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Recommended Core Competencies for Community Engagement Approach
Recommended Readings and External Resources
Recommended Core Competencies for Community Facilitators of the Community Development Approach
Core competencies recommended to support effective use of this Community Development Approach are provided below:
- Facilitation Skills: Experienced in facilitating participatory learning and action (PLA) processes to enable communities to express their understanding or concerns about problems they consider to be important. Able to analyse and reflect on issues, generate motivation to act, and identify possible solutions without leading or injecting your own ideas into community discussions. Knowledgeable of PLA tools and capable of selecting the appropriate tools to support communities in their continuous reflection, learning and action process.
- Gender Mainstreaming: Understanding of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality, as well as intersectionality and implications for vulnerable groups in terms of planning and implementing projects.
- Training of Trainers: Understanding of adult learning theory application for effective training: having the skill to make an intervention (training or community discussion) interactive using different methods/activities and the use of participatory tools.
- Understanding of COM-B and stages of change model and appropriate strategies of engagement at each stage.
- Animal Welfare: good understanding of animal welfare in terms of the five domains and their behavioural equivalents.
- Compassionate handling: to handle compassionately makes the experience more positive and welfare-friendly, it improves the experience for animals and humans. Understanding of how to handle animals humanely and to lead by example.
- Compassion: capacity to observe and share understanding for another’s distress or pain and have a desire to alleviate or mitigate it.
- Excellent communication skills:
- active/reflective listening skills
- two-way communication, open ended questions
- conversations for change: capacity to lead/facilitate discussions to solicit conversations for change and motivate and influence people to change using their own reflections, use values-based communications and be a good negotiator all within an ethical framework - Group formation and strengthening:
- experienced with group formation and strengthening processes within the local context e.g. how to set up, legalization and registration of community-based organizations, promoting women’s membership and leadership - Community organizing/mobilization: effective event planning and organization skills (detail oriented).
The following C4A tools and resources may be useful to supporting capacity building related to these core competencies:
- T17 ‘If I Were an Animal’
- T18 Thriving not Surviving
- T19 Animal Feelings Analysis
- Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours
- Facilitation Skills Checklist
- Gender Mainstreaming Checklist
- Essential Communication Skills for Facilitating Behaviour Change
- Guidance on Listening for Change Talk
- Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change
- Negotiated Behaviour Change: Guidance on Overcoming Resistance to Change
- Techniques for Supporting Progress through the Stages of Change
- Overview of Community Group Formation Process, Challenges, and Factors
- Guidance on Effective Outreach Messaging
- Guidance on Identifying Effective Behaviour Change Strategies Based on COM-B Diagnosis
Recommended Readings and External Resources
Recommended readings and external resources that support this approach and the development of recommended core competencies are provided below:
C4A Readings
- Animal Welfare and Communities Learning Module – recommended for gaining an understanding of concepts of the five domains of welfare and how this can be used in raising awareness with communities
- Human Behaviour Change Learning Module - recommended for gaining an understanding of behaviour change theory and best practices, the stages of change, and their importance to facilitating behaviour change
- Community Engagement and Development Learning Module - recommended for gaining an understanding of the difference between community engagement and community development, and understanding principles and best practices essential to effective community engagement
- Extensive Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach - recommended to complement the community development approach by supporting awareness raising to improve knowledge, change perceptions, and/or develop social norms on a broad scale to support adoption of desired behaviours and improved animal welfare. [Note that a campaigns approach is also more than awareness raising].
- Ethical Considerations for Working with Communities
Community Development
- VIDEO: Introduction to Community Development
- VIDEO: Values and Principles of Community Development
- UNICEF’s Minimum Quality Standards and Indicators for Community Engagement (2020)
- International Association for Community Development’s Guidance on International Standards for Community Development Practice
- VIDEO: The Problem with Collective Action – a useful, critique of collective action, covering situations when it is unlikely to work or even to be counterproductive
Facilitation Skills and Participatory Methods
- VIDEO: How to be a Great Facilitator
- VIDEO: Introduction to Adult Learning Theory
- VIDEO: How to empower communities
- VIDEO: Why self-efficacy matters
- VIDEO: What is compassion? What is empathy?
- VIDEO: 3 Minute Introduction to Participatory Learning and Action
- VIDEO: Five Steps to Assessing Community Needs
- VIDEO: The 5 Whys Explained - Root Cause Analysis
- VIDEO: Resolving Conflict
- VIDEO: The Beauty of Conflict (Clair Canfield)
- VIDEO: Finding Confidence in Conflict
- VIDEO: The Art of Reflection
- VIDEO: Brené Brown on Empathy
- Communication and Development: A Practical Guide (DfID)
- Adult Learning Theory Online Training (Study skills for lifelong learning and teaching)
- Constructive Learning Alignment Theory: Aligning Teaching for Constructing Learning
- Learning Curriculum Design Method - Workshop PowerPoint
- University of Edinburgh Reflection Toolkit - resource with information and support for facilitating reflections in self or others
- VIDEO: Introduction to Adult Learning Theory
- VIDEO: Adult Learning/Cone of Learning
Gender Mainstreaming and Intersectionality
- Guidelines on integrating gender in livestock projects and programs (CGIAR)
- Gender Integration Continuum: Training Session User’s Guide Interagency Gender Working Group (IGWG)
- Toolkit for Community Facilitators in the field of intersection of gender and cultural diversity
Behaviour Change
- VIDEO: ‘Improve Your Life Using the Stages of Change (Transtheoretical) Model with Dr Wendy Guess’
- VIDEO: Intro to the COM-B model
- VIDEO: Three Myths of Behaviour Change What You Think You Know That You Don't (Jeni Cross)
- VIDEO: What Does Change Talk Sound Like in Motivational Interviewing?
- VIDEO: Change Talk (Bill Miller)
Other
- VIDEO: Basic Monitoring and Evaluation Concepts
- VIDEO: TEDx How to measure success of international development projects (Benjamin Bogardus)
- VIDEO: Creating a project plan that works