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Community Development (CD) Approach Overview

Figure 32: Overview of the Intensive Community Development (CD) Approach

The community development (CD) approach is a more intensive approach than the community engagement approach and societal outreach and campaigns approach. This approach relies on using participatory techniques with individuals and groups to progress through the stages of change in a way that aims to promote empowerment within communities to identify, prioritise and work towards sustained improvement of animal welfare issues of importance to them.

Community members determine, through inclusive dialogue and consensus, the mobilisation, planning, development, reflection, monitoring and evaluation of their own solutions to address their animal welfare priority needs. Your job as practitioner is not to transmit education or messages but to facilitate dialogue and participation. The members own experience, skills and stories complete the development process as they are best placed to understand the holistic community-wide solutions that will improve animal welfare in their own locality. Practitioners and community members all learn together through action and reflection, each community will be different, so adaptability is key.

Before working with a community, it is important to have the appropriate permits to work within the region, these may be obtained through regional or local government departments depending on the country or area you are working.

You will need to meet with local leaders (local and traditional) to ask for their cooperation, to discuss the ideas for collaboration and to gain their perspective, it is recommended to have a respected member of the community to help make introductions; it is likely you will have to arrange a meeting beforehand to ensure all necessary person/s are present. These leaders may voice their opinions about what they feel your project should target but these opinions may only fit within their specific agenda, it is important at this stage to create dialogue from the outset to ensure your presence is supported and that it is understood the process needs to be driven by the community itself.

Identify who you need to speak with before talking to all members of the community – often there are unwritten protocols, ensure you get off to a good start by respecting the order of communication expected within the community. Respecting customs is extremely important, respect their approach and be guided by those within the community. Their time frame and approaches may be counter to what you are used to but if not followed engagement may be weakened.

A summary overview of the entire community development approach outlined within this guide is provided in Figure 32 above. Whilst the diagram shows a simple summary different contexts and communities will progress through these phases at different rates. The process will be an iterative cycle of planning and implementation as learning proceeds, arrows highlight that the process is non-linear, and you may find you have to revisit previous phases as the project develops. The steps contained within this stage are about building collaboration, trust and understanding to encourage participation to empower communities in efforts to improve animal welfare.

The diagram below illustrates the general progress through the stages of change throughout the different phases of the intensive community development approach. However, as change is a process, community members can progress or relapse through the stages of change at any time during the project. As such, it is recommended that facilitators pay careful attention to where individuals are in their change process and adapt as needed to support people’s continued progress through the stages of change. Refer to the Human Behaviour Change Learning Module Part 3 for an introduction to the stages of change.

Figure 33: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Community Development Approach

Ensure you read and consider the content in Essential Ethical Considerations for Working with Communities and 1. Gender Mainstreaming Checklist throughout all phases of the project.

Link to References Cited

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Essential Ethical Considerations for Working with Communities

An important part of working with communities to improve animal welfare is the consideration and mitigation of ethical issues. Below is an outline of recommended ethical principles important understand and consider throughout any community animal welfare intervention project:

Support Personal/Group Agency

As the only one who can actually change a person’s behaviour is the person himself/ herself, not the facilitator, change agent, or organization, the role of a project is to support people to practice desired behaviours by enabling them to understand (and where possible also experience) the benefits of the promoted behaviours, recognize and believe in their own capabilities, and address those factors that make practicing desired behaviours difficult. It is always important to recognize and appreciate existing positive behaviour as well as start from using locally available resources.

Respect People’s Right to Choose

Projects must always respect individuals’ right to choose (or not) to adopt a particular behaviour (unless it harms or endangers others) and must consider the risks early adopters may face (e.g. disapproval of their community members, incurring initial financial or time-related costs).

