisfaction or preferences, as well as identified criteria they use to judge their local service providers competence and/or satisfaction with services which can provide a useful foundation for informing use of this tool. In addition, if you conducted T5: Gender Roles and Responsibilities, referring to this may help you develop discussion questions and facilitate discussion amongst community members about different opportunities and constraints faced by men and women in their interaction with different local service providers.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Identify gaps and levels of satisfaction in local animal service provision in terms service quality, availability, affordability, accessibility and adaptability • Promote shared understanding amongst community members and local service providers of common issues and solutions related to service provision and use • Improve accountability and motivation to improve animal service provision and use amongst local animal service providers and community members. • Support identification of indicators for assessing service quality and user satisfaction, and participatory monitoring of local animal health service quality and improvements. • Improve dialogue, feedback, and collaborative working between local animal service providers and communities,
2 hours for community scoring; 2 hours for local service providers self-evaluation scoring; 2 hours for a joint interface meeting. Time may be shortened to 4 hours if the community scoring and local service provider self-evaluation scoring is conducted simultaneously
Materials needed:
Chart paper, coloured sticker dots and/or coloured markers, coloured index cards or sticky notes, meeting halls to post papers for scoring.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning, Implementation, Exit and Evaluation
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Monitoring and Evaluation, Documentation and Reporting
Specific Topics: Animal Health and Services
Community Scorecard Process
As this tool is about a service provider and the animal owning communities who are using such services, it is important to properly layout the process with adequate care to have a negotiated and empowering results both for animal owning communities and the service providers. Focusing on one service provider at a time removes confusion and to properly identify gaps and recommendations.
Some of these processes can be done simultaneously. The community scoring, the service providers own scoring and the joint interface meeting between the animal owning communities and respective service providers can each take 1.5 to 2hrs. It can be scheduled all in one day or can be done in consecutive days. If you have enough facilitators the animal owning scoring and the service providers scoring can be done simultaneously giving enough time for both facilitators to have a reflection time in between to help them frame the agenda and leading the interface meeting.
If you want to find the views of vulnerable members of the community, you can hold separate sessions with them. So you can make any number of animal owning communities scoring separately and bring the scores together for the interface meetings. (E.g. you can have a women only, youth only, or a specified community group members’ organization, etc.) The essence is to help you understand the perception and the real barriers for them in relation to their lived experience with the LSPs and the kind of services they provide including how they interact with them.
Figure T35: Community Score card processes adapted from [90]
Community Score Card Process
Step 1
Plan and Preparation The first step is to do the preparatory work to the community score card process for the identified service.
Input tracking and planning the process. This includes who gets to be part of this process (identifying key stakeholders from both community and service providers side) and make logistical arrangements like meeting halls, scoring materials, scheduling for the meeting; and allocating separate rooms if the community scoring and the service providers scorings are going to take simultaneously.
When identifying community members that will participate, organizers need to ensure that vulnerable community members understand the community score card process; and enable them to understand and encourage their participation. It is critical to take into consideration that different segments of the community participate and an enabling environment is created for them to share their views in a safe space whereby each of their individual views and scores are taken into consideration, and their experiences valued. At times, depending on the context and the culture as well as preference by the vulnerable groups, separate sessions could be organized for them to do the community scoring. If separate meeting halls or times need to be set up for women and men groups, ensure this is already planned and agreed with the community or have an additional conducive meeting hall/space for both meetings.
To ensure community participation, it is important to create an enabling space and demystify fears around participation for fear of retaliation by service providers and/or local government bodies.
Step 2
Mobilizing community, developing the performance scorecard and scoring
Start by explaining the purpose and process of the exercise and then ask participants (from the community members) to identify the parameters of good quality service (depending on the animal welfare local service identified to be focused on).
This must be an empowering process for communities. Therefore before the actual scoring, it is important to have preparatory sessions with communities by providing appropriate information about the purpose of undertaking community score card, their rights and expectations from the service providers; and the roles and responsibilities of the service provider that is in focus. The discussion needs to be focused on the connection between the service provision and why lack of or limitation in the identified service exacerbates the animal welfare issue; and what quality service looks like and how it will benefit them in addressing animal welfare problems/issues. This is to help them to be focused on the service provider and the quality of service that is relevant to address the animal welfare problem. It is important to have a properly facilitated session to enable them to share their expectation of the kind of quality, affordable service and their satisfaction as clients who own equines.
