A daily activity schedule is a chart showing how animal-owning families spend their time, including the time of day that each activity takes place and the time it takes to complete each one. This exercise identifies important times of the day, for example times when people are busy working, when they spend time with their working animals, or when they are free to discuss their common problems. This activity can be used to initiate a discussion about the best times to plan animal welfare activities, to hold a community meeting or for you (the facilitator) to visit the community. Step-by-step guidance for conducting this activity is provided in relation to daily activity schedules for both people and animals.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To understand which activities, take up the most and least time • To identify the best time to meet with individuals and community members and times when they are not available. • To identify who cares for the animals in each household and in what capacity. • To identify times when individuals are overburdened and why. • To identify potential opportunities for sharing or shifting workloads of men, women, and other family members to improve the well-being of people and animals.
1.5-2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper and markers or using sticks, stones, straw, local resources
Daily activity schedule of the animal-owning community
This chart (Figure T4A) explores and compares how animal owners, users and carers spend their work and leisure time. This exercise is a useful, non-threatening exercise that looks at real life experiences and helps people to understand the roles and responsibilities of different family members towards their animals. It can be used to analyse the factors that influence different people’s roles and activities, and to understand the problems and obstacles faced when dealing with animals.
Figure T4 Daily Activity Schedule of an animal-owning community
In this exercise (Figure T4a above), men, women and children listed all their activities between getting up at 5am and going to bed at 9pm.
Women start cleaning the animals’ shelter, preparing the morning meal and fetching water with the children between 5 and 7am.
Men and children pray between 5 and 7am.
Men take the animal out to work at 9am.
Women are involved in feeding, watering and cleaning up after animals several times a day, while men are involved with their animal only between 9am and 2pm and at 8pm for a final feed.
Children clean the animals’ shelter between 3 and 6pm.
Men are the main income generators and users of the animals, whilst women participate in alternative income generating activities at the market.
This initiated a discussion about the roles and responsibilities of family members in caring for the animals and how some responsibility might be shifted to men.
Daily Activity Schedule of the Animal-Owning Community
Step 1
Start by explaining the purpose of exercise to the participants and agree whose daily activities to chart first. This can be the animal owner/carer or members of the owner’s family. Agree whether to make a circular clock or a line chart to represent time. Decide whether to show time in hours or as parts of the day, such as morning, afternoon, and evening. The example above provides a numeric representation of time. Show daily activities using symbols placed at the appropriate time of day.
Step 2
Start a discussion about the activities that a person or a group of people normally do, from when they get up in the morning until they go to sleep. Ask participants to list the activities in ascending order from morning to night.
Key points might include:
• Free time and work time • Times when animals are fed, or the animal shelter is cleaned • When animals are taken for grazing • When animals are offered feed and water • When people groom or clean animals
Step 3
Ask when people have free time to take part in other activities, either individually or as a group. • How is other/spare time spent? Do they have spare time? • What are other income generating activities and how much time is spent on those? • What social activities should be included in the list?
Step 4
Once daily schedules are complete, discuss results with participants.
Consider these questions:
• How do participants feel about the way they use their time throughout the day? • Why are some people responsible for some tasks while others are responsible for others? • Which periods are busiest or most stressful? Why? • Which activities are most important for meeting the needs of the household? The animal? Why? • Are any activities felt to be very burdensome? Why? • Are there any ways in which some activities could be made easier?
If feasible, bring the two groups back together to discuss any differences in perceived division of daily activities of different people in the two charts.
Summarize the results of the activity and discussion and ask participants to reflect on what they learned through this activity.
Step 5
Once the activity is complete, take a photo or record of the chart on a piece of paper, ensuring the community has a copy for their records. A copy is retained by the facilitator for future reference or planning. Add any notes regarding when people are available (men, women, children, all) in your project action tracker.
Facilitator’s notes: Daily activity schedule – animal-owning community
Daily activity charts are best made by individuals and small groups, so divide up larger groups to make charts for different people, such as men, women and children.
Encourage men and women to create separate charts to enable comparison of perceptions of each other’s daily activities. This will help with identifying the best time to plan community visits with men, women and/or both.
Remember that you are not controlling the exercise. Give confidence to people so that they gradually take over the entire process themselves.
You might want to discuss how daily routines change depending on the time of the week or the season.
Next Steps
As part of rapport building stage in the initiation phase, the daily activity schedule might follow on with one of the following activities:
T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.
T7 Historical Timeline to learn which major past events community members perceive to be significant to working animals and people
As part of a community needs assessment and shared vision, the daily activity schedule for the animal-owning community might accompany one or more of the following tools to get a full picture of community dynamics and needs for project planning:
T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
T2 Mobility Map to understand where people spend most of their time and how long it takes to get places
T3 Venn Diagram (T3b Social Networking Venn Diagram) to identify key individuals, groups and actors perceived to be most important to people and their animals.
T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
The chart produced in this version of the daily activity schedule illustrates how working animals spend their time, during both work periods and rest periods. It looks at a daily routine from the animal’s point of view and identifies where improvements to welfare could be made, such as increasing the time available to animals for rest, play or grazing. The animal’s daily activity schedule differs from the community’s schedule as it looks in-depth at how only the animals’ time is spent during the day, rather than humans.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To understand animals’ daily activities and promote understanding of ways it supports meeting their needs in terms of the five domains of welfare • To identify opportunities for improving animal welfare through husbandry and management practices
1.5-2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper and markers or using sticks, stones, straw, local resources
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs
Daily activity schedule of the animal
Figure T4B Daily activity schedule of the working animal
This daily activity schedule for animals (Figure T4B, above) was used to initiate a discussion on animal welfare issues amongst rural workers, who use their equine animals to generate income by transporting goods and people to markets and tourist places. The animals’ day starts with their feeding trough being cleaned at 6am, followed by being fed at 6am. The animals are harnessed to carts at 8am and start their work at the market at 8:30am. Water is offered between 11:30am and midday, and again at 5pm when the animals return home. A second feeding is offered after finishing work 6pm From 7 to 8pm animals are provided free time to graze and roll. They are groomed between 8 and 9pm and the last feed is given between 9 and 10pm.
Daily Activity Schedule of the Animal
Step 1
Start by explaining the purpose of exercise and agree whether to make a circular clock or a line chart to represent time. Decide whether to show time in hours or as parts of the day, such as morning, afternoon, and evening.
Step 2
Start a discussion about the activities that animals are involved in from morning to night. Ask them to list all the activities in order, both with them and other users. Show daily activities using symbols placed at the appropriate time of day.
Step 3
Encourage participants to include some of the following activities in the animals’ daily activity schedule: • Resting and working time • When animals are taken for grazing • When animals are offered feed and water • When animals are groomed or cleaned • When animals can socialise with other animals • When animals can perform instinctive behaviours (e.g. rolling around)
Step 4
Once the animals’ activity schedule is complete, discuss results with participants.
Consider the following guiding questions:
• What do participants think their animals feel about the activities they do throughout the day? • When do you think animals feel most hungry/thirsty? • Do animals have time to satisfy and engage in natural behaviours? (In natural environment or with other animals e.g. rolling, grazing/roaming, socializing) • Which activities are most important for meeting the animals’ needs? Why? • Which periods are considered as heavy workload or strenuous? • Are there some activities that could be made easier/less strenuous for the animal?
Summarize the results of the activity and discussion and ask participants to reflect on what they learned through this activity.
Step 5
Once the activity is complete, take a photo or record of the chart on a piece of paper, ensuring the community has a copy for their records. A copy is retained by the facilitator for future reference or planning. Add any important notes to your project action tracker.
Facilitator’s notes: Daily activity schedule – animal-owning community
Animals at one place of work may have different work types, so divide groups by animals’ work type to produce the daily activity schedules.
Encourage men and women to create separate charts to enable comparison of perceptions of each other’s daily activities. This will help with identifying the best time to plan community visits with men, women and/or both.
Remember that you are not controlling the exercise. Give confidence to people so that they gradually take over the entire process themselves.
You might want to discuss how daily routines change depending on the time of the week or the season.
Next Steps
As part of rapport building stage in the initiation phase, the daily activity schedule might follow on with one of the following activities:
T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
T6 Seasonal Calendar to identify periods of scarcity and risk for the community.
T7 Historical Timeline to learn which major past events community members perceive to be significant to working animals and people
As part of a community needs assessment and shared vision, the daily activity schedule for the animal-owning community might accompany one or more of the following tools to get a full picture of community dynamics and needs for project planning:
T1 Mapping to understand which resources and services are important to the community.
T2 Mobility Map to understand where people spend most of their time and how long it takes to get places
T3 Venn Diagram (T3b Social Networking Venn Diagram) to identify key individuals, groups and actors perceived to be most important to people and their animals.
T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities to understand men’s and women’s animal care-giving and use roles and responsibilities, and identify whether they desire changes in the division of labour.
This checklist is intended to assist projects in gender mainstreaming by providing a list of key considerations for mainstreaming gender within any project. It may be used as a framework to both design and evaluate projects in terms of the extent to which they include gender in their design, planning, implementation and monitoring and evaluation.
Have the key characteristics and possible differences among the target groups been clearly identified by sex, age, type of work, income, ethnic origin, etc.?
2
Has a gender analysis been conducted to identify and understand?
a) The needs of male and female beneficiaries
b) The problems that both men and women face related to their animals’ husbandry and management/use (not just men or women only)
c) Gender roles in the community or home related equine care and use between men and women, boys, and girls (e.g. decision-making in relation to equine care, use and management, accessing of service providers, perception of service providers about women and men), etc.)
d) The gender relations (norms, customs, traditions, beliefs) in the community or home related to the division of labour and benefits amongst men and women, boys, and girls as they relate to their animals.
3
Have the views of both men and women community stakeholders been sought in a consultative process?
4
Is the outcome of gender analysis used to inform the design of project plans?
Project Planning/Strategy
5
Are there strategies in place to ensure that men and women can participate equally in the project activities? For example, if household chores and family care responsibilities are roles expected of women and girls, they tend to have less time to participate in project activities. Are these kinds of concerns considered when organizing activities?
6
Are there clear strategies in place to ensure that women and men will equally benefit from project activities?
7
Have any existing gender inequalities been identified amongst community stakeholders that could potentially affect their ability to meet their animals welfare needs/adopt desired behaviours?
a) If yes, are any gender transformative strategies built into the project to address this?
8
Is the promotion of gender equality included explicitly as one of the project strategies? e.g. ensuring gender equality in representation in messaging, community leadership roles, how men and women are treated and their views valued by the project.
9
In strengthening the capacity of the target groups, is there a consideration to avoid increasing the workload of the members of the household who have a greater labour burden? e.g. women, girls
Project Planning/Outputs & Outcomes
10
Do the outputs (and corresponding indicators) reflect priority concerns and respond to the needs of both men and women related to their animals’ welfare/their ability to meet their animals’ welfare needs?
11
Do the outcomes and outputs identify the intended target stakeholders by gender or other marginalized or vulnerable group requiring special consideration (e.g. migratory workers, religion, caste, race etc.)?
12
Do the outputs specify the ratio or number of target stakeholders by gender or other relevant marginalized social status?
Project Implementation/Activities
13
In training/education activities, are the numbers of boys, girls, women, and men who will be trained/educated clearly stated?
14
Is there proportionate budget allocation as well as staff/trainer time investment to ensure all genders interests, needs and roles are given adequate attention to facilitate their empowerment to improve animal welfare?
15
If there is a high chance that women will participate less and/or potentially not benefit equally as men, have quota been set for men’s and women’s participation under the outputs and activities?
16
Are communication channels identified that will effectively reach specific target groups, in particular women and girls, and any other marginalized groups?
17
If women and girls, or men and boys, cannot or will not speak freely in mixed groups, are separate events planned for women/girls only and men/boys only, or with facilitators of the same sex to promote equal participation?
18
During project implementation, do staff take opportunities to raise awareness on gender equality and demonstrate that the participation of women alongside men is beneficial to everyone?
19
Does the programme have support from, or cooperate with, gender experts or organizations with gender expertise, if it needs assistance in this respect?
Project Monitoring and Evaluation
20
Does the project collect any information or data that can be disaggregated by gender or other marginalized group to identify potential inequalities, constraints, and opportunities these groups face?
21
Are methods and tools provided to project staff to enable them to effectively measure and evaluate the nature and extent of impact and benefits for male and female project stakeholders and/or other marginalized groups?
22
Does the project collect feedback from male and female stakeholders (or other marginalized groups)? Are the timings for feedback and monitoring meetings convenient for the gender roles of male and female stakeholders? Are there female facilitators/evaluators/translators etc. to create a safe space and culturally/religious norms of the area?
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communications; Compassion/Empathy; Community Change Agents
2a. Promoting Effective Interpersonal Communication through Emotional Intelligence
The most important skills that can improve a community facilitator’s ability to be a catalyst for change and influence behaviour change are effective inter-personal communication skills, which are comprised by the skills people use to exchange information, feelings, and meaning through verbal and non-verbal messages.
Emotional intelligence (EI) is a foundational competency in effective inter-personal communication defined as the ability to recognize and manage our own feelings, and recognize and respond effectively to those of others [94]. Emotions are one of the aspects to lookout under automatic motivation as positive or negative feelings can either encourage or discourage a particular behaviour. Emotional intelligence can enable community facilitators to respond to challenging situations in ways which improve rather than hinder collaborations and better support communities’ in changing their behaviour.
EI is comprised of four competency domains related to understanding and managing one’s self (personal competencies), and relationships with others (social competencies) including: self-awareness, self-management, social awareness, and social skills. The figure below illustrates emotional intelligence in terms of these four competency domains, demonstrating how they influence each other and ultimately the community facilitators’ ability to be successful in their work [94, 95]. Emotional self-awareness is a precursor to the other three competencies, as the more we are aware of our feelings the easier they are to manage and in turn effectively interact with others.
RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE COMPETENCIES AND THE WORK OF COMMUNITY FACILITATORS - Diagram adapted from [95, 94, 96]
2b. Transactional Analysis - Using Human Psychology to Improve Communications
Effective interpersonal communication and relations can be improved through an understanding of the concept of transactional analysis (TA) [97]. Transactional analysis is psychological model developed by Eric Berne to make sense of how people interact with one another (referred to as transactions) based on their feelings influencing their actions [98]. TA has proven a useful method for increasing emotional intelligence by helping one become aware of one’s emotions, exert greater self- control which are essential to ensuring the effectiveness of communication and associated positive interactions with others [98].
The key assumptions of TA are as follows [99, 98]:
People are OK: all people are good and worthy when they enter the world.
All people can think: every person has the capacity to think, and are therefore responsible for the decisions they make.
All people can change: as everyone is responsible for their decisions, change is possible and decisions need not be determined by one's past.
Key Influences on Inter-personal Communications
1. Ego States
TA defines the different “ways of being” or “personalities” people adopt in their interactions with others, and refers to these as ego states. Our interpersonal communications can be classified as falling into one of the three following ego states: the child ego state, the parent ego state, and the adult ego state [98]. Each of these ego states are comprised of consistent feelings and behaviours, and these activate (unconsciously) in our interactions. By enabling you to identify which ego state is activated when interacting with others, TA can help better manage your emotions and respond in ways which promote collaboration and improve your ability to influence behaviour change in others. The three ego states of parent, adult, and child are further described below [100]:
Parent Ego State: the parent ego state is rooted in the past, and contains the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours taught/learned fromour parents or other significant authority figures. It involves responding as one of our parents would have: saying what they would have said, feeling what they would have felt, behaving how they would have behaved. It can take one of two forms: 1) the critical parent (criticizing, censoring, punishing authority-based judgments or rules e.g. “You should”, “You must”), and 2) the nurturing parent (protective, loving, and encouraging). The parent state can negatively hinder our interactions when experienced as being judgemental, dominant, punishing, condescending, smothering, overprotective or stifling. Other examples which may indicate the unhelpful parent ego state is activated include: impatient body language, anger, judgemental comments, criticisms, providing unsolicited advice, ordering others, raised eyebrows, arms folded across chest, blaming others.