Promote Ethical Change

Only seek to change existing behaviours if such change [20]:

  • has benefits which are perceived by the targeted community members to outweigh the potential costs/losses caused by changing existing behaviours, customs, and traditions.
  • are proven to effectively address the problems faced by the targeted animal owning community.
  • are supported by the key stakeholders (such as civil society representatives, ministries)

Practices to Avoid [20]

  • Avoid changing a behaviour without trying to understand it first e.g. arriving at a community with a plan to change a given behaviour(s) without trying to first understand why people practice it, why they cannot / do not change it.
  • Avoid using excessive social pressure or victimizing e.g. coercing instead of motivating people; labelling individuals as a bad animal owners or carers/cruel people when they do not follow certain practices while not reflecting on their ability to do so.
  • Avoid promising more than the behaviour can deliver e.g. exaggerating the real benefits that a behaviour can deliver or downplaying its costs (required time, effort, disapproval of others)
  • Avoid Promoting a behaviour with unproved effectiveness e.g. asking people to spend their time, effort, or resources on practicing a behaviour (e.g. certain animal husbandry and management practices) for which there is no strong evidence of effectiveness.
  • Avoid Creating demand without adequate supply e.g. encouraging people to use animal related resources or services which are hard to access (due to costs, poor availability, distance) without helping to improve access.
  • Avoid ignoring the already present positive behaviours e.g. introducing new practices without assessing and taking advantage of the existing positive behaviours, beliefs, and know-how
  • Avoid culturally insensitive interventions.

Promote Equality

It is important understand who discriminated and/or vulnerable groups are and ensure equal opportunities for their participation and representation during the design, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of such projects to mitigate the perpetuation of their discrimination and/or disadvantage. Community animal welfare intervention projects must ensure they do not operate in ways which are blind or exploitative of different social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, disability etc. Such social categorizations often result in overlapping and interdependent systems and patterns of oppression, discrimination, and disadvantage for these groups, a phenomenon known as intersectionality. This may include ensuring policies and standard operating procedures are in place for gender mainstreaming, promoting equality and diversity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups in any engagement activities or communications as needed. At the very minimum it is important to strive to promote equality, and measures may be required to promote equity as a means to achieving equality as needed whenever feasible.

Ensure the Capabilities, Safety, and Security of Community-based Workers

Ensure facilitators and/or community change agents have sufficient core competencies to undertake their work with communities in an ethical, effective, and participatory manner, are provided necessary training and support to undertake their responsibilities as needed, and that proper measures are put in place to ensure their safety, security and well-being while working (e.g. to mitigate safeguarding issues and burn out).

Ensuring the Safety, and Security of Community Members

It is important proper policies and standard operating procedures are in place within your organization and project, as well as sufficient capability within your team, to adopt necessary safeguarding measures to work within the local norms and customs in a way that protects and create an enabling environment for potentially discriminated and vulnerable groups.

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Link to References Cited

Community Development Approach Recommended Core Competencies, Readings, and External Resources

QUICK LINKS
Recommended Core Competencies for Community Engagement Approach
Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended Core Competencies for Community Facilitators of the Community Development Approach

Core competencies recommended to support effective use of this Community Development Approach are provided below:

  • Facilitation Skills: Experienced in facilitating participatory learning and action (PLA) processes to enable communities to express their understanding or concerns about problems they consider to be important. Able to analyse and reflect on issues, generate motivation to act, and identify possible solutions without leading or injecting your own ideas into community discussions. Knowledgeable of PLA tools and capable of selecting the appropriate tools to support communities in their continuous reflection, learning and action process.
  • Gender Mainstreaming: Understanding of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality, as well as intersectionality and implications for vulnerable groups in terms of planning and implementing projects.
  • Training of Trainers: Understanding of adult learning theory application for effective training: having the skill to make an intervention (training or community discussion) interactive using different methods/activities and the use of participatory tools.
  • Understanding of COM-B and stages of change model and appropriate strategies of engagement at each stage.
  • Animal Welfare: good understanding of animal welfare in terms of the five domains and their behavioural equivalents.
  • Compassionate handling: to handle compassionately makes the experience more positive and welfare-friendly, it improves the experience for animals and humans. Understanding of how to handle animals humanely and to lead by example.
  • Compassion: capacity to observe and share understanding for another’s distress or pain and have a desire to alleviate or mitigate it.
  • Excellent communication skills:
    - active/reflective listening skills
    - two-way communication, open ended questions
    - conversations for change: capacity to lead/facilitate discussions to solicit conversations for change and motivate and influence people to change using their own reflections, use values-based communications and be a good negotiator all within an ethical framework
  • Group formation and strengthening:
    - experienced with group formation and strengthening processes within the local context e.g. how to set up, legalization and registration of community-based organizations, promoting women’s membership and leadership
  • Community organizing/mobilization: effective event planning and organization skills (detail oriented).