Limiting Indicators and Prioritizing among them: It helps to have a limited set of indicators that represent the different aspects of quality service. In case that more indicators are suggested, it is important to try to categorize them and create an understanding on the amended indicator. If coming to amending them is not possible, then it might be good to prioritize which criteria to use depending on the issue at hand. Either way, it is important to note the discussions generated during such discussions.
As the literacy level of community members could be mixed, it is important that you be prepared to provide support to them by reading it for them and reminding them what the scoring rates are (whether using smiley faces, or using rating scales in a way they can understand). The scoring should be properly explained and repeated to community members when each of them come to do the scoring so that there is a clear understanding on that among all. Facilitators need to have locally made scoring materials (beads, beans, etc.) or cut out some sticky materials (e.g. dots, etc.) - enough for all participants to score per each identified scoring criteria, and with clear scoring definitions. If such materials are not available or if writing on flipchart is easier, then it is important to do each of the members' scoring and write it down immediately.
Once the individual scoring by each community member is done, discuss among them the potential reasons/justifications for such scoring. Based on the scoring and the discussion, prioritize issues that are pertinent to them, and the kind of solutions they are proposing. The prioritization will help if and when the scoring by the service providers list is different and if the need to narrow down to a maximum of 10 indicators are going to be the focus for the joint action planning, then it will help you to easily identify and take the first top 5 issues for the joint meeting. Include these proposed recommendations for each of the issues, or put them in a separate sheet whereby you will be able to easily refer to/use them during the interface meeting.
Step 3
Developing and scoring the self-evaluation scorecard by respective service provider
It is best practice to focus on a single service provider to make the discussion and scoring more focused. Start by explaining the purpose and process of the exercise and then ask participants who are service providers to identify the parameters of good quality service (depending on the animal welfare local service you have identified to focus on). It is ideal if the facilitator knows and has overall understanding regarding the role of the service providers regarding equine welfare needs, the legal/policy and implementation frameworks that guide the kinds of service the service provider need to provide and the equine owning community’s main concerns regarding the service.
Before jumping into indicator selection by the service provider participants, it is good to brainstorm first on their overall roles and responsibilities to shape the discussion and the indicator selection to focus on their type and quality of service provision. (E.g. is it only to do treatment or are they mandated to provide education or follow up etc. as part of their role, etc.) Such discussion will help to make the discussion and the scoring comprehensive as much as possible.
It is ideal if the facilitator that leads this process needs to have an overall understanding of the service providers’ roles in the animal welfare improvement and the kind of services they provide,
It is good to create an understanding with the service providers (whether they are public/government or private service providers) on the reason for doing and process of community score card. It is good to reiterate that it is to create a smooth interaction for joint action and monitoring of progress with their stakeholders, who are equine owning communities. The discussion should not result in making them feel cornered or be defensive; rather this process needs to also be empowering for the individual service providers. If there are female service providers, ensure that their views and challenges in discharging their roles to provide quality service is also captured during the indicator identification, scoring and recommendation generation.
Depending on the literacy levels of the service providers, it is suggested that facilitators have alternative scoring materials available to accommodate literacy levels as needed (beads, beans, etc.), or have some stickers or similar materials (e.g. dots, sticky notes etc.) in sufficient quantities to support scoring of all identified criteria by all participants. Facilitator may need to read the scoring criteria out loud during the scoring process depending on participant literacy levels.
Once the individual scoring by each community member is done, discuss among them the potential reasons/justifications for such scoring. Based on the scoring and the discussion, prioritize issues that are pertinent to them, and the kind of solutions they are proposing. Include these proposed recommendations for each of the issues, or put them in a separate sheet whereby you will be able to easily refer to/use during the interface meeting.
Step 4
Interface meeting to develop action plan
Ensure that you have ample space to accommodate both community and service providers, and that it is a safe place for all to be. Facilitator(s) need to go through the indicators and scorings, with the commonality and the unique indicators identified by respective groups, the level of score, the prioritized issues and the recommendations before the meeting to structure the meeting with a feedforward mentality.
Start the discussion by reiterating the purpose of doing the score card and the need for this interface meeting. As one of the purposes is to create a shared understanding among community and service providers for a consultative dialogue to generate joint recommendations and action plans, set the meeting tone with that. Display the scoring of both groups so that each of them see the indicators they have identified and the scores they have provided.