The concepts of ego states and life positions are discussed below as they are key influencers on our inter-personal communications.
Adult Ego State: the adult ego state is the only ego state rooted in the present and contains the attitudes, feelings and behaviours we have learned to help us interpret reality based on our rational, objective appraisals. A person behaving or interacting with their adult ego will properly seek information and use their reasoning skills to evaluate it before making decisions. Interacting from the adult ego state is always the ideal as it promotes clear, effective communication because responses are logical and appropriate to the situation or present, and this ego state is able to keep the parent and child ego state under control. A good way to know if your adult ego state is activated is to examine whether your questions/comments are fuelled by compassion and curiosity, or irritable emotions, the desire to blame, criticize, and/or prove a point. Other example indicators the adult ego state is activated may include: being/feeling relaxed/composed, calm, open, reasoned statements, unemotional, thoughtful, leaning in to listen/look, clear confident tone, taking responsibility, focused on facts not opinions, discussing alternatives or results, seeking information, evaluating pros-and-cons, questioning: “why?, how?, who?, what?, where?, how?”
Child Ego State: the child ego state is rooted in the past, and contains the attitudes, feelings, and behaviours we feltin our childhood related to avoiding perceived painful experiences or pursuing pleasurable experiences. It involves responding instinctually in the present as we would have as a child seeking to meet its basic needs: saying what we would have said, feeling what we would have felt, and behaving how we would have behaved as a child. The child ego can present in one of two forms: 1) the adapted/rebellious child (defiant, complaining, compliant, and/or passive). 2) free child (curious, creative, spontaneous, affectionate and fun-loving). The child ego state may negatively hinder interactions when anger or despair dominates an individuals’ reasoning. Other indicators the unhelpful child ego state is activated may include: feeling/being resistant, defensive, uncompromising, withdrawn, disengaged, helpless, dejected, sullen, manipulative, subservient, obstructive, destructive, wanting one’s own way, feeling like a victim/persecuted, shoulder shrugging, irritable, monotone, fidgeting.
In TA, interactions are referred to as complementary when the ego states of the interacting parties are the same/sympathetic to one another (e.g. child-child, adult-adult, parent-parent). This means there is alignment between what an individual says and expects to receive as a response, and what they actually receive as a response, and results in more clear and effective communication [100]. Alternatively, when transactions occur between individuals communicating with each other from different ego states (e.g. parent-child, adult-parent etc.) they are referred to as crossed transactions, which can lead to breakdowns in communication, misunderstanding, and associated conflict.
Examples 1 (top) and 2 (middle)
Examples 3 (left) and 4 (right)
Examples of complementary transactions:
Parent-Parent (See Example 1): “What a terrible meeting!” - “One of the worst I’ve been to!”
Adult-Adult (See Example 2): “I noticed you weren’t able to take action since we last spoke, can we talk about what’s been going on for you?” - “You’re right, I’ve been really busy with illness in the family, however plan to take action now that things have calmed down”
Child-Child “I’m not going to try these recommendations as the people who made them don’t even understand our lives!” - “Yeah, I’m not going to bother trying any of them either.”
Examples of crossed transactions:
Parent-Child (See Example 3): “You should be careful or your animal won’t be able to continuing to earn money for you” - “What do you care?”
Adult-Child (See Example 4): “We haven’t spoken for a while and I’d be interested to hear your experiences trialling the solutions we discussed when we last met.” - “I feel like giving up as nothing is working!”
Adult-Parent: “I noticed you attended the training, what were key learnings for you?” - “They should have provided that training ages ago when we really needed it!”
The goal of TA is to have all parties involved converse in the idealized state of adult-adult because these are the only interactions informed by rational appraisals of reality in the present (vs feelings or learnings from the past), and thus result in clear and effective communication, decision making, and problem solving. However, as we go about our daily lives, we move from one ego state to another in reaction to different interactions without any thought, and our (perceived) ego state can also elicit different ego states in others that can either help or hinder communications and relations. Operating in the idealized adult-adult state can therefore be challenging, particularly when we are faced with emotionally difficult situations or interactions with people who have not yet developed an ability to manage their emotions and behaviours.
The following example illustrates how ego states inform the nature of our transactions:
When a community member feels like their needs are not being met e.g. does not feel understood, or like they are being judged by the community facilitator, their “child” ego state of mind may intervene to influence their interaction causing them act uncooperatively in defiance. This child ego state response may in turn arouse frustration in the facilitator, arousing an annoyed “parent” ego state response which can further break down relations as a sense of disdain takes over their interactions. This example illustrates how the parent and child ego states interact to create crossed transactions and undesirable outcomes. However with an understanding of TA, the community facilitator can identify ego states activated in themselves and others, and manage their emotions to effectively communicate from their adult ego state without undermining relations with community members that can hinder desired behaviour change and animal welfare improvements.
2. Life Positions
In addition to the ego states that define our personality state in any given moment, TA also defines “life positions” which are the basic beliefs about ourselves and others which act as the frame of reference through which we experience our interactions with others [101]. These beliefs refer to our sense of feeling “OK or “not-OK” about ourselves and those we’re interacting with, and ultimately influence the nature of our social interactions. In this context, being “OK” refers the innate value, goodness, worth, and equal right to live and meet needs we perceive ourselves and other parties in the interaction to have. The TA model assumes that everyone is born viewing themselves and others as “OK”; however it also recognizes our childhood experiences shape can change our perception of ourselves and/or others as “not OK”. Life positions therefore may change and adapt throughout life as we learn in develop, and can also be influenced by our/others’ states of being (ego states). As we interact with others, we take one of four life positions, which in turn result in one of four specific social interaction reactions or outcomes as illustrated in the below matrix and described further below [102, 99, 103, 101]:
Life Positions and their Influence on Social Interaction Outcomes adapted from Franklin Ernst’s OK Corral
I am not OK with me (-) (e.g. I don’t feel good/worthy/equal)
You’re OK with me (+) (e.g. I feel you are good/worthy/equal)
I am OK with Me (+) (e.g. I feel good/worthy/equal)
Helpless/One Down Position I’m not OK, You’re OK
Interaction Outcome: I get away from you
Healthy Position I’m OK, You’re OK
Interaction Outcome: I get on with you
Hopeless Position I’m not OK, You’re not OK
Interaction Outcome: I get nowhere with you
Better than You/One Up Position I’m OK, You’re not OK
Interaction Outcome: I get rid of you
You are not OK with me (-) (e.g. I don’t feel you are good/worthy/equal)
Healthy Position = I am OK, you are OK
This is the healthiest position, with people occupying this position holding the belief they and anyone else in the interaction are innately worthy and valuable. This position is grounded in the belief in one’s own abilities, and is characterized by mutual respect and seeing the best in the other person, thereby allowing parties to find a constructive approach to issues. This healthy position is expressed in the adult ego state, and results in the individual wanting to continue interacting with the other party (I get on with you).To adopt this way of thinking requires self-awareness and the ability to manage one’s emotions (automatic motivation). In addition, this position benefits from having positive beliefs about self (reflective motivation) e.g. confidence, self-esteem, self-efficacy, perceived competencies, sense of empowerment, and behavioural control. It also requires feeling one’s role and identity are valuable, even in the face of factors which may render one disadvantaged or marginalized. As such, this position may be a challenge for community members to adopt, particularly if they are marginalized and lack this self-belief. However, by communicating from this position using the adult ego state, community facilitators can demonstrate their belief in community members’ worth and value, which can contribute to improving community members’ own belief in their ability to make desired changes.
Better than you/One Up Position = I am OK, you are not OK
In this position the individual is at an advantage or feels superior or right (“I’m OK”) and projects anger, disgust, or disdain onto the person with whom they are interacting who they perceive to be wrong, inferior, or a scapegoat (“You’re not OK”). As a result of this projection of anger, blame, and/or criticism, the other party may get angry in response. This position can be expressed in the critical parent or rebellious child ego state, and results in an individual blaming or feeling hostile towards the other party (I get rid of you). When community facilitators operate from this position they can undermine community members’ self-efficacy when they don’t seek to understand community members’ lived experiences or recognize them as experts in their own lives and instead act as the expert or limit their meaningful participation, which can give the impression they don’t believe community members are capable of change or finding solutions to their own issues.
Helpless/One Down Position = I am not OK, you are OK
In this position, the individual feels disadvantaged, helpless and disempowered in comparison with others they are interacting with and may experience themselves as victims. This position is often expressed in the rebellious child ego, and creates a sense of wanting to withdraw from others in the interaction (e.g. I get away from you) due to not feeling as worthy as others in the interaction, often as a result of existing limiting self-beliefs (e.g. individuals who are marginalized or discriminated against may not believe they have anything valuable to contribute, or believe in their capability to affect change).
Hopeless Position = I am not OK, you are not OK
In this position, the individual perceives themselves and the other party as not good, worthy, or having equal rights. It is essentially a hopeless and frustrating situation where effective communication is very difficult. This position if often expressed in the rebellious child ego, and results in the individual feeling that their interactions with the other party are futile (I get nowhere with you). For example, individuals who have experienced discrimination may have developed limiting self beliefs as well as a lack of trust in others/social systems, which cause them to feel hopeless about working with others or trying to affect change.
In the previous example where the community member interacts from a child ego state and community facilitator from their parent ego-state, the community member perceived the interaction from a hopeless life position as they don’t feel “OK” about themselves or the community facilitator, which results in their child ego state influencing the community facilitator’s to perceive the interaction and respond from a Better than you/One up life position. As this example shows, it is important to understand how your ego state and life positions may be triggered when faced with emotional situations and interactions with community members, as well be aware their ego states, so you can manage your feelings, thoughts, and actions and respond in ways that not to hinder your influence and ability to collaborate. Additional examples of how TA can aid your role as a community facilitator include:
It is important for community facilitators to understand that different communities and social groups may respond or behave differently as a result of their unique social and cultural experiences and learnings influencing their ways of being (ego states) and relating (life positions). TA can help you understand, appreciate and accept this diversity amongst community members, and help reduce unconscious bias from hindering your efforts to promote inclusivity, diversity and equality, and achievement of desired behaviour change outcomes [104].
When one is exposed to situations where the welfare of animals or people is compromised, community facilitators can experience negative feelings such as anger and hostility which can be challenging to manage (e.g. child or parent ego state). When these negative emotions influence community facilitator’s perceptions of, or are directed towards community members, the ability be an effective community servant can be compromised as rapport and trust break down [104]. Being aware of how and when your ego state and life position influence your interactions in these situations can enable you to regain control of your feelings, thoughts and actions so you can respond appropriately from your adult ego state.
How to Apply Transactional Analysis in Practice
Two models which help to understand how our roles in social interaction, which are influenced by our ego states and life positions, can produce ineffective and effective communication are referred to as the Drama Triangle and Winner’s Triangle which are illustrated in the figures below.
The Drama Triangle is a model which describes conflicted or drama intense relationship transactions [105]. The drama triangle defines the three unconscious roles people take on (and can switch between) in stressful, emotional, or high conflict situations. When two people enter an interaction in one of the three roles on the drama triangle, their interactions will be characterized by drama, stress, conflict, or rescuing people from their responsibilities to solution problems for themselves. These interactions are unhelpful, and interfere with problem solving and effective communication. The three roles of the drama triangle which are further described below are Victim, Persecutor, and Rescuer; and people are likely to have a preference for playing one of these roles.
VictimRole: people who play this role feel oppressed, hopeless, and helpless. They may complain of unmet needs, and be unable to make decisions, solve problems, take pleasure in life, or achieve insight. The payoff for individuals who take this role is that they can avoid dealing with things that are unpleasant or difficult. The problem with the victim role is that individuals discount themselves, and typically seek out a persecutor and a rescuer who they think will save them but who in fact just disempowers them by perpetuating the victim’s negative feelings and/or creating dependency e.g. nothing is my fault, I’m not capable, poor me. The victim role is aligned with the hopeless (I am not OK, You are Not OK) or helpless/one down life positions (I am not OK, you are OK). Characteristics commonly associated with the victim role include: complaining, being helpless, withdrawing, catastrophizing, pretending to be incompetent.
RescuerRole: people who play this role tend to be enablers, will feel guilty if they don’t come to rescue, can be over-helpful, self-sacrificing. The payoff of this role is to be needed, wanted or liked. The problem with the rescuer role is that rescuing discounts others’ ability to think for themselves, keeps those in the victim role dependent, and gives the victim permission to fail e.g. you need me, let me help. The rescuer role is very prevalent amongst helping and caring professions, and is aligned with better than you/one up position (I am OK, you are not OK). Characteristics commonly associated with the rescuer role include: fixing, telling, giving solutions, taking over, martyrdom.
Persecutor Role: people who play this role tend to blame, criticise, and can be oppressive, controlling, rigid, authoritative, angry, and unpleasant. The payoff for persecutors is that they get what they want. However the issue with this role is that they tend to discount others’ value and integrity, don’t enable others to show their full potential, and keep the victim feeling oppressed by their demanding and inflexible behaviour. Persecutors will seek to control and criticize while failing to solve any problems or help anyone else solve the problem e.g. its all your fault, you got it wrong, and people tend to want to get away from them whenever they can. The persecutor role is aligned with the better than you/one up life position (I am OK, you are not OK). Characteristics commonly associated with the persecutor role include: criticizing, blaming, labelling, putting others down, feeling inadequate.
While the Drama triangle describes the above roles in their most extreme form, we often encounter milder versions of these roles in our work and personal lives. When people are caught up in a drama triangle, they will switch roles, and a rescuer may become a victim or a victim may become a rescuer, and these roles can change as the dynamics of the interactions change and develop.
As an alternative to the problematic drama triangle, the winner’s triangle was developed as a model for more productive social interactions that lead to a win-win situation for everyone involved [106].The roles within the winner’s triangle reflect the positive aspects of the three drama triangle roles and include: Assertive (vs. persecutor), Caring (vs. rescuer), and Vulnerable (vs. victim), which are further defined below [106, 107]:
Vulnerable Role: people who play this role may be suffering however express their real feelings, accept themselves, use their thinking and problem solving, and take action to care for themselves.
Caring Role: people who play this role have genuine concern for people which they demonstrate by: giving help when asked, trusting the other person has their own answers, accepting and encouraging others’ to think for themselves, actively listening (without trying to solve the problem), having clear boundaries, doing their share, and not doing things they don’t want to do (unless absolutely necessary). They are caring, understanding, and don’t need to be needed by others.
Assertive Role: people who play this role are aware of their own feelings, needs and wants, and act in their own best interests by: asking for what they want, saying no to what they don’t want, being flexible in order to get their own needs met, and don’t punish or others feel wrong. They often use “I” statements (vs. you statements), are non-judgemental, and accept others’ value and integrity.
The drama triangle can be transformed into the winner’s triangle through development of one’ self-awareness, managing one’s emotions, and communicate effectively [107]. Once we understand these drama patterns and become aware we are no longer operating in the adult ego state, we can break free and choose to step off the drama triangle and consciously seek to operate from our adult ego state.