The following C4A tools and resources may be useful to supporting capacity building related to these core competencies:

Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended readings and external resources that support this approach and the development of recommended core competencies are provided below:

C4A Readings

Community Development

Facilitation Skills and Participatory Methods

Gender Mainstreaming and Intersectionality

Behaviour Change

Other

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Community Engagement (CE) Approach Overview

Community Engagement (CE) Approach Overview

The community engagement (CE) approach is an intermediate approach between the community development approach and societal outreach and campaigns approach, which requires you the community engagement facilitator or a trained community change agent to directly engage with individuals or groups to facilitate behaviour change to improve animal welfare. This approach relies heavily on using recommended tools and techniques in effective communication for behaviour change and adult learning theory and recommends involving communities in the identification and prioritization of animal welfare issues and working with them to identify solutions for achieving desired changes through a collaborative process of inquiry and reflection. In this way, members of the animal owning community are supported to progress through the stages of change with an in a way that aims to promote sustained behaviour change for lasting animal welfare improvements.

While this approach promotes working through community change agents (CCAs), if it is not feasible to work through CCAs, you are encouraged substitute your project’s community engagement staff and adapt the approach as needed to support working in this way. Before deciding, whether to work through change agents or your project’s own staff, consider the benefits and limitations of both ways of working:

Agent of ChangeStrengthsWeaknesses
Community Change Agents (CCA)• Builds lasting internal community expertise in animal welfare beyond the scope of project.
• Community change agents knows the community context better and know what is likely to be well received.
• Can be more efficient in reaching more people (as accepted as part of community and reduced language barrier)		• Less expertise in behaviour changes and requires training, and skills/lessons may be diluted when transferred.
• Requires support, monitoring and management which can take additional time.
• May be constraints on change agent time/availability.
Project Community Engagement Staff• May be more experienced and skilled in core competencies/effective group facilitation.• Less familiar with local context and may not be as influential/respected by community.
• Efficiency/reach limited to project staff capacity and workload on staff.

Table 7: Key Considerations for Working through Change Agents

While the guidance within this approach are based on best practices in participatory community engagement and behavioural change science [31, 21, 66, 20], the steps are not intended to be prescriptive and can be adapted based on need and context.

An overview of the entire community engagement approach, including each intervention phase and its associated step is mapped in the figure below.

Figure 45: Overview of Semi-Intensive Community Engagement (CE) Approach

Figure 45: Overview of Semi-Intensive Community Engagement (CE) Approach

The diagram below illustrates the general progress through the stages of change throughout the different phases of a project adopting the community engagement approach. However, as change is a process, community members can progress or relapse through the stages of change at any time during the project. As such, it is recommended that community engagement agents pay careful attention to where individuals are in their change process and adapt their engagement techniques as needed to support people’s continued progress through the stages of change. Refer to the Human Behaviour Change Learning Module for an introduction to the stages of change.

Figure 46: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Community Engagement Approach

Figure 46: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Community Engagement Approach

Ensure you read and consider the content in Essential ethical considerations for working with communities and 1. Gender mainstreaming checklist throughout all phases of the project.