Start with a brainstorming session and explore and focus on the common themes to start the discussion. The spirit of the discussion is to get to a common understanding and focus on what can be done in the future. Hence, ensure that both groups present their findings and why they think the issues they have identified are critical. Through the discussions, ensure there is no blame game rather an understanding on the constraints both communities and service providers face, and frame the issues for them to tackle together.
Next write down the prioritized and consensus reached issues/problems to be tackled jointly or separately but will be monitored together. If consensus cannot be reached, it is good to give individual participants a chance to identify what is a priority for them through scoring on the key issue that is important for them. Ensure that illiterate participants’ interests are catered for as stated in step 2 and 3 above.
Once the issues are prioritized, use the below template/table to document the discussion. As much as possible ensure that the issues identified by equine owning communities and the service providers are captured and joint solutions are sought for them. Indicate who the responsible groups are to champion/lead on prioritized issues to be tackled and try to outline clear steps/actions and when that can be delivered.
Step 5
Implementation and Monitoring of Recommended Actions
Once an agreed action plan is drawn, it is good to show commitment to follow up on the agreed action points. As some of the action plans might need the two groups to work within their own constituencies (e.g. equine owning communities might need to work in their groups, or service providers might need to do an internal budgeting/planning, customer service training to their service provider members, etc.), try to ensure that they follow through their respective action plans as well as help them monitor their joint and constituency-based action plans progress together as a joint taskforce. The purpose of this step is to ensure that agreed joint action plans are implemented and monitored together to improve the service provision as well as bridge the understanding/expectations of equine owners’ on the quality of service.
As part of monitoring, once the agreed action plans have been undertaken, it is possible to do another round of scoring to assess the progress from the initial scoring. Following this is equally important to this is also to celebrate successes as well as organize a similar process of community score card if issues identified are addressed and/or if there are still constraints that need to be further dealt with. The initial and the follow up scorings need to be documented to show progress, stagnation or regress on the quality of service. Moreover, the plenary reflections and the action plans notes need to also be captured and distributed to the equine owning community/groups, the service providers and the joint taskforce (if a separate entity is formed) for their records, future reference and/or action planning. Add a copy to your Project Action Tracker and Community Action Plan Template note on quality of service provision and the services rendered by service providers.
Facilitator's Notes
It is your responsibility as a facilitator to ensure adequate understanding is created among all involved stakeholders about the purpose, process and spirit of this tool in advance. (It is to facilitate conversations rather than shifting blame and pointing fingers)..
It is recommended this activity be administered by a trained community facilitator to ensure discussions result in agreement on joint action plans.
This tool is not only about capturing results, but rather is a process orientated approach that empowers communities, facilitates conversations and dialogue between communities and service providers.
It is important to ensure vulnerable and excluded members of the community are aware of the process and how it will help them to voice their concerns when it comes to being able to access, afford and enjoy quality service provision without explicit or tacit discrimination.
Depending on the issue at hand and the time and convenience of setting the meetings, discussion with the community and discussion among service providers can take place simultaneously before the joint session. However, if the community, service providers are done separately it is recommended there be a time gap in scheduling before reconvening for the joint session. This will enable facilitators to summarize points and identify potential sticky and tricky areas for joint reflection and recommendations for potential actions for consideration during the joint session.
It is useful to examine perceptions of animal-related resource and service providers with different groups in a community as they may rely on, or have different perceptions of resources and service providers. Consider asking both men and women from animal-owning households to participate in this activity; or if it is not feasible or appropriate to conduct this activity with both sexes together, consider conducting this activity separately.
Facilitators could ask probing questions when indicators are identified by animal owning communities as well as during the local service providers own self-scoring to encourage people to think about how the identified indicator relates to the local service provider and animal welfare.
Facilitators should not control or insert their ideas into the community or service provider assessment or scoring process, but rather facilitate the process so that people feel free to do their individual scoring. In contexts with participant illiteracy or where assistance is required, facilitators can provide support by reiterating the assessment criteria to use when it is time for them to do their scoring.
Next Steps
Information on resource and service provider gaps identified using this tool if conducted during the initiation or planning phase of a project, can be helpful to refer to during community action planning discussions.
![Figure 40: Stages of Group Development [70]](http://communitiesforanimals.thebrooke.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/05/image-4.png)
![Figure 42: Reflection and Learning Process [7]](http://communitiesforanimals.thebrooke.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/12/Picture-1-1.png)