As facilitators of behaviour change, it is therefore helpful to understand which role you tend to play on the Drama triangle. For example, as a community facilitator you may have a tendency to step on to the drama triangle in the role of rescuer, or potentially persecutor, and perceive community members as the victim who either are to blame for the welfare issues of their animals or who need your help to address observed welfare issues. Or you may perceive other community members or stakeholders within the role of persecutor, for example the animal health service provider who provides poor treatment and puts animals at risk may be perceived as the persecutor. These roles may then change if after your initial interactions, you find community members are not following your advice on how to improve animal welfare and are instead following the advice of the poorly trained animal health service provider. In this example, you may find yourself moving from rescuer to persecutor and start feeling negative feelings towards the animal owner. These feelings and associated responses and interactions are unhelpful to problem solving and achievement of the goal for improved animal welfare. Alternatively, if you perceived the animal health service provider in the role of persecutor, this would be similarly unhelpful to promoting a collaborative approach to addressing animal welfare issues.
When our professional interactions don’t seem authentic, or when we find ourselves confused or frustrated by conversations with others, we probably we have entered into one of the roles on the drama triangle. So how can you become free of all that could be holding you back so you can relate to people with congruence and authentic influence?
Use the following steps when interacting with community members to support effective inter-personal communication to promote collaboration and improve your ability to influence behaviour change:
Notice how you feel: the first thing to do when you feel a sense of confusion, irritation frustration, or helplessness is simply to notice this is actually happening. Ask yourself the following questions to improve your self-awareness:
Are we frustrated, confused, irritated, do we feel it's somebody else's fault?
Does that mean that we might be operating from a parent or child role?
Are we feeling “not ok” about ourselves or the other person?
Do we feel as if we're in our adult ego state?
Are we experiencing crossed transactions (where either our and/or another person’s non-adult ego state is operating).
Think about what might be happening for you, and also for the other person?
Listen - in order to communicate effectively we first need to listen (for additional guidance re to section on active listening below)
Move to your adult ego state
Soothe the child or parent ego state (yours or the other’s)
Enabling someone to move to their adult ego state so they can communicate from their best self is easily done by giving a few meaningful and positive comments e.g. empathetic responses or positive affirmations (for additional guidance refer to sections on empathy and active listening below). For example, you can say “That must be difficult for you”, “I understand how stressful that is for you”, “I know its frustrating when things don’t go as you believe they should” which helps the person then move back to their adult ego state so you can interact in a congruent adult-adult ego state.
Feel/show: it is important to authentically feel, and to show qualities of respect, vulnerability, authenticity, and empathy.
By understanding TA and being aware of the different ego states, you can learn not to respond based on unhelpful ways of being (e.g. from parent or child ego states, unhealthy life positions), and instead choose to respond consciously to improve communication, collaboration, and your ability to influence human behaviour change. TA therefore lends itself to strengthening emotional intelligence and inter-personal communication in the following ways:
Improves self-awareness through enabling identification and understanding of our/others’ emotional state and how this is influenced by/influences inter-personal interactions
Enables self-management as we can learn to keep our emotions under control once we are aware of them, thereby enabling us to choose to react consciously and in ways which are congruent with our values and objectives even in the face of challenges
Improves social awareness by enabling us to understand how others are feeling and why they reacting as they are,
Increases social skills by enabling us to respond effectively and with empathy, based on an understanding of our self and others, which also helps mitigate potential for conflict and break downs in interpersonal relations.
2c. Key Communication Skills
Empathy: Understanding Others’ Perspective
Empathy is a foundational skill which underpins emotional intelligence. The ability to communicate (send and receive messages) and lead by understanding others' thoughts, views, and feelings (being empathetic) is one of the most important means through which community facilitators enhance the quality of their interactions with community members to influence transformation and change.
Definition of Empathy: empathy is the ability to see things from another person’s point of view or from their frame of reference and feel what they feel. It involves understanding, being aware of, being sensitive to, and vicariously experiencing the feelings, thoughts, and experience of another person without making judgements [108]. In terms of communication, being empathetic involves communicating your sense of the other person’s experiences and feelings from your understanding of their perspective.
Benefits of Being Empathetic
Empathy involves being able to understand what a person is feeling in a given moment and also why their behaviours or actions make sense to them and we can use these insights to appropriately frame our communications with others, build trust and strengthen our relationships, and ultimately be more effective leading and inspiring desired change. The benefits of empathy are further described below:
Rapport Building: when facilitators express understanding of community members’ experience and feelings, and community members in turn feel they are accurately understood, accepted, and feel secure, rapport is built which is critical to a facilitator’s ability to influence behaviour change.
Improved Understanding and Awareness: responding with empathy provides community facilitators the opportunity to better organize and reflect back the meaning of the information community members are processing and communicating. This enables the facilitator to:
Demonstrate and check their own understanding of community members’ experiences and feelings, and
Evoke community members’ own reflections to support them in identifying problematic behaviours and solutions for themselves, as opposed to telling them or providing personal opinions or judgements which can cause defensiveness and a break down in relations. This is helpful to facilitating community members’ to move through the stages of change.
Guidance on Being Empathetic
Factors Influencing Empathy: People tend to be more empathetic toward some people and less so toward others [108]. As acommunity facilitator, it important to understand some of the factors that may influence your empathy so you can mitigate them and ensure your empathy is consistent across people you interact with. Factors influencing empathy include [108]:
How you perceive the other person
How you attribute the other individual's behaviours
What you blame for the other person's predicament
Your past experiences and expectations
You can mitigate these factors’ potential negative influence and improve your ability to be empathetic through an understanding and application of transactional analysis, particularly in relation to its assumptions, ego states, and life positions. Furthermore, the following points provide suggestions for how to be empathetic with others [109]:
Actively listen: effective listening must be active, which requires listening attentively to a speaker, understanding what they're saying, responding and reflecting on what's being said (refer to section below for guidance on active listening). It can also be demonstrated by providing appropriate feedback through body language e.g. nodding, smiling to encourage them continue, leaning forward, eye contact etc. Active listening encourages both the listener and speaker to remain actively engaged in the conversation.
Imagine yourself in the other person’s situation and accept their interpretation of it: By Imagining being in same situation as the person enables you to connect with their emotions and perspective and help ensure you don’t draw incorrect conclusions, comment and/or judge from your perspective without knowing the full details of what a person is experiencing e.g. “this is no big deal”, “you should try harder”, “you’re overreacting” etc. It is important to accept their interpretation of their experiences/situation without judging it, even if you do not agree and have a different interpretation.
Show care and concern: when someone tells you about their challenges or issues, show care and concern by asking how they are doing, if they would like your support, and/or let them know you are there to listen and support them in the ways you can/as appropriate.
Acknowledge the person’s feelings: it is important to validate people’s experiences and feelings as a means to build trust and rapport before working with them to address issues. Acknowledging means to recognize the importance of how they are feeling. Ensure you do no brush off or dismiss their feelings, avoid the topic, say something irrelevant, or attempt to move the conversation on before acknowledging and respecting how they feel.
Ask questions: ask people questionsto learn more about them and their lives and help encourage people to share more (refer to section below on open questions).
Don’t Rush the Conversation: a common mistake in community facilitation is trying to rush conversations to reach a certain end point or achieve a predetermined objective. When someone is sharing about their situation or issues, glossing over what they are feeling to rush towards the desired end point without acknowledging their feelings is invalidating and undermines the potential for collaboration. The more empathetic thing to do is connect with them based on their current emotional state by understanding their perspective and how they feel, and then seek to move them forward with questions. For example, a conversation like this may flow like this: “That sounds really frustrating” → “What happened that made it so difficult?” → “How are you feeling about it now?” → “What are your ideas about how to move forward?”. You can better build rapport by pacing the conversation and matching a person’s emotional state rather than trying to rush a conversation to a specific end point.
Don’t Judge: it is important to not to express judgement on an issue or person, nor form one before you understand the situation. Instead always give people the benefit of the doubt and understand they are doing the best they can and likely have their own justified reasons for their decisions, thoughts, and actions. It is also important to remember that all people have the ability to change and to uphold this belief regardless of their current actions.
Mirroring: mirroring is about connecting authentically with others by imitating their nonverbal signals as a means to build rapport e.g. their gestures, speech patterns, or attitude etc. The goal is not to copy someone’s mannerisms blindly but rather to adjust your behaviour to match their tone and vibe to create a sense of congruence with them.
Show emotional support: emotional support means giving people your trust, affirmation and encouragement (refer to section below on affirmations). Let them know that you will support them in whatever they choose to do and do not judge them. An example of a supportive statement is: “Knowing you, you always consider things very carefully. You know your situation best and I am supportive of whatever you choose to do.” Sometimes, what people are looking for is not answers or not solutions, but rather are looking for empathy and support.
In addition to the above, other things you can do to strengthen your empathy skills include [108]:
Work on listening to people without interrupting.
Pay attention to body language and other types of nonverbal communication.
Seek to learn more about how others feel to strengthen your connection with them.
Seek to identify your biases to understand and mitigate how they affect your perceptions of others.
Look for ways in which you are similar to others versus focusing on your differences.
Be willing to be vulnerable and open about how you feel.
Engage in new experiences to improve your understanding of how others in that situation may feel.
Examples of Responding with Empathy
Example Scenario: a community member expresses the following: “I’d like to meet my livestock’s welfare needs and am worried that I won’t be able to continue to rely them to earn a living if I don’t; but I don’t know what I can do given how busy I am and how limited my resources are. It’s overwhelming.”
Examples of empathetic responses:
“You rely on your animals and care about their wellbeing, and face challenges in meeting their needs which leaves you feeling very overwhelmed and not sure what to do.”
“It is understandable that you are worried about your animals and your livelihood which depends on them, and feel a sense of powerlessness.”
“There’s a looming uncertainty and risk if you don’t meet your animals’ welfare needs, and it feels like there’s a wall in front of you which prevents you from being able to take action to improve their welfare.”
“So, on the one hand, you want to take action and improve your animals’ welfare, but on the other, you worry you won’t be able to do anything even though you have the desire to.”
Applying Empathy to Improve Communications
When you are communicating it is important to adapt your communication to what will be most effective for the interaction from the perspective of the person you are engaging with. The following two step sequence outline how you can take the concept of empathy and apply it to your communication practices [110]:
Attribution: attribution is the act of gathering information concerning where your audience or recipient is and how they will best receive your message. You can do this by seeking to understand the perspective of the person receiving your communication and see the world from their eyes and understand how they feel. This will enable you to make some “attributions” about where they are, what they want, and how they may need something conveyed to them.
Accommodation: once you have taken into account the perspective of the person receiving your communication, you will then need to accommodate their perspective and feelings by adapting your behaviour and communication to their perspective. Adapting to a context and speaking empathically doesn’t mean you have to tell people whatever they want, but rather when you know where people are at, you can be more effective in compelling them into a different future. To help you adapt your communications to be empathetic, consider the following questions from the perspective of your audience [110]:
What communication do they need to hear (e.g. choosing the right words that make the most sense in the situation to fit their perspective)?
How do they need to hear it?
Where do they need to hear it?
What is the style they need to hear it in?
Why they are interested in hearing it in the first place?
Active Listening - open ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, summarizing
The core skill associated with effective communication is active listening which includes: asking open questions, and providing affirmations, reflections and summaries. This can be remembered by the acronym OARS.
Listening is different to hearing what someone says. It is a very active process and can achieve the empathy, deep curiosity and exploration of someone’s perspective needed in the change process. This can also be vital to overcome any challenges regarding the interpersonal relationship between listener and speaker.
OPEN QUESTIONS
Open questions are questions that encourage more than a yes or no answer. They elicit understanding, encourage talking and facilitate abstract thinking skills.
The goal: use more open than closed questions.
Open Question Examples:
“How are you today?”
“What’s made you speak to me about this?”
“Can you tell me more about that?”
“Why do you want to make this change?”
Additional tips for framing open-ended questions to be authentic and situationally appropriate:
During initial discussions, ask questions which first seek to identify a person’s own understanding of situation/problem e.g. ask what they know about the issue. This will enable you to focus your discussion with them on areas where they may lack understanding or awareness.
Remain curious to learn and focus on evoking more change talk through open ended questions and reflections.
Keep in mind which stage of change a person is in at a given point in time, and tailor your questions depending on their stage of change/how they respond. For example you can tailor questions or elicit change talk in pre-contemplation, contemplation stage, or tailor questions to evoke ideas about how to plan/solutions in preparation stage. How to use open ended questions within the four facilitation processes for facilitating progress through the stages are described below:
Process of Engagement: use open ended questions when starting to build a foundational relationship to gain sense of what is important to community members and help build rapport
Process of Focusing: after rapport has been built, use open ended questions to begin identifying the priority issues community members are interested in to set a clear direction for working together moving forward.
Process of Evoking: use open ended questions here to elicit change talk change talk and draw out their own reasons and motivations for change.
Process of Planning: once community members are aware of the issue and have expressed a desire to change to behaviour, use open ended questions to ask about what they think they can do/what solutions they can implement to achieve desired change.
AFFIRMATIONS
Affirming means to actively listen for a client’s positive strengths, skills, values, efforts, accomplishments, aspirations and traits, and to reflect those to the client.
The goal: be in a mind-set of consciously ‘looking out for’ these positive qualities, and, if genuinely appreciated, to reflect them back to community members.
Affirmation Examples:
“You came up with a lot of great ideas to address your animal’s welfare needs. Great brainstorming today.”
“It’s important to you to be a good animal owner.”
“You are the kind of person who takes their responsibilities seriously, and want to do the right thing.”
“You’re investing a lot of effort and really trying to make this change.”
Additional tips on giving affirmations:
Affirmations should be framed in terms of “You” and never include the word “I”. This is because “I” reflects your opinion rather than affirms an innate quality or strength in the person e.g. “You clearly have through about this care a lot” vs. “I think you care a lot.”
Focus affirmations on reflecting a person’s efforts rather than their results as a means to encourage and motivate them and promote their self efficacy and confidence.
Avoid using words like good, bad, great etc. when making affirmations as they imply judgement. When such positive words are used they act more like praise rather than affirmations e.g. “It is good you are supporting your animals” (praise) vs. “Caring for your animals is important to you” (affirming).
Focus affirmations on positive aspects as a means to express empathy for what and why they want to change e.g. focusing on their strengths, efforts, who they are as a person/animal owner etc.
REFLECTIONS
Reflections are statements rather than questions, and are based on having listened to what someone said, and making a guess as to what they meant. Often a question statement can be turned into a reflection by removing the inflection at the end and any query words at the beginning. Reflections can be simple or complex. Try to use complex reflections at least half of the time.
The goal:
Remember that what we think a speaker means may not be correct, and that we must ‘hypothesis test’ our thoughts with reflections to ensure common purpose
Reflect more often than you ask questions.
Reflection Examples: Consider the statement: “If I was happier monitoring my animal’s welfare, I would do it”. Possible reflections include:
“You would like to be more confident in monitoring your animal’s welfare.”
“You feel unsure about whether you’re monitoring your animal’s welfare correctly.”
“Observing your animals’ welfare issues is upsetting for you.”
SUMMARIES
A summary is a special type of reflection that brings together content from two or more statements made by someone. They encourage us to listen very carefully to what a person says throughout a session, and, when offered, show a person that you remember and value what they say. They also give the person we are speaking with an opportunity to point out if we have missed something important in the discussion, so they can fill in the gaps.
The goal: listen attentively to a person’s thoughts and feelings throughout, ready to use a ‘basket of reflections’ to thoughtfully collect, link or transition client statements as needed. For example, you may wish to form a collecting summary to bring together all the reasons for change someone has offered in an interaction.
Summary Example:
“So one thing you hope will be different a year from now is that you will have some better buildings on the farm, that will help make your daily routine easier and be more positive for the cows. You’ve been finding it easier to keep on top of the shelter cleaning recently, and you’d like that to continue. You also said you’d like to learn a little more about nutritional feed composition. What else comes to mind when you think of where you’d like things to be a year from now?”