Link to References Cited

Essential Ethical Considerations for Working with Communities

An important part of working with communities to improve animal welfare is the consideration and mitigation of ethical issues.
An important part of working with communities to improve animal welfare is the consideration and mitigation of ethical issues. Below is an outline of recommended ethical principles important understand and consider throughout any community animal welfare intervention project:

Support Personal/Group Agency

As the only one who can actually change a person’s behaviour is the person himself/ herself, not the facilitator, change agent, or organization, the role of a project is to support people to practice desired behaviours by enabling them to understand (and where possible also experience) the benefits of the promoted behaviours, recognize and believe in their own capabilities, and address those factors that make practicing desired behaviours difficult. It is always important to recognize and appreciate existing positive behaviour as well as start from using locally available resources.

Respect People’s Right to Choose

Projects must always respect individuals’ right to choose (or not) to adopt a particular behaviour (unless it harms or endangers others) and must consider the risks early adopters may face (e.g. disapproval of their community members, incurring initial financial or time-related costs).

Promote Ethical Change

Only seek to change existing behaviours if such change [20]:

  • has benefits which are perceived by the targeted community members to outweigh the potential costs/losses caused by changing existing behaviours, customs, and traditions.
  • are proven to effectively address the problems faced by the targeted animal owning community.
  • are supported by the key stakeholders (such as civil society representatives, ministries)

Practices to Avoid [20]

  • Avoid changing a behaviour without trying to understand it first e.g. arriving at a community with a plan to change a given behaviour(s) without trying to first understand why people practice it, why they cannot / do not change it.
  • Avoid using excessive social pressure or victimizing e.g. coercing instead of motivating people; labelling individuals as a bad animal owners or carers/cruel people when they do not follow certain practices while not reflecting on their ability to do so.
  • Avoid promising more than the behaviour can deliver e.g. exaggerating the real benefits that a behaviour can deliver or downplaying its costs (required time, effort, disapproval of others)
  • Avoid Promoting a behaviour with unproved effectiveness e.g. asking people to spend their time, effort, or resources on practicing a behaviour (e.g. certain animal husbandry and management practices) for which there is no strong evidence of effectiveness.
  • Avoid Creating demand without adequate supply e.g. encouraging people to use animal related resources or services which are hard to access (due to costs, poor availability, distance) without helping to improve access.
  • Avoid ignoring the already present positive behaviours e.g. introducing new practices without assessing and taking advantage of the existing positive behaviours, beliefs, and know-how
  • Avoid culturally insensitive interventions.

Promote Equality

It is important understand who discriminated and/or vulnerable groups are and ensure equal opportunities for their participation and representation during the design, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of such projects to mitigate the perpetuation of their discrimination and/or disadvantage. Community animal welfare intervention projects must ensure they do not operate in ways which are blind or exploitative of different social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, disability etc. Such social categorizations often result in overlapping and interdependent systems and patterns of oppression, discrimination, and disadvantage for these groups, a phenomenon known as intersectionality. This may include ensuring policies and standard operating procedures are in place for gender mainstreaming, promoting equality and diversity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups in any engagement activities or communications as needed. At the very minimum it is important to strive to promote equality, and measures may be required to promote equity as a means to achieving equality as needed whenever feasible.

Ensure the Capabilities, Safety, and Security of Community-based Workers

Ensure facilitators and/or community change agents have sufficient core competencies to undertake their work with communities in an ethical, effective, and participatory manner, are provided necessary training and support to undertake their responsibilities as needed, and that proper measures are put in place to ensure their safety, security and well-being while working (e.g. to mitigate safeguarding issues and burn out).

Ensuring the Safety, and Security of Community Members

It is important proper policies and standard operating procedures are in place within your organization and project, as well as sufficient capability within your team, to adopt necessary safeguarding measures to work within the local norms and customs in a way that protects and create an enabling environment for potentially discriminated and vulnerable groups.

