2.3 Develop Project Plan

QUICK LINKS
2.3.1 DEVELOP A PROJECT OPERATING PLAN INFORMED BY COMMUNITY ACTION PLAN(S)
2.3.2 DEVELOP PROJECT MONITORING PLAN AND CONDUCT BASELINE ASSESSMENT
HELPFUL TOOLS AND RESOURCES

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  

When thinking about what to measure, consider the following:

1. 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.
   
2. 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
   
3. 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.
   
   - Total number of community groups established

Once you have identified all indicators you can add them to your Behaviour Change Planning Table.

Figure 38: Identifying Monitoring Indicators

• 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

1. At the project’s start: conduct a baseline survey of the projects’ selected impact and outcome indicators
2. Throughout the project: consider assessing relevant outcome and output indicators to monitor the progress of activity implementation and achievement of results
3. 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.
4. 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.

Link to References Cited