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Stages of Behaviour Change: Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communications; Community Change Agents
When someone is contemplating making a change, there is balance between their reasons for and against change, and people often experience a period characterised by ambivalence where they weigh the advantages and disadvantages of change to help them make a decision. Resolving this ambivalence and tipping the balance in favour of change can be achieved by strengthening a person’s language about their reasons to change, referred to as change talk, and softening their language in favour of the status quo, referred to as sustain talk. The purpose of this facilitator resource is to enable you to recognize and understand the difference between change talk and sustain talk. Your ability to recognize change talk and sustain talk is a necessary first step to enabling you to effectively facilitate conversations about change as needed to evoke and strengthen community members’ rationales for change (change talk), and overcome their arguments for not changing (sustain talk).
Ambivalence
Ambivalence is the state of experiencing conflicting beliefs, feelings or emotions simultaneously, which can stop people’s progress towards change. When someone is in a state of ambivalence, they will often have very good reasons for change and very good reasons against change. The language community members use (change talk and sustain talk) will indicate whether they are in this contemplation, or ambivalent stage of change.
If someone is simply not yet ready to change or does not believe there is a problem, this is different than ambivalence. In such situations you may instead encounter resistance talk, indicating they are in the pre-contemplation stage of change. For example, someone may say “I don’t believe this is a big a problem and don’t see the need to change.”
Change Talk
The acronym “DARN CAT” is useful to use to understand the types of change talk we hear. When someone is preparing to change, “DARN talk occurs, which is described with examples in the table below [111].
Types of Change Language
Change Talk Examples
Desire Statements about preference for change.
“I’d like my animals not to be lame regularly.”“I want to...” “I would like to...” “I wish…“
Ability Statements about capability.
“I guess I could pick out my animal’s feet more regularly.”“I could…”, “I can...”, “I might be able to…“
Reasons Specific arguments for change
“I want my animals to have good welfare.”“I would probably feel less stress if my animal’s welfare improved”“My animal needs to feel better as my family’s livelihood depends on it.”
Need Statements about feeling obliged to change.
“I must spend less time and money seeking treatments from animal health service providers.” “I ought to…”, “I have to…“, “I really should…”
When someone is close to resolving their ambivalencein favour of change, CAT talk appears which is described with examples in the table below.
Types of Change Language
Change Talk Example Statements
Commitment Statements about their willingness to change.
“I have good reasons to improve my animal’s welfare.”“I am going to ... “, “I promise…”, “I intend to... “
Action Statements about their readiness to take action.
“I’m willing to talk to an animal health service provider about this.” “I am ready to ... “ “I will start tomorrow…”
Taking steps Statements about action taken.
“I’ve started attending community meetings where this topic is discussed.”“I actually went out and…”, “This week I started...”
Sustain Talk
Any language that can act to promote change also has an equal and opposite partner in favour of staying the same: sustain talk. You will be able to identify sustain talk when a person verbalizes their reasons not changing. The table below outlines the types of sustain talk with examples.
Types of Sustain Language
Sustain Talk Example Statements
Desire Statements about preference for staying the same/not changing.
“I don’t want to spend that long trying to prevent issues.”
Ability Statements about not having capability.
“I’ve tried, and I don’t think I can check my animal’s feet that often.” “I can’t afford to seek treatment for my animal.”
Reasons Specific arguments against change
“If I try to manage this issue I just create a problem somewhere else.”
Need Statements about not feeling an obligation to change.
“I’ve got to focus my time on other things.”
Commitment Statements about their unwillingness or lack of commitment to change.
“I’m just not going to care for my animal’s feet - that’s final.”
Action Statements about not wanting to take action.
“I’m prepared to accept the risks of keeping my animals this way.”
Taking steps Statements about actions no taken.
“I threw away that information sheet earlier this week.”
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communications; Community Change Agents
Much of the work of community facilitators relies on their ability to effectively facilitate conversations and motivate communities to adopt desired change. A guided conversational facilitation technique for engaging stakeholders, clarifying their strengths and aspirations, evoking their own motivations for change, and promoting their autonomy in decision making is called Motivational Interviewing (MI). This facilitator resource outlines the spirit, processes and key principles of MI ensure conversations about change are effectively facilitated and that communities’ preferences, needs and values remain at the heart of all conversations.
The Spirit of Facilitating Conversations about Change
In order to be effective in facilitating conversations about change, it is first necessary to have the right mind-set or way of being, referred to a “spirit” in MI. The following section outlines the key elements of the spirit of MI which are required to effectively facilitating conversations about change, which are represented by the acronym “CAPE” [57]:
Compassion: Actively promoting community members’ welfare and needs.
Acceptance: Viewing your community members’ as people with absolute worth and autonomy, and engaging with empathy and affirmations.
Partnership: Viewing your interaction with community members as an active collaboration between experts.
Evocation: Viewing community members as people with their own good reasons and strength to change. Your role as a community facilitator is to guide them there.
It is important to consciously strive to embody this spirit and draw upon these four elements whenever facilitating conversations about change with community members.
Key Principles of Facilitating Conversations about Change
In addition to embodying the element of spirit, it is important to follow the four guiding principles below to effectively facilitate conversations about change [57, 112]:
Listen with empathy: Effective listening skills are essential to understand what will motivate a person to change, as well as the pros and cons of their situation. Seek to understand their values, needs, abilities, motivations, and potential barriers to changing their behaviour, and communicate respect and acceptance of where the person is in their change process.
Understand a person’s motivations: It is a person’s own reasons for change, rather than the community facilitators, that will ultimately result in behaviour change. By approaching a person’s interests, concerns and values with curiosity and openly exploring their motivations for change, community facilitators will get a better understanding of community members’ motivations and potential barriers to change.
Empower the person: Empowering people involves exploring their own ideas about how they can make changes to improve their animal’s welfare and drawing on their personal knowledge about what has succeeded in the past. It is the role of the community facilitator to elicit hope and support and encourage a person’s belief in the possibility of change, and their capacity to reach their goals. Work with them to identify achievable steps towards change an
Resist the righting reflex: The righting reflex describes the common urge amongst community workers to fix what is wrong (with a person, situation, or animal). It involves giving unsolicited advice e.g. “you should…”, or advice without eliciting more about the person’s perspective. At its core, it is a helping response driven by a desire to be of service, promote positive change, and support others; however it is often unhelpful in situations where people are uncertain about changing. When we give in to the righting reflecting, we often inadvertently reinforce a person’s argument to maintain the status quo. This is because most people resist persuasion when they are uncertain about change, and instead respond by recalling their reasons for maintaining the behaviour. Community facilitator’s ability to suppress their initial righting reflex is essential enabling them to explore and evoke a person’s own motivations for change.
Guidance on Providing Advice and Feedback: Ask-Offer-Ask
It is important to always remember that community members have the most expertise in their lived experience, and that any engagement with them needs to be in the spirit of partnership (vs. acting like the expert or parent or in their lives). When providing information, advice or feedback to support others’ change process and avoid falling into the unhelpful righting reflex trap, it is recommended to use the Ask-Offer-Ask model as described below:
Before providing your advice, information or feedback to community members, first ASK what they already know or what do they want to know about? e.g. “You know your situation best, how are you managing this issue right now?”, What are your thoughts on…? “What you know about….?”, “What would you like to know about?”, “Is there any information I can help you with?”, “What might be helpful?”
Exploring prior knowledge and what community members are interested in knowing more about shows respect for community members as experts on themselves. Further, it avoids telling them what they already know, which can also save time. Asking about what they’re interested to know helps you find out what they most need and want to know. You can then use reflections to show you have listened to what they have said before moving on to offering your expertise.
Ask permission to offer your advice, only then OFFER your advice/information, suggestion e.g. “Would it be alright if we talked about…?”, “I have some ideas about…, would you be happy for me to share them?”, “Would you like to know about…?”
Consider the following when offering your expertise:
Offer your input in a neutral way, and avoid scolding, instructing, telling them what to do, giving long lectures, or saying things like “you should…”.
Prioritize what you offer: what does the person most want/need to know? Start with what they want to know. Even if you have information you want to share, but don’t lead with what you think is most important.
Be clear: avoid jargon and use everyday language
Offer small amounts of information/advice and then check how it is received, making sure to provide them with time to reflect.
Support their personal choice/ agency: Acknowledge people’s freedom to disagree or ignore your input. Giving them the choice not to take your advice provides them with freedom and autonomy, and they are in turn more likely to listen and take your advice. e.g. “You might disagree with this idea”, “…but, of course it’s up to you…”, “I don’t know whether this is relevant to your situation…”, “This may or may not interest you…”, “I wonder what you will think of this…?”
Asking permission shows respect and increases their willingness to hear your thoughts/advice/information/feedback. Collaboration and shared focus are key.
Once you have provided advice or information, ASK community members what they think about it and what it means to them by:
Using open questions e.g. “What do you think?”, “What does that mean to you?”, “What are your thoughts on this?”, “How does that sit with your knowledge of this?”
Use reflections to reflect back the reaction you observed in them
Allow them time to process and respond to the information.
Asking what community members think of your input respects them as experts on activating their change. It also will enable you to check their understanding, identify potential needs for further discussion, or enable you to adapt your engagement as needed to further support their change process.
To effectively provide advice and overcome our righting reflex requires skills in active listening and empathy. Refer to the facilitator resource Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change for guidance on active listening and empathy.
The Process for Facilitating Conversations about Change
In addition to having the right mind-set or spirit and communication skills to facilitate conversations about change, you also need to know how to go about it. The following section outlines the four processes or sequential steps to follow to facilitate conversations about change[57]. However, it should be noted, that while these processes are generally followed in the order shown, in the course of a conversation, the processes are not necessarily fixed and any stage might recur, or the steps might overlap and flow into each other.
Step 1 - Engage: during this step, the goal is to create a collaborative working relationship with community members based on mutual trust and respect. To do this, community members need to feel that they are comfortably and actively participating in the discussion.
During the engage process, focus on:
Understanding why community members want to work with you. What do they want?
Understanding how important community members’ goals for their animals’ welfare may be. What are their challenges and motivators for improving animal welfare issue(s)?
Being welcoming, empathetic, and understanding.
Establish and explore expectations around how community members think you can help.
Offering hope, and presenting a positive, honest picture of possible changes.
Consider the following questions to support your effectiveness in having conversations seeking to engage community members in a collaborative working relationship:
How comfortable is this person talking to me?
How supportive and helpful am I being?
Do I understand this person's perspective and concerns?
How comfortable do I feel in this conversation?
Does this feel like a collaborative interaction?
Step 2 - Focus: during this step, the goal is to build a conversation that is purposefully moving towards change. Ensure consistency between your ideas and those of community members in terms by finding one (or more) goals or outcomes that create a direction that you and community member(s) agree on. The following three elements can help bring about focus, and may influence one another:
Community members may have problems they are interested in discussing with you
The context can inform the topic of focus e.g. veterinary visit, welfare inspection
Your own expertise may similarly provide insights on potential topics of focus as while community members may have ideas of their own, others may become apparent to you in course of your discussion with them.
Consider the following questions to support your effectiveness in having conversations with community members to bring about focus in goals for working together:
Do I have different aspirations for change for this person?
What goals for change does this person really have?
Are we working together for a common purpose?
Does it feel like we are moving together, not in a different direction?
Do I have a clear sense of where we are going?
Step 3 - Evoke: the goal of this step is to elicit community members’ own motivation to change whereby they talk themselves into change. To do this requires learning to recognise and evoke change talk, and strengthen it when it occurs (refer to facilitator resources 3. Guidance on Listening for Change Talk, and 2c. Key Communication Skills for further guidance)
Examples of change-oriented questions related to level of importance or confidence that can help evoke change talk include, but are not limited to:
If you could magically change one thing right now by snapping your fingers, what would it be? How could you do it?
What have you achieved so far?
How important is it for you to….?
What are the down sides of how things are now?
If you choose to continue on without making a change, how do you think your life might look like this time next year?
How could you implement this change?
What’s the worst thing that could happen if you make this change?
What’s the best possible outcome?
Use the following tips to strengthen change talk once you hear it:
Consider the following questions to support your effectiveness in having conversations seeking to evoke community members’ own reasons for change:
Is my righting reflex being activated and causing me to be the one arguing for change?
Is their reluctance to change more about lack of confidence or that they don’t feel making a change is important?
What arguments for change am I hearing?
Am I directing the conversation too far or fast in a particular direction?
What are this person's own reasons for change?
Step 4 - Plan: the goal of conversations in this step is to have conversations about action, whilst carefully promoting community members’ autonomy and decision making. The planning step occurs when community members begin thinking and talking more about how they could change and when, and less about why and whether to change, for example, when community members:
Consider the following questions to support your effectiveness in having conversations with community members about planning for change:
What would be a reasonable next step towards change?
Am I remembering to evoke rather than prescribe a plan?
What would help this person move forward?
Am I offering needed information or advice with permission?
Am I retaining a sense of quiet curiosity about what will work best for the person?
Facilitating Conversations about Change with Groups instead of Individuals
The guidance outlined above applies when working with individuals or groups. However, when having conversations with groups of community members, applying MI’s spirit, principles process, and key communication skills (discussed in the facilitator resource Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Change) can be further tailored to support group discussions in the following ways:
Affirm peoples' efforts to come together
Giving people a chance to have a choice (listening to them)
Reflect change talk as people contribute back to the wider group to inspire more collective change talk
Ask permission to give information
Evoke Questions from the group
Draw upon their expertise and experiences
Acknowledge their choices/agency/autonomy
Summarize the group consensus
Support the group to prioritize options and choices
General Best Practices and Rules of Thumb
Key best practices and rules of thumb to remember about the spirit, principles, and process of facilitating conversations about change (MI) include:
Effective Way of Being(MI consistent - DO)
Infective Way of Being(MI inconsistent - AVOID)
I have some expertise, and community members are the experts of themselves.
I am the expert on how and why community members’ should change.
I find out what information community members want and need.
I collect information about problems.
I match information to client needs and strengths.
I rectify gaps in knowledge.
Community members can tell me what kind of information is helpful.
Frightening information can be helpful.
Advice that champions community members’ needs and autonomy can be helpful
I just need to tell them clearly what to do.
Avoid the following common pit-falls in facilitating conversations about change:
Assuming providing our expertise will fix community members’ problems by providing our expertise and assuming this will solve the problem.
Overestimating how much information and advice communities need.
Thinking that frightening information is helpful and will motivate people to change.
Facilitating conversations about change (MI) is about evoking peoples' own motivations for change rather than trying to instil it.
Have interest in, and make an effort to understand the internal perspective of community members with whom you engage.
The use of MI techniques outlined in this resource are done 'for' and 'with' people.
Actively prioritise community members’ needs and promote their well-being. Improving animal welfare should not come at the expense of community members’ needs or well-being but rather be aligned with them.
Value and trust in the inherent potential and worth of community members with whom you interact.
Seek to acknowledge the efforts and strengths of community members.
Honour and respect community members’ autonomy, and their right and capability to direct their own lives, learning, motivation and behaviour based on their understanding of their own situations.
This PLA tool can support identification of community priorities related to a variety of topics, and you are encouraged to adapt the tool as needed to address topics relevant to your project. Step-by-step guidance for conducting this activity has been adapted from another matrix ranking/scoring tool for the following three topics: a) Animal Related Issues, b) Animal Service Providers, c) Sources of Credit [48].