Return to Approach

Link to References Cited

Community Engagement Approach Recommended Core Competencies, Readings and External Resources

QUICK LINKS
Recommended Core Competencies for Community Engagement Approach
Recommended Readings and External Resources

  • Excellent communication skills:
    - Active/reflective listening skills
    - Two-way communication, open ended questions
    - Empathy - capacity to see things from other’s people’s perspective, and be understanding and consider their situation, and can read the community’s feelings, cultural norms and adjust as needed to suit situation
    - Conversations for change: capacity to lead/facilitate discussions to solicit conversations for change and motivate and influence people to change using their own reflections, and good negotiator.
  • Training of Trainers / Understanding of application of adult learning theory for effective training: having the skill to make an intervention (training or community discussion) interactive using different methods/activities and using of participatory tools.
  • Understanding of COM-B and stages of change and appropriate strategies of engagement at each stage.
  • Animal Welfare: good understanding of animal welfare in terms of the five domains framework and their human behavioural equivalents.
  • Understanding of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality, as well as intersectionality and implications on vulnerable groups and related implications for planning and implementing projects.

The following C4A tools and resources may be useful to supporting capacity building related to these core competencies:

Recommended readings and external resources that support this approach and the development of recommended core competencies are provided below.

Recommended C4A Readings

Community Engagement

Gender Mainstreaming and Intersectionality

Community Engagement Skills

Behaviour Change

Other

Return to Approach

Societal Outreach and Campaigns (SOC) Approach Overview

QUICK LINKS
“Societal Outreach and Campaigns” (SOC)
roadmap of societal outreach and campaigns
The Stages of Change

“Societal Outreach and Campaigns” (SOC) is the broad umbrella term used to refer to this approach in recognition of the variety of education efforts and communication tactics that may be used to engage large target audiences to raise awareness and support achievement of behaviour change outcomes.

While not as empowering as working directly and more intensively with communities as other approaches such as the Community Engagement or Community Development Approach, awareness-raising approaches and outreach campaigns can provide a cost-effective method for reaching broad numbers of people to support the improvement of animal welfare when:

  • animal-owning community members and their animals are too geographically scattered to regularly meet or reach (e.g. in rural areas)
  • the population is too large to work with everyone at the same time (e.g. in urban areas)

The SOC approach is best suited to reaching broad sectors of society to support behavioural change through:

  • Raising awareness of issues
  • Improving knowledge or capabilities, and/or
  • Influencing social norms and values e.g. to promote compassion for animals and reduce the harmful animal husbandry and management practices, or raising awareness of animals’ value and role in people’s lives amongst society at large in contexts where animal welfare problems are associated with society’s low perceived status or value of animals as sentient beings.
  • Providing reminders or encouragement to support the action and maintenance of desired behaviours.

This approach can be undertaken concurrently in support of broader behaviour change initiatives, such as those using the Community Engagement or Community Development approach, to aide development of necessary preconditions for behaviour change related to awareness, knowledge, skills, or the creation of social norms. Use this guide to support you in either all or some stages of the SOC approach, for instance, if just raising general awareness about animal welfare, then concentrating efforts on gaining audience insight to ensure your messaging is framed effectively would be your focus, but it would be unnecessary to undertake further participatory activities as you would not need to identify target behaviours.

Although the SOC approach can be effective in changing knowledge, awareness, and social values, it is often insufficient for delivering sustainable change in behaviours. This is because increasing individuals’ knowledge, skills, and awareness or changing social values are often only part of what is needed to change a person’s behaviour towards their animals. However, the SOC approach’s broad focus on both reach and awareness raising may be particularly useful in contexts where the risks to animal welfare are relatively low and more intensive animal welfare improvement efforts are not necessary.

Using the SOC approach can be an important element in assisting people to move through the stages of change. It is particularly useful in supporting people to progress through the pre-contemplation, contemplation, and preparation stages of change, where awareness of an issue needs to be developed, which is supported by knowledge, and which in turn can generate motivation to act.