T9a: Matrix Ranking and Scoring of Animal Welfare Issues
This tool uses a matrix diagram to compare animal-related issues based on community-identified reasons/criteria[1]. Matrix scoring and ranking differs from pair-wise scoring and ranking because it scores and ranks issues based on criteria agreed by participants during the exercise, rather than identifying priorities in relation to each other. This exercise enables participants and facilitators to identify priorities and gain a better understanding of the reasons underlying community’s preferences and choices and how the decision-making process happens within the group.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To support animal owning communities in identifying their priority animal-related issues to address • To identification of determining factors informing animal owning communities identification of priority issues. • To understand differences in priority animal welfare issues and the criteria used to inform prioritization when activity conducted and results compared between different groups (owners/users/carers, men/women).
2 hours
Materials needed:
chart paper, pens/markers or chalk/coloured dust, stones, pebbles, local materials (leaves, seeds, etc.) Pictures if available.
Matrix ranking and scoring of animal-related issues
Matrix ranking and scoring can be used to identify and understand animal-related issues based on reasons/criteria agreed by participants. The tool can similarly be used with a greater focus on animal diseases specifically.
In the example below (Figure T9a), members of animal-owning households prioritized their working animal-related issues in terms of those felt to be most problematic, scoring each issues out of five and then ranking them. The group agreed to use frequency, severity/change of death, treatment cost, potential loss of work/income, challenging to treat to score and rank each issue. They agreed that 5 would be most serious/severe and 0 would be least serious/severe. The animal-related issue that had the highest cumulative score would be ranked as the number one priority, as it has the most severe consequences for the animal-owning households.
Figure T9a Matrix scoring and ranking of working animal-related issues
As a result of this exercise, participants identified lameness (19) as being the most significant issue, with colic (16) and hoof problems (16) were the second most important animal-related issues for the community. They decided to explore these issues further in their next session to understand the root causes.
Scoring and Ranking of Animal-related Issues
Step 1
Start by asking participants to prepare a list of animal-related issues. This could also be informed by previous discussions or tools. Alternatively, ask the group what animal-related issues can be or have been a problem in the past. It is important that the community come up with their own ideas and not be led by the facilitator. Ask the helper to draw a matrix and list the animal-related issues in the first column.
Step 2
Ask the group which issues are most problematic and note the reasons why. Once the first reason is identified, encourage the group to think about other reasons. Try to group similar reasons together, such as loss of work and loss of income (Figure 9a). Have the helper add the reasons/criteria along the top row of the matrix. If there are too many criteria, encourage participants prioritise the most important ones.
Once identified, assist participants in framing the criteria as either all positive or all negative, which will keep scoring consistent and prevent confusion. For example, criteria related to cost may be framed positively as affordable or negatively as costly. Using both positive and negatively framed criteria together (e.g. easy to address (+), costly (-) might confuse the ranking or scoring process, by mixing high scores with negative meaning and positive meaning. In T9a example, 5 = serious/severe/problematic, while 0 = non-serious/mild/non-problematic.
Step 3
Ask the group to score the animal-related issues listed in the first column against each of the criteria listed along the top row using up to five seeds or stones. Allow enough time for an in-depth discussion on the reasons for chosen scores and consensus reaching. Have the helper take notes for the reasons for choosing each score.
Step 4
Once completed, ask the group to total each row (issues) based on the scores. Then rank the issues with the highest ranking = 1, next highest =2, and so on.
Facilitate the group to draw conclusions from the exercise by asking:
• Which issue (row) had the highest and lowest scores? • Does everyone agree on the ranking? • What were the reasons for these scoring decisions (if not already identified)? • What is the significance of these scores to you? • Which issues are the highest priority to address and why?
If participants express an interest in addressing their priority issues, encourage them to analyse the root causes or major contributing factors to their priority issues as a next step.
Step 5
The matrix should be left with the community and prioritised issues added to a community action plan, which can be addressed later. Take a copy and add it to your project action tracker for future discussions and action planning
Facilitation Notes
Keep the group focused on the chosen topic, as this exercise has the potential to deviate from the original focus.
Consciously or unconsciously, there may be a tendency for facilitators to include their own criteria, rather than those of the community. Encourage participants to come up with their own criteria and avoid inserting your own ideas. Some criteria may seem strange. If participants consider it important, it needs to be respected and rationale understood.
Depending on the context, at the planning phase consider carrying out this activity separately between men and women or different groups of people (e.g. owners, users, carers) and compare the results. Differences in the roles people play in animals’ lives and/or how they depend on their animals to meet different needs can influence how people prioritize issues and make choices to act. Discuss any differences in their responses and reasons for those differences.
Encourage participants to explore the root causes of welfare issues or challenges prior to planning actions; this will promote the identification of more effective and sustainable solutions. This can be part of discussions at the end of the activity or see next steps for recommended follow-up activities to support root cause analysis.
Criteria should be either all positive or all negative: mixing positive and negative criteria can be confusing.
Explore the costs and benefits to people and animals of different solutions to prioritized issues, including preventative and treatment options, thereby helping to generate motivation to take action
Generate greater motivation to address non-prioritized issues by helping participants’ frame issues in terms of risks and opportunities
T9b: Matrix Ranking and Scoring of Animal Service Providers
This tool uses a matrix diagram to compare resource and service providers based on pre-determined criteria[1]. Matrix ranking and scoring differs from pair-wise ranking because it ranks or scores issues or items based on criteria agreed by participants during the exercise, rather than identifying priorities in relation to each other. This exercise enables participants and facilitators to identify priorities for animal-related resource and service providers and gain a better understanding of the reasons underlying community’s preferences and choices, and how the decision-making process happens within the group. Try to conduct this activity separately with owners, users and carers, including both men and women, or other relevant groups if they are likely to have different priorities.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify priority resource and service providers • To understand criteria animal-owning communities use to make choices in their use of resources and services • To compare differences in animal and resource service provider priorities and the underlying rationales informing choices between different groups (e.g. men and women, owners/users/carers).
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper and markers or using sticks, stones, straw, local resources
Matrix scoring of animal-related service providers
Service providers available in the locality are scored or ranked (see Figure T9b and T9c) against criteria participants identified as important to informing their use preferences. This exercise may be used to compare several providers of the same service (e.g. all the feed sellers) or may also be used to compare providers of different services (e.g. farrier vs agrovet vs community animal health worker etc.) Refer back to the results of T3 Venn diagram to understand the rationale for why participants rely on the animal resource and service providers. Consider using this activity to build upon the priorities identified in T8: Pairwise ranking of animal-related service and/or resource providers. However, the activity can be just as effective for prioritizing issues if used independently.
In the examples below, the services of five local animal health service providers were compared by participants within a community using a matrix scoring exercise.
Figure T9b Matrix scoring of preferences for local animal health service providers
Participants identified six criteria which they agreed were important to choosing a service provider: quality service, timely response, affordability, close proximity (distance), offers credit/repayment and friendliness/good relationship. They then scored each of the five service providers against each criteria using five seeds. Through a final discussion, participants decided to invite the prioritized health service provider to their next meeting to strengthen their relationships and negotiate a group rate for the service.
An example of the activity conducted using a ranking approach, rather than a scoring approach is also provided below for reference. The criteria are listed from top to bottom, with service providers listed from left to right. Participants were then asked to rank each service provider, against each of the criteria. The best service provider scored for the criteria was given a 1. Since there are five service providers, they would be ranked 1-5. In this example, some service providers were ranked equally and provided the same rank.
Figure T9c Matrix ranking of local animal health service providers
Matrix Ranking and Scoring of Animal-related Service Providers
Step 1
Ask participants to identify a list of resource or service providers commonly used. You may wish to refer to results from the T3 Venn diagram activity to help create the list of relevant animal-related resource and service providers for this discussion if available.
Step 2
Next, ask participants to discuss which resource or service providers they prefer to use over others, and ask what their reasons for this preference are. Have participants list all the criteria they identify as informing their preferences for difference service providers. The group can add as many criteria as possible they feel necessary, although if there are many criteria listed, encourage participants to sort out which are the most important ones.
Once identified, assist participants to reframe the criteria as needed to ensure they are either all positive or all negative. For example, a criterion related to cost may be framed positively as affordable, or negatively as costly. It is important that all criteria used either be all positive, or all negative, to ensure consistency in scoring and avoid confusion that can result when calculating final scores or ranking at the end of the activity.
Step 3
Matrix Scoring: For matrix scoring, draw a matrix on the ground with the service providers listed from top to bottom in the first column, and the criteria informing preferences for use across the top row from left to right. Then ask participants use up to ten seeds or stones to score each service provider against each criterion.
Matrix Ranking: For matrix ranking, rather than using seeds to score each service provider against each criterion, draw a matrix on the ground with the criteria listed from top to bottom in the first column, and the service providers for ranking across the top row from left to right. Ask the group to rank all the items based on the first criterion they have chosen. Then rank them all based on the second criterion and so on, until the full list of items has been compared against all the agreed criteria.
Allow enough time for in-depth discussion and analysis of the reasons for ranking or scoring and enough time to come to consensus.
Step 4
When the ranking or scoring is complete, facilitate the group to draw conclusions from the exercise by asking questions.
The following guiding questions may be useful for facilitating this discussion:
• Who scored/ranked highest and lowest? Why? • What is the significance of these scores to you? • Do those results reflect the service providers you must rely on now? If not, why not? • Are you satisfied that the providers you currently rely on are the best options for meeting the needs of you and your animal? • Are there any issues preventing you from increasing your reliance on the high scored/ranking service providers? What would you suggest would need to be different to enable you rely on these service providers? • How might you be able to better access or strengthen your relationship with these high scored/ranked service providers?
Step 5
Any identified priority issues or actions can be added to the community action plan for later discussion and action planning. The matrix should be left with the community. Take a copy and add any actions to take or follow up on to your project action tracker for future reference and planning.
Facilitation Notes
It is very important that the facilitator keep the group focused on the chosen topic, as this exercise has the potential to deviate from the original focus.
Consciously or unconsciously, there may be a tendency for facilitators to include their own criteria, rather than those of the community. Encourage participants to come up with their own criteria and avoid inserting your own ideas. Some criteria may seem strange. If participants consider it important, it needs to be respected and rationale understood.
Depending on the context, at the planning phase consider carrying out this activity separately between men and women or different groups of people (e.g. owners, users, carers) and compare the results. Differences in the roles people play in animals’ lives and/or how they depend on their animals to meet different needs can influence how people prioritize issues and make choices to act. Discuss any differences in their responses and reasons for those differences. If this activity is carried about by a single gender group (men’s or women’s group), information gathered from this activity can help inform your gender analysis and planning.
Encourage participants to explore the root causes of welfare issues or challenges prior to planning actions; this will promote the identification of more effective and sustainable solutions. This can be part of discussions at the end of the activity or see next steps for recommended follow-up activities to support root cause analysis.
Criteria should be either all positive or all negative: mixing positive and negative criteria can be confusing.
Facilitators must be clear about the specific topic being examined to keep the group focused.
Use understandings gained about what motivates animal owning communities to choose one resource or service provider over another to inform the design of projects and/or strategies.
T9c: Matrix Ranking and Scoring of Sources of Credit
This tool has been adapted from another matrix ranking/scoring tool to use a matrix diagram to compare sources of credit based on pre-determined criteria [48]. Matrix ranking and scoring differs from pair-wise ranking because it ranks or scores based on criteria agreed by participants during the exercise, rather than identifying priorities in relation to each other. This exercise enables participants and facilitators to identify priorities and gain a better understanding of the reasons underlying community’s preferences and choices for credit providers, and how the decision-making process happens. Try to conduct this activity separately with owners, users and carers, including both men and women, or other relevant groups if they are likely to have different priorities.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify animal owning communities preferences for sources of credit and the criteria important to determining their priorities • To generate motivation amongst animal owning communities members to form a community savings group to improve access and availability of financial resources to meet their household and animal needs • To compare differences in priorities for sources of credit and the underlying rationales informing different groups’ priorities (e.g. men and women, owners/users/carers)
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, pens/markers or chalk/coloured dust, stones, pebbles, local materials (leaves, seeds, etc.)
Specific Topics: Livelihoods, Group Formation / Strengthening
Matrix ranking and scoring of sources of credit
In this adaptation of the tool, different sources of credit can be analysed against agreed criteria that group members consider important to deciding which source of credit to use to borrow money. Rather than ranking across each criteria, this example ranked credit sources at the end, to allow participants to provide greater details they felt important to distinguishing between different sources of credit within the matrix itself. This exercise can also be used to motivate community members to form a self-help/savings group if one does not already exist.
T9d Scoring & ranking of different sources of credit
The credit source analysis was carried out with a self-help group in an animal-owning community. Upon completing the chart, the group revealed the following:
Two guarantors are required for credit eligibility from money lenders and banks, whereas only one guarantor is required co-operative societies.
Banks and co-operative societies require land as collateral to be eligible for loans, whereas money lenders do not require land - they accepting jewellery as collateral instead.
Individuals can access interest-free loans from relatives.
Money lenders have the highest interest rate (6%), but can provide loans very quickly.
Banks and co-operative societies have a lower interest rate (3-4%), but the application and approval process takes a long time.
Only loans from self-help groups offer a 1% return of interest, and also offer a relatively low rate of interest (2%) in comparison with money lenders, banks and cooperative societies, as well a quick turnaround for accessing money.
Borrowing credit from money lenders and/or relatives can be high risk/stressful, as they often come with unrealistic timelines and heavy pressure to return money quickly, and are much less forgiving if repayment is late.
Through this exercise, the group realised that the best source of credit would be from a self-help group. This prompted the group to decide to establish a self-help group to start saving money together, so they could begin lending money amongst members to help meet the needs of their animals and families. As a result of establishing a savings groups, group members were able to being quickly accessing low-interest loans with low stress, the only condition for accessing loans from the group was that they had to be an official group member in good standing in terms of meeting the established savings contribution requirements.
Analysis of sources of credit using ranking
Step 1
Start by asking participants to discuss the different sources of credit and what is needed to access those sources. You can initiate the discussion by asking whom they might owe money to now or who they have borrowed from in the past. Draw a matrix either on the ground or on chart paper and list the sources of credit in a column.
Step 2
Have the group discuss the reasons for choosing one source of credit over another. List the criteria considered when selecting a source of credit along the top row of the matrix.
Examples of selection criteria might include:
• Accessibility (ease of access) • Eligibility or collateral required • Interest rate charged • Interest rate returned (from contributions to a savings group) • Availability / timeliness of accessing loans • Loan repayment flexibility (instalments vs one lump sum) • Threat or stress associated paying back the loan
The group can add as many criteria as they feel are relevant. If there are many criteria listed, encourage participants to prioritise the most important ones.
Step 3
Have the group fill in the matrix criteria for each source of credit.
Once identified, assist participants in framing the criteria as either all positive or all negative, which will keep scoring consistent and prevent confusion. For example, criteria related to accessibility may be framed positively as ‘ease of accesses, or negatively as ‘difficult to accesses. Using both positive and negatively framed criteria together e.g. easy to access (+), difficult to access (-) might confuse the ranking or scoring process, by mixing high scores with negative meaning and positive meaning.
Step 4
Upon completion, ask the group to total each row based on the scores that they have assigned each criterion. If a self-help is identified as a credit option, consider ranking the sources of credit in addition to scoring. If a self-help group is not an option, it is not necessary to rank the sources of credit. In this case, it might be an appropriate time to introduce the option of a self-help group.
Then, have the group rank the scores if a self-help group was identified, with the number one (1) having the highest score, number two having the second (2) highest score and so on.
Step 5
Ask the group to draw conclusions from the exercise by asking:
• What are some reasons for needing credit? • Which sources of credit are used most often to meet your needs? Do you use any of these sources of credit to help you meet the needs of your animals as well e.g. to pay for health services, or purchase feed or equipment? If have self-help groups have not been identified as a source of credit, then consider these discussion questions: • Based on the criteria and the results of this exercise, are you satisfied that the sources of credit you currently rely on are the best options to meet your credit needs? • What are the benefits of starting or joining a group like for example self-help group or animal welfare group or saving and credit cooperatives?