IMPORTANT
When implementing any strategy to change behaviour ensure to:
• investigate actual reasons particular behaviours are performed, and the barriers to performing target behaviours
• research and keep an open mind, and
• avoid the use of your own or others’ theories and assumptions about why existing behaviours are performed, and the barriers to the adoption of desired behaviours.

Core principles that should guide implementation of this approach include:

  1. Respect for all those involved: respect the autonomy and self-determination of participants, and protect those who lack autonomy, are vulnerable or marginalised.
  2. Compassion and empathy: safeguard the welfare of all involved, risks must be minimised, benefits must outweigh any risks.
  3. Integrity: fair distribution of benefits and burdens to ensure all those involved are treated fairly and that no groups or individuals are discriminated against during the SOC process [75]

In addition, refer to the section on Essential Ethical Considerations for Working with Communities for guidance on working ethically with communities on animal welfare improvement projects.

A summary overview of the entire SOC approach contained within this resource is mapped in the figure below, including each phase and its associated steps. Although the diagram shows a simple summary different contexts and communities will progress through these phases at different rates, and timelines indicated are only rough estimates and not prescriptive. Arrows highlight that the process is non-linear, and you may find you have to revisit previous phases as the project develops.

Figure 49: Overview of Societal Outreach and Campaigns (SOC) Approach

Figure 49: Overview of Societal Outreach and Campaigns (SOC) Approach

The diagram below illustrates the general progression through stages of change in the different phases of the SOC approach. As change is a process, community members can progress or relapse through the stages of change at any time during the project. As such, it is recommended that facilitators pay careful attention to where individuals are in their change process and adapt as needed to support people’s continued progress through the stages of change. Refer to the Human Behaviour Change Learning Module Part 3 for an introduction to the stages of change.

Figure 50: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach (SOC)

Figure 50: The Stages of Change Linked with the Phases of the Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach (SOC)


Follow the steps outlined in this approach and ensure animal owning communities are consulted, involved and/or collaborate in the design, planning, and/or implementation of the outreach and campaign activities undertaken in this approach. Through this approach, important discussions can be initiated, understanding of issues and the consequences for animal welfare, and the associated desired behaviours and practices; perceptions and assumptions challenged or changed, and harmony created between welfare friendly practices and people’s values and norms. As a result, this approach can be effective in increasing capability and motivation for improving animal welfare.

Ensure you read and consider the content in Essential ethical considerations for working with communities and 1. Gender mainstreaming checklist throughout all phases of the project.

Link to References Cited

Return to Approach

Ethical Considerations for Working With Communities

An important part of working with communities to improve animal welfare is the consideration and mitigation of ethical issues. Below is an outline of recommended ethical principles important understand and consider throughout any community animal welfare intervention project:

Support Personal/Group Agency

As the only one who can actually change a person’s behaviour is the person himself/ herself, not the facilitator, change agent, or organization, the role of a project is to support people to practice desired behaviours by enabling them to understand (and where possible also experience) the benefits of the promoted behaviours, recognize and believe in their own capabilities, and address those factors that make practicing desired behaviours difficult. It is always important to recognize and appreciate existing positive behaviour as well as start from using locally available resources.

Respect People’s Right to Choose

Projects must always respect individuals’ right to choose (or not) to adopt a particular behaviour (unless it harms or endangers others) and must consider the risks early adopters may face (e.g. disapproval of their community members, incurring initial financial or time-related costs).