Step 6
The matrix should be left with the community and opportunities to learn more about group formation and collective action activities added to a community action plan, which can be addressed later. Take a copy and add it to your project action tracker for future discussions and action planning.
Facilitation Notes
It is very important that the facilitator keep the group focused on the chosen topic, as this exercise has the potential to deviate from the original focus.
Consciously or unconsciously, there may be a tendency for facilitators to include their own criteria, rather than those of the community. Encourage participants to come up with their own criteria and avoid inserting your own ideas. Some criteria may seem strange. If participants consider it important, it needs to be respected and rationale understood.
Depending on the context, at the planning phase consider carrying out this activity separately between men and women or different groups of people (e.g. owners, users, carers) and compare the results. Differences in the roles people play in animals’ lives and/or how they depend on their animals to meet different needs can influence how people prioritize issues and make choices to act. Discuss any differences in their responses and reasons for those differences.
Encourage participants to explore the root causes of welfare issues or challenges prior to planning actions; this will promote the identification of more effective and sustainable solutions. This can be part of discussions at the end of the activity or see next steps for recommended follow-up activities to support root cause analysis.
Criteria should be either all positive or all negative: mixing positive and negative criteria can be confusing.
Facilitators must be clear about the specific topic being examined to keep the group focused.
Next Steps
This activity can be followed by T15 Cost-Benefit Analysis to explore the costs and benefits to people and animals of different solutions to credit sources, including alternative sources, thereby helping to generate motivation to take action.
Use understandings gained about what motivates animal owning communities to inform the design of projects and/or strategies.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Behaviour Change: Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communications; Community Change Agents
How community facilitators respond to community members’ resistance to change is a big determining factor in the outcome of their interactions with them, and the ability to help community members move toward behaviour change[113]. This resource outlines guidance for overcoming resistance to change you may encounter amongst community members.
What is Resistance?
Resistance is what happens when we expect or push for change when community members are not ready for that change. It often reflects conscious or unconscious defences against change. While the reasons community members are not ready to change in the way we desire may not be clear to us or to community members, they exist and ignoring them gets us nowhere.
Signs of resistance may include:
Community members may interrupt you.
Community members may seem distracted (looking at watch, phone, etc.).
Community members may get defensive.
Types of Resistance
The manifestations of resistance to change typically fall into two categories: sustain talk (a manifestation of ambivalence) and discord, and different strategies may need to be adopted depending on which of these manifestations you encounter. These two types of resistance and tips for dealing with are discussed below:
DISCORD: Discord refers to statements from community members about the intervention process or relationship to the community facilitator, particularly the direction in which community members perceive things are going [57]. This often feels like resistance but actually discord which is related to a lack of trust/respect/empathy/power sharing in the relationship, which can result in the break down in the relationship and sense of partnership. When people don’t believe we really value their opinions or experiences, and/or if they feel you are trying to tell them or force them to change or acting like an expert without understanding their life, they will either resist you, resent you, or both. As a result, they will become more motivated to defend their position. Examples of comments indicating there is discord: “You don’t understand.”, “You can’t help me.”
SUSTAIN TALK: Sustain talk represents the other side of a person's ambivalence about changing. It can be an expression of a community member’s desire for the way things are, feeling unable to change, having reasons for keeping things the same or needing to keep things the way they are.
Remember that every behaviour has a positive intention, it may not just be positive from your perspective. Thus, it is important to believe the best in others and ensure that you have a positive intention.
Avoid Arguments and Pushing Back
Respect the resistance and roll with it, don’t confront it directly and avoid arguing for change as thisusually causes community members to keep voicing sustain talk (the reasons not to change).[113], and can undermine interpersonal communication and relationships (e.g. refer to facilitator resource Essential Communication Skills for Promoting Behaviour Changefor information on ego states and transactional analysis).
Avoid the righting reflex:
Resist the urge to provide unsolicited advice or guidance and telling people what to do to improve their situation as this often times result in discord. Acknowledge that the righting reflex is present and ask yourself to override it.
Talk less and listen more using active listening skills (refer to facilitator resource: Essential Communication Skills for Facilitating Behaviour Change for additional guidance).
If someone hasn’t volunteered to be part of a conversation about change or doesn’t want to change or aren’t open to making suggestions, or if you see an immediate welfare issue you feel you need to mention you can still share your concerns in a spirit of partnership using the Ask-Offer-Ask model of providing feedback (refer to Guidance on Providing Advice and Feedback: Ask-Offer-Ask within the facilitator resource 4. Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change). For example: Don’t say you shouldn’t do this, you need to change etc., and instead use the ask-offer-ask model:
Ask - May I share my concerns about this issue/behaviour?
Offer - My concern is that this puts you/your animal at risk of…because
Ask – What do you think about my concerns?
Sometimes you may have to apologize or shift the conversation. for example, if you find people responding in a way indicating they may be feeling invalidated, resistant, or withdrawing as a result of your attempts to provide unsolicited advice, and you have the opportunity to catch it quickly in the moment, you can backtrack and say, “I’m sorry, I realize you didn’t ask for my opinion, what do you think about …” [113].
TIPS FOR DEALING WITH SUSTAIN TALK
Roll with Resistance: When you encounter community members who are resistant to change and expressing a lot of sustain talk, it is helpful to roll with this resistance rather than try to fight or debate it, as this can further cement their unwillingness to change [113, 57].
Evoke Change Talk: Focus on eliciting community members’ consideration of, motivation for, or commitment to change, also referred to as change talk(refer to facilitator resourceGuidance on Listening for Change Talkfor further guidance). You can do this by:
Reflect on the problem using summaries as a means to show empathy and make the person feel they are heard which will build rapport.
Actively listen for a person’s positive strengths, skills, values, efforts, accomplishments, aspirations and traits, and to reflect those back to them using affirmations to shift focus away from the negative and focus on positive characteristics or the person as a means to build rapport, motivate and inspire their own belief in self and the possibility for change.
If they say, “maybe I could do something” you can respond by asking whether it would be possible to discuss this next time you meet to give them more time to process.
Use a change scale/ruler (e.g. readiness for, confidence to, importance of change) and discuss what would move them up the scale.
Reflect back “a part of you is interested….what is it that makes you curious about or what would be helpful towards taking a step in the future?”
Ask what would be helpful for them
Emphasize Choice and Control [114, 57]: Embody the spirit of working in partnership with communities, by emphasizing the client's choice and control (autonomy) can help minimize resistance and move the conversation away from sustain talk. This means explicitly stating something along the lines of "It really is your choice what you will do about _______" or “Ultimately it is your choice, and I’m happy to work with you on this, perhaps we can talk about this next time we see each other?”
Shift Focus [114, 57]: when talking about an issue becomes counterproductive you can respond by shifting the conversation away from what seems to be a stumbling block to progress (shifting focus). This means changing the subject. An example of shifting focus might sound like "That doesn't seem like a problem to you right now. What are some of the things you're dealing with that you feel are a challenge?" The facilitator resource Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours provides guidance on how you can use the five domains of animal welfare framework linked with human behaviours to shift focus to identifying behaviours people can enact to improve their animal’s welfare when they are resistant or unable to adopt desired behaviours.
Develop Discrepancy[113]: change won’t occur without discrepancy. It allows the client to realize their current behaviour isn’t leading to their desired goal and to be more open to change.
Help community members define their most important goals for their animals’ welfare
Help community members see that their current behaviours don’t align with their ultimate goals that are important/valuable.
Help community members see the difference between their core values and their behaviour(s).
Create gap between where community members are and where they want to be.
Promote community members' belief in their ability to do what is needed to change.
Focus on past successes and skills and strengths community members have or can easily learn.
Promote self-esteem and build confidence.
TECHNIQUES FOR EVOKING CHANGE TALK [57, 112]:
Ask Evocative Questions: Ask an open question which you believe the person will respond to with change talk. The simplest and most direct way to elicit change talk is by asking a series of targeted questions from the following four categories:
Disadvantages of the status quo e.g. “What difficulties have resulted from not providing your animal with timely medical care? What worries you about your animals’ welfare?”
Advantages of change e.g. “What do you think life would be like, or what do you think would be different, for you and your animals if you did make a change and resolve this animal welfare issue?”, “What are the advantages of feeding your animal appropriate quality and quantities of feed?”
Optimism for change e.g. “When have you made a significant change in your animal’s welfare before? How did you do it?”, “What strengths do you have that would help you to improve your animal’s welfare?”
Intention to change e.g. “In what ways do you want your animals’ welfare to be different five years from now?”, “Forget about how you would achieve it for a moment, if you could do anything, what would you change about your animal’s welfare?”
Alternatively, if you are short on time, a quick method of drawing out ‘change talk’ is to use an ‘importance ruler’ (refer to change ruler below).
Use Change Rulers: Ask: “On a scale from 1 to 10, how important is it to you to change [the specific target behaviour] where 1 is not at all important, and a 10 is extremely important?” Follow up: “And why are you at [xxx] and not [a lower number than stated]?”. “What might happen that could move you from [xxx] to [a higher number]?” or “What would move you up the scale?” Alternatively, instead of importance, you could ask in terms of their confidence to make the change if they decided to do so, or their readiness to change e.g. on a scale of 0-10, with zero being I’m not ready to change, and 10 being ready to change.
If respondent gives you a zero, use reflections to reflect their sentiment back e.g. “at this time, you don’t feel like the right time to make this change YET.”
If respondent gives you a low number, use open ended question to ask them why they scored it 1 or 2 and not a zero as this can evoke more change talk about the part of them that is wanting to change.
If respondent provides a low number, an open ended question asking “what would it take to move that from a 5-7” can also get them thinking about strategies for how they could make this change, which can help boost their confidence in their ability to attempt change.
Explore Decisional Balance: Ask for the pros and cons of both changing and staying the same.
Good Things/Not-‐So-‐Good Things: Ask about the positives and negatives of the behaviour targeted for change.
Ask for Elaboration/Examples: When a change talk theme emerges, ask for more details. “In what ways?” “Tell me more?” “What does that look like?” “When was the last time that happened?”
Look Back: Ask about a time before the target behaviour emerged. How were things better, different?
Look Forward: Ask what may happen if things continue as they are (status quo). Try the miracle question: If you were 100% successful in making the changes you want, what would be different? How would you like your life to be five years from now?
Query Extremes: What are the worst things that might happen if you don’t make this change? What are the best things that might happen if you do make this change?
Explore Goals and Values: Ask about what their guiding values are, or refer back to previous conversations with the person where they provided an indication of their guiding values. What do they want in life? Using a values card sort activity can be helpful here. Ask how the continuation of target behaviour fits in with the person’s goals or values. Does it help realize an important goal or value, interfere with it, or is it irrelevant?
Come Alongside: Explicitly side with the negative (status quo) side of ambivalence. “Perhaps [xxx] is so important to you, that you won’t change no matter what the cost.”
This tool analyses the differences in control over resources and services important to promoting animal welfare amongst men and women from animal-owning households. Resources and services important to promoting animal welfare may include water, feed and/or grazing land, financial resources, equipment for working animals (e.g. harnesses, carts), grooming supplies, and services, such as animal health service providers. This tool is a great follow-up to T12 Dependency Analysis.
Internal control within the household refers to who is able to make the decision about provision of a resource and/or service, as well as their purchase and sale. This should not be confused with roles and responsibilities, which can be analyzed in T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To generate understanding of gender-based differences in control and their implications over resource and service provision important to promoting animal welfare. • To motivate participants to take action to address gender-based differences in control over resource and services. • May be used to evaluate changes in gender equality related to control over animal-related resources and services if repeated over the course of project.
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
Chalk, coloured dust, stick, stones, pebbles, cards or paper, pens, and any other locally available resources to represent service or resources.
An animal-owning community used this activity to explore differences in control over animal-related resources and services between men and women.
Figure T10a - Control Analysis - blank template
Figure T10b - Control Analysis - completed by a group of women
Figure T10c Control Analysis of differences between men and women
Following the chart’s creation, the group analyzed the gender-based differences in control of resources and services. They identified the opportunity to train women to feel empowered to treat basic illnesses and wounds. This was necessary as men frequently migrate for work, leaving women with little capacity or skills to treat animals in their absence.
Control Analysis
Planning Phase - Community Scale Planning
Step 1
Start by asking the group to think of all the resources and services they use to care for their animals and have the helper write them down. If T12 Dependency analysis was performed prior to this exercise, use the resources and services listed step 1 (this should be in the community action plan).
Step 2
Ask the community helper to draw a large table, either on the ground using a stick, coloured dust/chalk or on chart paper using markers. There should be three main columns: ‘Resources & services’, ‘control - men’ and ‘control – women’ (See figure T10a).
Please note: If there is an additional household member that also controls the provision of animal-related resources and services, such as a child, add another column under ‘control’.
Step 3
Ask the group to analyse the household control by asking the question: who makes the decision about provision of a resource or service?
Remember: internal control refers to seeking the service or making the decision about purchase and sale of resources.
For example: If men and women were equally able to make the decision about the service, without having to ask permission from the other, then the pebbles would be divided equally. The score would be men and women with 5 pebbles each. (See figure T10b).
Step 4
Ask participants to analyse the differences in control over resources and service provision between men and women. Ask the community helper to record the responses or note them yourself.
The following questions may be used to guide the discussion:
• Why are there differences in control over resources and services provision between men and women? • How can you improve animal welfare by changing decision making between men and women?
Step 5
After this discussion, ask participants what actions they can take towards making these changes. Help the group to qualify short-term (~3 months) versus long-term actions (more than a year). If there is a long list, have the group prioritise just one or two to focus on before the next meeting.
Summarize the results of the activity and have the community helper add any actions and activities to the community action plan. Agree on a date and time for the next session.
The chart should be left with the community. Make a copy or take a photograph for your reference for future discussions and further action planning. Add a copy to your project action tracker.
Repeat steps 1-3 (above) to assess the changes agreed by the community in step 4 within the community action plan, by comparing with the previous activity outputs (step 5).
Initiate a final discussion using the following questions as guidance:
• The reasons for changes (why they may or may not have occurred). • How changes have impacted on animal welfare and their own lives.
Comparing the past results to present situation can generate useful discussion about perceived improvements in animal welfare and related benefits to people’s livelihoods and well-being that have resulted from changes.
Facilitation Notes
An experienced facilitator should lead this discussion, as topics related to gender may be sensitive, require good rapport and ability to gauge the group’s level of comfort.
Decide the group dynamics ahead of time and whether it would be best carried out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on your rapport with the community, culture and local gender dynamics.
If conducted separately between men and women, consider bringing the two groups back together at the end of the activity to review the results of each chart and resolve any discrepancies if time allows.
Next Steps
Record the community’s short and long-term actions and linked activities in your project action tracker. Revisit the activities in the next meeting to monitor their progress and what further support is required.
T12 Dependency Analysis to understand the community’s dependencies on external actors and potential implications for resource and service provision important to promoting animal welfare.
The table below provides a summary of general guidance for community facilitators to support working with community members to progress through the different stages of change. It includes definitions of each stage of change with examples in the context of animal welfare, along with the process for community facilitators to focus on when individuals are in each stage, as well as recommended tools and techniques helpful to harnessing people’s own motivations and rationales for change, and building their confidence and commitment to take action and sustain change.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Change: Stages of Change, Pre-contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage, Preparation Stage, Action Stage, Maintenance Stage
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communication, Community Change Agents
Stage of Change
Processes for Change / What to Focus On
Recommended Tools / Techniques to Use in Each Stage of Change
Pre-contemplation:
Individuals do not recognize the need for change or are not actively considering change.
Consequences/cons of change are felt to outweigh the benefits/positives.
For example, a person doesn’t think it is a problem if they do not provide their animals with access to water to drink throughout the day.
• Build Rapport – show respect and empathy by recognizing individuals’ expertise in their own lives/situations, their intentions for acting informed by their expertise and lived experiences, support their autonomy in decision making rather imposing your expertise.
• Evoke individuals’ reasons for change by connecting behaviour change to the things the individual cares about.
• Elicit change talk/their rationales for change by bringing their attention to their rationales for change and minimize attention and discussion focused on exploring rationales for sustaining their current practices.
• Consciousness Raising: Support individuals to seek out new information to gain understanding and feedback about the problem behaviour to help improve their awareness of the problem (e.g. facts, leaflets). You may wish to consider undertaking a Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach as a first step.
• Dramatic relief: Support individuals experience and express feelings about the problem behaviour and potential solutions, encourage self-evaluative process that enables individuals to assess/understand the negative impacts of the current behaviour and potential benefits of change.
• Environmental Re-evaluation: help raise doubt and increase the person’s perception of the risks and problems with their current behaviour e.g. guided discussions with others, testimonies, storytelling that promote learning and reflection about how their actions affect their animals/themselves/others.
If individuals continue not to recognize or accept there is a problem, focus on continuing to build rapport through active listening, asking open ended questions, using reflections and summaries about what they community and show empathy so they feel understood. Ensure they understand change is ultimately up to them and not being pushed on them. Consider asking to schedule a time when the discussion can be revisited, perhaps after they take time to reflect or seek out additional information.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:
Use OARS to elicit change talk, build rapport, show empathy, and:
• Open ended questions to invite individuals to tell their story in their own words, and provides an opportunity to learn more about what the person cares about e.g. their values and goals.
• Affirmations: Can take the form of compliments or statements of appreciation and understanding that recognize a person’s strengths and acknowledge behaviours / qualities / characteristics that encourage the direction of desired positive change, helps build rapport and their confidence in their ability to change.
• Reflective listening: Involves rephrasing a statement to capture the implicit meaning and feeling of a person’s statement, encourages and helps people understand their motivations more, and helps amplify or reinforce individuals desire for change.
• Summarize what you have heard individuals, highlighting in particular any recognition of the problem, their concerns about the issue, their intent to change, or their optimism about their ability or outcome of making change.
Provide Feedback using Ask – Offer – Ask approach:
• Ask permission to discuss behaviour to show respect, Ask what they already know before offering feedback / advice / information about the issue, Ask permission to offer information they may not know.
• Offer information or feedback if granted to permission to do so.
• Ask them to reflect on the feedback/information you have provided.
Individuals recognize the problem related to their behaviour and are considering change.
They are weighing the pros and cons of change but are ambivalent and/or uncertain, and may feel the negatives of change still outweigh the positives.
For example, a person doesn’t take preventative measures against animal disease despite being concerned about the health risks diseases pose.
• Guide their internal motivation by continuing to elicit change talk / their rationales for change to strengthen their commitment to change.
• Self re-evaluation/Re-evaluating self-image: work to facilitate changing their beliefs and attitudes by (Davis Jr. 2010): - helping them recognise the difference between their values and behaviour/creating cognitive dissonance, - values clarification activities or discussions, - contact and discussions with role models, - guided imagery (where people imagine themselves in the new situation [e.g., animal experiences good welfare and they feel good about practicing desired behaviour]
• Support individuals to choose change through weighing up the pros and cons of change to resolve their ambivalence/tip the balance between the pros and cons by: - exploring ambivalence and alternatives, - identifying reasons for change/risks of not changing, - increasing the persons confidence in their ability to change.
Highlight/promote awareness of success stories/those who have made and sustained similar change to encourage others to follow their example and improve their confidence in their ability to change.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:
Strengthen commitment to change through use of OARS (see above):
• Elicit change talk by asking open-ended questions related to: disadvantages of the status quo advantages of change optimism for change their intention to change.
• Use reflections to amplify or reinforce individuals desire for change.
• Use affirmations to help build individuals confidence in their ability to change.
• Use summaries to point out discrepancies between the person’s current situation and future goals.
Individuals are motivated to change their behaviour/see the benefits of change, and are intent upon taking action.
They believe the positives/benefits of change outweigh the costs, however are considering what to do.
For example, a person is convinced of the benefits of addressing a particular welfare issue, but lack the understanding of what to do about it.
• Goal Setting - support individuals to identify a specific target for change / goal.
• Making a commitment to change.
• Support them to explore options for making the change and select appropriate strategies for taking action e.g. identify time to act, who/what will help.
• Recognize/reiterate individuals’ choice and control over any decisions or change they make.
• Develop a realistic plan for taking action.
• Discuss potential problems/challenges and solutions to help reduce their perceived/real barriers that may make the behaviour more difficult to adopt e.g. how to acquire the necessary knowledge or skills, or ideas for reducing costs.
• Create social conditions to support individuals in making the change as needed (Davis Jr. 2010): - work to change community norms to favour change - draw attention to those who have made a change - organize events or create opportunities for individuals to make their commitment to change publicly or in front of others for greater accountability
Recommended Tools/Techniques:
• Continue elicit change talk to strengthen individuals commitment to change. • Write down individuals goals for change and change plan.
Individuals have initiated change and start practicing the new behaviour, experiencing its benefits as well as costs, such as time, effort, money, opinions of They are taking steps towards change, however haven’t fully stabilized in the process.
For example, a person has begun sheltering their animals at night, however may find that this now requires extra effort to regularly keep it clean.
• Support individuals to implement action plans and take steps toward change based on the plan they developed and revise as needed.
• Work to
• Recognize/reward successes: provide encouragement and feedback on positive steps taken towards desired behaviours, praise and recognize individuals efforts.
• Support individuals to overcome challenges e.g. skill building, assisting with solving problems, identifying and removing/avoiding problem behaviour triggers.
• Consider mechanisms for supporting accountability to help maintain individuals motivation and commitment e.g. self-monitoring, public sharing of achievements/proud moments, give praise and recognition of efforts, facilitate peer-peer support networks.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:
Affirmations can be used to recognize individuals’ strengths and efforts in taking action to change.
Individuals are practicing the new behaviour and making necessary adjustments to sustain the change. The benefits or positives of change are clearly outweigh the costs/negatives. new behaviour is sustained for at least 6 months.
For example, despite efforts to require to learn how to train their animals using positive reinforcement rather than harmful punishments, a person continued guiding their horses without whipping for at least 6 months.
Ensure preconditions for sustainability of change.
Support individuals to develop processes and skills for maintaining change.
Support individuals to identify and use strategies to prevent return to prior behaviour.
Continue to promote individuals’ motivation and confidence in abilities to sustain change through:
• Regular discussions and reflection, and sharing of success stories by those who have made and sustained change, and recognize people’s efforts to change and encourage others to follow their example.
• Continue positive reinforcement and establish mechanisms of rewards and recognition for maintaining behaviours e.g. acknowledge individuals efforts, commitment, and achievements, encourage individuals to be role models for others, public sharing of their successes, continued self-monitoring and reflection on their positive efforts and achievements, as well as benefits of change.
• Encouraged utilization of support systems e.g. peer support networks, linkages with local organizations/extension agents etc.
Establish accountability mechanisms that encourage individuals to sustain change e.g. self-monitoring and sharing of results, peer-peer support and sharing of progress.
Recommended Tools/Techniques:
Affirmations can be used to recognize individuals’ strengths and efforts in maintaining change.
Effective outreach messaging is key to delivering sustainable changes to improve animal welfare. This resource will outline how to develop your messaging strategy; the psychological and societal drivers to consider that will influence the content and design of the messaging; and how to design and deliver messaging in the most effective way to be heard, accepted, and ultimately change behaviour. Follow the steps outlined in the Community Development, Community Engagement, and Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approaches to gather the information you need to generate a greater understanding of your target audience, including barriers that might prevent behaviour change, and what messaging and communication mediums may work best for the specific audience you aim to target.
Stages of Change: Pre-Contemplation Stage, Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training
Specific Topics: Outreach and Communication,Community Change Agents
ATTENTION!
Communication is a two-way process; it is as important to listen as it is to speak. Listen to feedback given by your target audience, ask for their guidance and then actively listen to their response, and avoid imposing your own ideas without giving full credence to theirs. Your target audience will teach you about their community, so listen and observe carefully.
1.1 Developing your messaging strategy
No community is homogenous, so it is critical to consider the following as you develop ideas (adapted from [32]):
Who do you want to communicate with?
Are there potential supporters or barriers to communication? You need to ascertain who the allies and gatekeepers are to the information you want to communicate i.e. those who may support or regulate the way messaging can be designed and disseminated? You will need to need to anticipate reactions when developing/framing the messages so ensure you work with these allies and gatekeepers to facilitate the effectiveness of the communication.
Do you need to tailor messages for different target audiences? Are you trying to change the behaviour of animal owners, or perhaps people who offer resource provision for animal owners, or those at a higher level of leadership within a community?
Why should your message matter to your audience?
What are the differences within your target audience you need to consider, such as values, social norms, beliefs, religions, traditions, power dynamics and varied experiences because of intersecting issues in their lives?
Does everyone in your target audience have a similar capacity and motivation for change? For example, are there differences in literacy levels, knowledge, and access to resources or wide socio-economic divides? Does everyone have the same need or want to change?
What is the main overarching narrative any messaging needs to convey?
What are your communication goals? Key messages need to support these goals. Try to keep specific goals to only one or two; distribution of resources over too many goals will dilute messaging and reduce the likelihood of behaviour change.
What are your messaging needs - are they needed to support a long term or short-term subject?
How does your messaging create a sustainable vision for the future – do you know what that might look like?
How widely do you want to disseminate information? (this may also depend on your organisation’s targets, which will influence how accessible it needs to be to a wider audience) A small, more personalised approach can be more effective but is more resource heavy, than a larger scale approach, which is less resource intensive, reaches a greater audience but may cause less degree of change [88].
How do the audience share information between themselves, and how do they most readily receive information?
Your message is the core information you wish to communicate, through whichever media you have decided will be most effective within your target audience (refer to Societal and Campaigns Approach for more information about types of communication media). Your messaging needs to persuade people that they need to change, though of course behaviour change is not as simple as telling someone they need to change. People need to be supported and given opportunities to explore the problems and generate ideas for possible solutions - giving them ownership of the changes they need to create ( [89]). Bear in mind you will never attain 100% uptake of any behaviour change target, people are individuals with differing priorities and pressures.
1.2 Psychological and societal drivers your messaging strategy needs to consider
Behaviour is incredibly complex so effective messaging to create sustainable behaviour change needs to consider how all the following drivers’ interplay and influence each other, for example, knowledge can influence attitudes but then changing attitudes can lead to a person seeking out more knowledge; internal and external drivers can be interdependent [90]. Also refer to the facilitator resource 2. Essential communication skills for promoting behaviour change.
1.2.1 Internal and External Drivers
Internal and external drivers must be considered when designing messaging for human behaviour change. The following section outlines different internal and external drivers influencing people’s behaviours.
Social norms are the informal rules and understandings everyone abides by [91] and are an important driver in behaviour change; what people see others doing may be more likely to encourage them to adopt the behaviour [90]. However, social norms can also create barriers to positive behaviours by the persistence of negative behaviours that are perceived as acceptable within that community [91]. Social norms as drivers of behaviour make perfect sense; if we see others performing a behaviour, we can see that it works, and we can also observe the method. People are drawn towards those who behave the same way and avoid those who deviate (generally!). Using messaging that harnesses social and descriptive norms may increase the effectiveness of the information you are trying to convey, particularly when the information is included as part of guided group discussion [90]. For example, highlighting how a target behaviour has benefitted or been adopted by a proportion of people already within their community, is more likely to influence uptake, than communicating about social responsibility towards animal welfare improvement. Be careful when developing messaging, as highlighting the frequency people engage in undesirable behaviours can also increase the likelihood of other people adopting these behaviours for the same reasons as previously mentioned. People are highly social, so if they believe an undesirable behaviour is common within their community your message could have the opposite impact to the one you are expecting [90, 89].
Introducing this concept in your messaging is important to overcome barriers such as those mentioned previously, in the maintenance of negative behaviours due to social norms. Introducing shared values, a value-based approach, or thinking about the values needed to grow within the community to move towards positive behaviour change, can create useful dialogue about the similarities we share with the audience and enables diverging behaviour to be reframed within a more acceptable vision [91]. Values determine a person’s willingness to change, their openness to new information and their concern for ‘others’. Although changing people’s values is incredibly difficult, targeting these values when developing messaging can be a very effective method to encourage behaviour change [90].
Attitudes are strong predictors of behaviour when “based on personal experience, specific to the behaviour, and salient”. The most effective messaging considers the credibility of its source (your key influencers), the format your messaging takes and its content. Make messaging applicable and salient for your target audience, something the audience can believe is replicable and beneficial to them in their current environment [90].
In addition, an individual’s beliefs will influence their interpretation and processing of messaging; beliefs are an individual’s assertion that something exists or is true developed from their direct personal exposure to information. People are more likely to accept messaging that is framed in a way that is consistent with their beliefs; if messaging does not challenge their world view, they are less likely to reject it. When people are exposed to messaging that is inconsistent with their beliefs, they are likely to show resistance to the new information and more firmly fix onto their original view; this also has implications when developing messaging as people will most strongly believe the first messaging that is delivered so ensuring it is accurate is essential. Be aware of your own beliefs when developing messaging, incorrect assumptions may cause offence and alienate your audience.
Personal norms will play a part in how willing someone is to take responsibility and change their behaviour. It is difficult to increase someone’s sense of personal responsibility but asking for a level of commitment through your communications can increase the likelihood a person will try to act. This is even more effective when people verbalise or write their commitments publicly rather than in private, but these commitments should always be a voluntary action [90]. When an agreed commitment is written and displayed publicly within a community, those who have joined in with the agreement will have a greater feeling that the behaviour change is being internally driven by their own choices. For behaviour change to be truly sustainable, a person needs to be able to attribute that change to themselves, rather than some external forces. However, there will be differences on how much value is placed on individuals expressing their own individual behaviour, depending on whether communities have interdependent or independent cultures [90].
Emotions are a useful route to encourage sustainable behaviour [90]. Increasing empathy, such as encouraging your target audience to ‘imagine how an animal feels’ or by appreciating some elements of shared experiences with their animals, may promote willingness to try methods of husbandry that are known to be more humane.
Self efficacy or a person’s belief in their ability to perform an action, increases motivation to perform a behaviour [90]. Some members of your target audience, such as those more marginalised or discriminated against, may have less confidence in their ability to create change or make a difference [92, 93]. Using messaging that increases knowledge about the behavioural options available to improve animal welfare, particularly when broken down into smaller manageable steps with regular positive feedback, can support peoples’ perceptions of their ability to change their practices [90]. Messaging may need to be developed that helps support the challenging or broadening of perceptions within the wider public e.g. promoting women as key decision makers in seeking services when this is not typical within their community or how an individual woman perceives themselves.
Encouraging the collaboration of groups of individuals, either as formed memberships or peer to peer, can increase the effectiveness of messaging. Groups of individuals working together may provide a link between individual action attempts and a wider societal reach; working together provides social support and encourages sustaining behaviour change to form habitual patterns. Social capital or the shared bonds, reciprocity and trust encouraged by working together increases obligations and cooperation and is a useful concept to embrace. However, it will not work in isolation if a community does not have the capacity for change (such as a lack of resources, knowledge, power and so on) but embedding messages within social groups is known to increase their effectiveness. Ensuring messaging and communications are participatory in their development increases the chances the behaviour change will be adopted by heightening the sense of group or social identity and empowerment within the target audience [90].