Promote Ethical Change

Only seek to change existing behaviours if such change [20]:

  • has benefits which are perceived by the targeted community members to outweigh the potential costs/losses caused by changing existing behaviours, customs, and traditions.
  • are proven to effectively address the problems faced by the targeted animal owning community.
  • are supported by the key stakeholders (such as civil society representatives, ministries)

Practices to Avoid [20]

  • Avoid changing a behaviour without trying to understand it first e.g. arriving at a community with a plan to change a given behaviour(s) without trying to first understand why people practice it, why they cannot / do not change it.
  • Avoid using excessive social pressure or victimizing e.g. coercing instead of motivating people; labelling individuals as a bad animal owners or carers/cruel people when they do not follow certain practices while not reflecting on their ability to do so.
  • Avoid promising more than the behaviour can deliver e.g. exaggerating the real benefits that a behaviour can deliver or downplaying its costs (required time, effort, disapproval of others)
  • Avoid Promoting a behaviour with unproved effectiveness e.g. asking people to spend their time, effort, or resources on practicing a behaviour (e.g. certain animal husbandry and management practices) for which there is no strong evidence of effectiveness.
  • Avoid Creating demand without adequate supply e.g. encouraging people to use animal related resources or services which are hard to access (due to costs, poor availability, distance) without helping to improve access.
  • Avoid ignoring the already present positive behaviours e.g. introducing new practices without assessing and taking advantage of the existing positive behaviours, beliefs, and know-how
  • Avoid culturally insensitive interventions.

Promote Equality

It is important understand who discriminated and/or vulnerable groups are and ensure equal opportunities for their participation and representation during the design, planning, implementation, monitoring, and evaluation of such projects to mitigate the perpetuation of their discrimination and/or disadvantage. Community animal welfare intervention projects must ensure they do not operate in ways which are blind or exploitative of different social categorizations such as race, class, and gender, disability etc. Such social categorizations often result in overlapping and interdependent systems and patterns of oppression, discrimination, and disadvantage for these groups, a phenomenon known as intersectionality. This may include ensuring policies and standard operating procedures are in place for gender mainstreaming, promoting equality and diversity and inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups in any engagement activities or communications as needed. At the very minimum it is important to strive to promote equality, and measures may be required to promote equity as a means to achieving equality as needed whenever feasible.

Ensure the Capabilities, Safety, and Security of Community-based Workers

Ensure facilitators and/or community change agents have sufficient core competencies to undertake their work with communities in an ethical, effective, and participatory manner, are provided necessary training and support to undertake their responsibilities as needed, and that proper measures are put in place to ensure their safety, security and well-being while working (e.g. to mitigate safeguarding issues and burn out).

Ensuring the Safety, and Security of Community Members

It is important proper policies and standard operating procedures are in place within your organization and project, as well as sufficient capability within your team, to adopt necessary safeguarding measures to work within the local norms and customs in a way that protects and create an enabling environment for potentially discriminated and vulnerable groups.

Return to Approach

Link to References Cited

Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach Recommended Core Competencies, Readings and External Resources

QUICK LINKS
Recommended Core Competencies for Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended Core Competencies for Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach

  1. Excellent communication skills:
    • Effective communication skills appropriate for the chosen channel of communication
    • Charismatic/engaging public speaker (for individuals delivering outreach messages publicly)
    • Expertise in effective message framing
  1. Gender Mainstreaming: Understanding of gender mainstreaming to promote gender equality, as well as intersectionality and implications for vulnerable groups and planning and implementing projects.
  2. Understanding of COM-B and stages of change model and appropriate strategies of engagement at each stage.
  3. Animal Welfare: good understanding of animal welfare in terms of the five domains of animal welfare and their human behaviour equivalents.
  4. Empathy and compassion: capacity to see things from other’s people’s perspective, be understanding and consider their situation, and read the community’s feelings, cultural norms and adjust as needed to suit situation.
  5. Event organization: experienced and effective planning and organizer of community events and activities.

The following C4A tools and resources may be useful to supporting capacity building related to these core competencies:

Recommended Readings and External Resources

Recommended readings and external resources that support this approach and development of recommended core competencies are provided below.

C4A RECOMMENDED READINGS

COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT

GENDER MAINSTREAMING AND INTERSECTIONALITY

BEHAVIOUR CHANGE

OUTREACH COMMUNICATION SKILLS AND MESSAGING

OTHER

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