Correct framing will influence how well received and understood your messaging is, and ultimately influence whether people are likely to change their behaviour and/ or attitudes. Incorrectly framed messages may move people into cognitive dissonance and denial, creating a barrier towards any further change [94]; but harnessing dissonance may also motivate behaviour change in a direction more consistent with a person’s attitudes and as the behaviour changes the attitude may change to be more consistent with the behaviour [90].
1.3 How to design and deliver effective messages
Messaging as a journey (adapted from [124])
To provide a good, solid foundation, messaging needs to capture attention and be relevant to your audience:
Where possible, use media or communications that utilise all the senses – people learn and remember in different ways so try to capture the imagination of as many of your audience as possible. Embed messages within the physical environment your target audience frequent and the media sources they tend to utilise [125].
Applicable
Applicable: to real life - tangible, believable, achievable
Make the idea you are trying to convey tangible to that audience – if a concept is tricky to understand make it clearer by relating it to something where they do have experience.
Personalised
Personalised: to your target audience – beliefs, social norms, attitudes etc.,
Use images as close to the target audiences’ experience as possible – it needs to be believable, and people need to feel they too could achieve what is being shown. Use local landmarks, recognisable clothing, types of building, and so on.
(Adapted from [32])
1.3.1 Development of messaging
An effective communication strategy must include well-conceived content, but the delivery, dissemination and execution of the information is key to drawing the audience in whilst also motivating and empowering them to change [97].
Keep messaging simple, avoid jargon or the use of unfamiliar terminology as this will turn a receptive audience into an ambivalent one very quickly.
Use audience guidance to develop messages
Target audiences may adhere to very different values and behaviours in terms of communication styles. Develop relationships and be creative, respect, listen and respond to these differences. It is important to generate messaging that is meaningful to your audience and allow them to be instrumental in supporting that process of change. Prescriptive communications and provision of solutions can create reliance and disempower your audience, and this process can encourage psychological reactance, which creates barriers to change [91, 98]. See Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach for the practical ways to encourage target audience discussion.
Frame your message
Evaluation of ways that make the behaviour easy or difficult, and whether solutions are simple or require more involved interventions, all impact how messaging is framed and how it will be received. People cannot change their behaviour if the resource required to support that change is not available within their environment or is inaccessible due to its cost or complexity of use [90]. Most messages highlight positive outcomes but sometimes highlighting the losses that may be incurred if a behaviour change is not adopted can be more effective. Emphasising the local and immediate impacts of the issue can encourage your audience to relate to the issue and increase effectiveness of communications [32, 97].
Debunking
Correcting misinformation or myths can backfire, so it is recommended to avoid using this technique in your messaging. Mentioning misinformation can serve to increase familiarity and reinforce the maintenance or adoption of negative undesirable behaviours. If you have no option and this technique must be used, any misinformation debunking should always follow clear evidence containing the correct information [97].
Make messaging specific
Describe actions clearly, in easy steps to improve clarity and comprehension and increase a person’s self-efficacy (see section 1.2.1).
Avoid fear based, threatening or authoritarian/ prescriptive messaging
People react to these types of messages with either problem-focused coping or emotion-focused coping, and responses are heavily reliant on the degree of self-efficacy (see section 1.2.1) and the control people have of their situation. Reactions are likely to lead to avoidance, particularly when dealing with marginalised communities, so this method of messaging should be avoided [32].
Encourage commitment
By getting people to sign up to the project, perhaps those who have signed up or pledged to work at targeted changes get some visible marker that they have joined – such as a badge or other signal that increases the chance of them sticking to the project (people do not like to be inconsistent), which can then encourage peers to want to sign up. Refer to personal norms and social norms in section 1.2.1. for more information. Public commitment to change tends to be effective at sustained behaviour change by transferring motivation from an external source (pleasing others) to an internal one (self-fulfilment) [90, 89].
Provide goals
Encouraging the target audience either individually or together to work towards certain target behaviours can increase the perception of social norms (see section 1.2.1.) and encourage peer-to peer pressure to engage in them.
Make messages memorable
Develop specific prompts to help people remember the behaviour changes when you are clear which behaviour you are targeting, these prompts can also be linked to parts of an established routine to increase the chances of habit formation [91]. If there are barriers to people adopting some behaviours, for instance being unsure about how to treat certain wounds, you could create a card that your audience can use that takes them through the steps (either visually or written depending on literacy) or create a vivid reminder to water their animals that they can attach to somewhere prominent [32, 89].
1.3.2 Delivery of messages
Use a credible source
Pick your spokesperson/s carefully; trust and rapport is an important element of behaviour change [97]. To disseminate some of your messaging you may want to use existing social networks and so enlisting people considered influential within their community is key – refer to Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach for guidance on how to identify these key influencers. Do not immediately assume the key influencers to be the official leaders within a community. Do your research; key influencers are those who the target audience look up to as valuable sources of credible information and are also those who encounter the greatest number of people [90]. Avoid the use of groups or channels that could increase social divisions, such as strongly political or those from a very different socio-economic background [90].
Avoid solely providing information
This is known to be less effective at promoting behaviour change, although knowledge does matter. Giving people information to enable them to understand their behavioural options and the impact of these options on welfare is important, particularly at low levels of knowledge [90].
Narratives
The use of narratives with compelling storylines and characters that relate to the target audiences’ beliefs and values can emotionally engage audiences and motivate change with greater effectiveness than arguments and information [97].
Behaviour change is dynamic
Not all information will be relevant or most effective at the same time or in the same way [96] – adapt your messaging, accordingly, listen to feedback and for change talk, different messaging will work effectively depending on the Stage of Change of your target audience.
Showcase
Use early adopters of the targeted behaviour change to showcase the benefits in your messaging. Showcasing examples from early adopters serves two purposes, it not only shows the target audience that behaviour change is achievable, which creates social norms and overcomes barriers, but also it increases the commitment the adopter has and in doing so increases the chance the behaviour change will be sustained [89]. These early adopters could also assist by disseminating messaging; encouraging peer to peer or community contact is a major influence on adoption of behaviour changes via social diffusion [32].
Feedback
Effective messaging involves receiving feedback from your target audience, which can help guide and adapt your messaging to make it more effective, but you also have a responsibility to feedback to your target audience. Where target behaviours have been adopted feeding back to your community about, for instance, how many people have reduced the wounds in their animals, or have adopted free access to water provision, can serve to increase the likelihood of the behaviour change being sustained in the longer term.
This tool analyses the household’s dependency on internal actors e.g., household or community, and external actors for resources and services, such as water, feed and/or grazing land, shelter, financial resources, equipment for working animals (e.g., harnesses, carts), grooming supplies, and services, such as animal health service providers. This exercise may also be adapted to assess dependency in contexts where key stakeholders are comprised of only a single group (e.g., women only).
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To increase community awareness of their dependencies on external resources and service provision actors and potential implications for promoting animal welfare. • To motivate participants to take action to reduce unnecessary dependency on external actors and improve their self-sufficiency. Activity discussions can motivate collective action and group formation. • To identify project support required to support animal-owning communities in reducing their dependency on external actors. • To monitor changes in reduced dependency on external actors and improvements in self-reliance, which can serve as a proxy indicator of improved resilience/reducing community vulnerability to vulnerable
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
Chalk, coloured dust, stick, stones, pebbles, cards or paper, pens and any other locally available resources to represent service or resources.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Opportunity, Motivation
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Monitoring and Evaluation
Specific Topics: Animal Health and Services, Vulnerability / Resilience, Group Formation / Strengthening
Dependency Analysis
An animal-owning community used this activity to explore their dependency on external actors.
Figure T12a Dependency analysis – blank template
Figure T12b Dependency analysis produced by an animal-owning community
The group identified twelve resource and service providers on whom they felt they had an external dependency. After scoring their level of dependency, they discussed the reasons for the dependencies:
Figure T12c Dependency analysis – reasons for external dependencies and challenges
The group identified opportunities for action to improve animal welfare:
The community requested support to learn how to make first aid kits for their animals, so they could stock basic medicines for treatment in their own village.
Women decided to use their collective savings from their self-help group to purchase a grinder to begin making their own grain and thereby decreasing their cost of animal feed.
Through these actions, the group was able to reduce their vulnerability and improve their self-sufficiency.
Dependency Analysis
Planning phase – Community action planning
Step 1
Start by asking the group to think of all the resources and services they use to care for their animals and have the helper write them down.
Step 2
Ask the community helper to draw a large table, either on the ground or on chart paper. There should be three main columns: ‘Resources & services’, ‘external dependency’ and ‘household/internal’ (See figure T12a).
Step 3
Start analysing external dependency versus household/internal control, by asking the question: do you depend on an outside source to be able to provide this resource or service to your animal? Provide examples as necessary, such as shopkeepers to buy equipment and materials, feed/fodder sellers to buy feed/fodder, farriers to trim hooves. Have the group score the listed resources and services using seeds or pebbles out of a total score of 10.
Please note: If a household needed veterinary treatment for an injured animal, the external control might be scored as 6/10, as they are dependent on the veterinarian to provide treatment. If they do not rely on anyone externally (e.g. they produce all the feed & fodder themselves), the external score is 0 and the household/internal score is 10.
Step 4
Ask participants to analyse their dependency on external actors based on the chart they have produced. Ask the community helper to record the responses or note them yourself. The following questions may be used to guide the discussion:
• Why do you depend on external actors for certain resources or services? (If not already identified through the exercise) - If externally dependent actors have not already been identified through discussions, ask participants to identify them. • How can you improve animal welfare by reducing your dependency on external actors? • Are there collective actions that the community could take to reduce external dependency?
Step 5
After this discussion, ask participants what actions they can take towards making these changes. Help the group to qualify short-term (~3 months) versus long-term actions (more than a year). If there is a long list of issues and associated actions, have the group prioritise just one or two to focus on before the next meeting.
Have the helper record the actions and linked activities in the community action plan. Make sure to include who will monitor it and a realistic timeline. Support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
Implementation phase - Participatory monitoring
Step 6
Repeat steps 1-3 (above) to assess the changes agreed by the community in step 4 within the community action plan, by comparing with the previous activity outputs (step 5).
Initiate a final discussion using the following questions as guidance:
• Why have changes occurred or not? What are the reasons for changes? • How have changes impacted on animal welfare and their own lives?
Comparing the past results to present situation can generate useful discussion about perceived improvements in animal welfare and related benefits to people’s livelihoods and well-being that have resulted from changes.
Facilitation Notes
Decide the group dynamics ahead of time and whether it would be best carried out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on your rapport with the community, culture and local gender dynamics.
If conducted separately between men and women, consider bringing the two groups back together at the end of the activity to review the results of each chart and resolve any discrepancies if time allows.
An in-depth analysis of dependency on external actors (step 4) can take considerable time, so discuss this in advance with the group in preparation.
Next Steps
Record the community’s short and long-term actions and related activities to your project action tracker. Revisit the activities in the next meeting to monitor their progress and what further support is required.
T10 Gender Control Analysisis a useful tool for exploring the differences in internal control (within the household) between men and women.
T13 Income, Expenditure and Credit Analysis is a useful follow-up tool for analyzing dependency on external actors for financial resources and motivating participants to take collective action to reduce expenditures or increase access to savings and credit through the formation of self-help groups.
This checklist reflects the key skills and observable behaviours for effectively facilitating community participation and empowerment. While these skills may not all be observed or needed for all activities or contexts in which communities’ are engaged, they represent the core competencies desirable in community facilitators. By harnessing these skills, community facilitators can enable community participants to freely express their opinions, ideas, and concerns, feel valued and respected, and help foster their sense of self-efficacy and ownership over change. This resource can be used as a self or peer assessment tool to help identify capacity strengthening needs and areas of improvement, inform training delivery, and support effective delivery of community development or engagement projects.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Project Support: Facilitator Resources, Training
Community Facilitation Skills Checklist
Did the facilitator come prepared to ensure activity/discussion ran smoothly and didn’t waste unnecessary time of participants? e.g. appropriate materials, understanding of the activity
Did the facilitator sit/position themselves same level with participants?
Did the facilitator explain the purpose of the discussion/activity before it started, and give an indication of how long it would last?
Did the facilitator ask if participants had any questions before the session/exercise began?
Did the facilitator their unsolicited opinions/information/answers rather than facilitate participants to discuss, reflect, learn, and identify their own ideas?
Did the facilitator use open ended questions to help participants reflect and identify key learnings for themselves?
Did the facilitator prevent domination of the activity/discussion by one or a few people, and encourage participation/input from others?
Did the facilitator encourage equal participation from men and women and/or people who are marginalized or vulnerable?
Did the facilitator encourage even shy/timid participants to speak/participate?
Did the facilitator summarize the discussion and key learnings at the end?
Did the facilitator ask participants for feedback on their experience of the discussion/activity at the end? This is important to understand the perspective of participants and whether they felt time spent was valuable to them, to enable them to make any improvements in the future.
Did the facilitator make plans for follow up with the participants and/or ensure clear understanding of next steps?
Did the facilitator record the outcome/result of the activity to ensure the community has a copy, and relevant information could be used to inform project planning?
Was the facilitator engaging and respectful from the beginning to end of the visit?
For effective facilitation, the community facilitator must process the following skills: -
Actively listen: Listening is the bedrock of good facilitation skills. Effective listening before and during a session/meeting is necessary to create a tailored and relevant learning process.
Ask questions: Ask questions often during the session/meeting. This is a critical facilitation skill to move individual and group sharing and learning forward. Questions can be framed to accomplish different types of responses, such as to gain or focus attention, solicit information, give information, direct the thoughts of others, and close discussions.
Be comfortable with silence: Often, questions are met with silence. Participants may need time to process the question, formulate a response, or think of other questions. However, silence can also mean that participants are confused or frustrated. With more experience, you can read nonverbal cues and know how best to address silence.
Be flexible: You never know exactly how a session/meeting will go, who will be there, and what unexpected events will arise. Be flexible and willing to shorten an activity, add important language to a definition, or adapt an exercise.
Stay focused on objectives: Select just one or two practices to focus on during a session/meeting, so that you can discuss them in more detail. If participant discussions get off-topic, refocus the group by using phrases such as “this is interesting to explore further at another time, but let’s return to the topic.” It is your responsibility to find the appropriate time to intervene, thank participants, and bring the conversation back to the objective.
Use verbal and nonverbal encouragement: By using verbal and nonverbal cues, you can make participants feel more comfortable with sharing their thoughts and ideas. By nodding your head or agreeing with the participants as they are speaking, they will feel encouraged to continue sharing. It is also helpful to foster participation of shy or modest participants.
Foster respect among participants: Mutual respect and trust between you and the participants and among the participants nurtures the learning process. Effective learning is supported through the constructive and supportive feedback of respected peers.
Use participatory activities: When participants actively engage with others, they build capacities that are more effective, memorable, and easy to apply. Mix activity types so that there are opportunities to work alone, in small groups, and in one large group. Everyone in the room is a student and a facilitator.
Build in time for reflection: The most effective learning takes place through “real world” experiences, including the opportunity to reflect, identify patterns, draw conclusions, and derive principles that will apply to similar experiences in the future. Allow time for participants to share their experiences and/or to respectfully share others’ experiences.
Build in time for forward planning: Participants need time to practice their new skills, but also to consider ways in which to change their practices going forward. When talking about behaviour change, always include time to discuss barriers and enablers.
Seek feedback: This will ensure that participants can freely express how they found the process, and what needs to be improved. A sample feedback form that can be adapted is presented below.
