The problem animal tool supports identifying and exploring the underlying causes of perceived animal welfare issues through an in depth root cause analysis. This activity can be revisited when planned actions have resulted in desired welfare improvements to promote evaluation and reflection on unidentified or unaddressed root causes. Please note that the first step in this exercise is the same as that ofAnimal welfare body mapping (T20).
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To raise awareness of the root causes of welfare issues affecting different parts of an animal’s body and possible actions to be taken to address them, either collectively or individually • To inform organisational planning based on root cause analysis of animal welfare issues
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, cards, sticky notes, coloured markers, tape, and scissors
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach, Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning, Capability
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs
Problem Animal
Figure T25a Problem animal diagram
Exploring the complexities of need and demand for farriery service.
This diagram was made by a group of animal owners. First, the group discussed the problems affecting each part of the animal’s body, then they analysed the problems in depth to find their root causes. The group found that wounds on different parts of the body have different causes, but there are also causal factors (sub causes) which are common to more than one body area, such as bad road conditions and the way that ropes are tied. Wounds on the belly, breast and tail base were found to be inter-related. The group created a community action plan to address some of the root causes identified during this exercise.
Figure T25b Problem animal – causes of identified animal welfare problems
Animal body mapping PLEASE NOTE: Steps 1-3 are the same as in T20 Animal body mapping and should be completed prior to carrying out T25 Problem animal.
Animal body parts map
Step 1
If the broken animal jigsaw puzzle is available, start by playing the game. Then, ask participants to sketch the body of their animal on the ground or on paper and to identify the different body parts and the local names used for each body part.
Step 2
Once participants have identified all body parts, initiate a discussion on their perceptions of the role and function of each part. This discussion often creates an opportunity for facilitators to sensitize participants about which body parts are important to animals’ function, which is particularly relevant in relation to working animals.
Animal body issue map
Step 3
Follow step one above, then ask the group to identify issues they commonly perceive on the body of their animals. This may include wounds, symptoms of disease, or other problems with animal health or function which they observe. It is important to allow participants to identify what they perceive to be issues, rather than identify issues you as the facilitator perceive. Encourage participants to draw these issues on the body map or represent those using symbols next to the appropriate body part.
Problem animal
Step 4
Then, ask the community which 2 or 3 of the issues identified in step 3 are the biggest problems and focus on those for the rest of the activity. Start with those most common to everyone.
Have participants discuss the causes of the problems and draw or write the causes near the relevant part of the animal’s body. Analyse each welfare issue in depth by repeatedly asking ‘why?’ questions.
For example:
‘Why does the animal get that wound?’ – ‘Because of the leather belt on the harness’
‘Why does the leather belt cause the wound?’ – ‘Because it is not cleaned and oiled’
‘Why is the belt not cleaned and oiled?’ – ‘Because we don’t have the time’
‘Why don’t you have the time?’
…and so on, until the group reaches the deepest root causes of the welfare problem and cannot go any further.
When one welfare problem is complete, take up the next one and repeat the questions until root causes are drawn or written next to all the problems shown on the body of the animal. If time permits, add additional issues, and repeat the same process with participants.
Step 5
As the discussion progresses and all the causes are identified, analyse any links or relationships between different causes and show these using lines or arrows (see Figure T25).
Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to guide participants to the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 6
Ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped.
Discussion questions may include:
• What have they realized or learned because of doing this activity? • What are possible solutions for addressing the root causes of priority animal welfare issues? • Are there opportunities to take collective action to address the root causes the issues? • Referring to the identified root causes, what are the implications or consequences for owners or animal-owning households if not addressed?
Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 7
Have the community helper record the root causes and any specific actions and activities in the community action plan, including who will monitor, a realistic timeline and any help needed from external stakeholders. Record the root causes and actions to be taken by the team to your project action tracker and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders
Facilitator’s notes: Problem animal
The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas.
Men, women, owners, users and carers all have different roles and responsibilities related to their animals and may have different knowledge to contribute to understanding the root causes of welfare issues. Decide who best to include in this activity and whether to carry it out with men and women (or other subgroups) separately or in a mixed group. This will depend on group dynamics, your rapport with the community and the local context.
The in-depth problem analysis explores socially and traditionally induced inequality related issues as root causes from different people’s lived experiences depending on their position within a society e.g. gender inequality, caste systems, migratory status, race, etc. might uniquely affect owners/users/carers understanding in living within and dealing with root causes. Therefore, the importance of creating safe and enabling environment during such discussion is a high priority as part of a ground rule when leading such sensitive areas. It is also important to acknowledge people’s realties/lived experiences; rather than being dismissive.
This exercise needs a lot of patience and questioning in order to enable the deepest causal factors to come out of the discussion. Keep asking “why” until all root causes are identified.
Consider using cards or sticky notes to document the causes and sub-causes, as participants may change their mind about the causes and either move or remove them.
It is important for the facilitator to end such meetings on a positive note by doing Step 6 and 7 focusing on the potential solutions. Doing this helps with reflective motivation for people to be more motivated to continue to engage and work with us (rather than leaving them pondering about all the magnitude of the problems they have to tackle).
If the animal body mapping (T20)exercise was performed by the group in the recent past, it should not be necessary to repeat steps 1-3. In this case, review and summarize the issues identified with the group, then move to root cause identification in step 4.
T26 Animal welfare cause and effect analysis to explore the root causes of an individual welfare issue identified during this Problem Animal activity in greater depth along with the related effects on animals and people. This tool is great for fostering motivation to improve animal welfare, as it explores the consequences of inaction for both animal and humans.
T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the risks and opportunities of action and inaction on both animals and humans, including potential solutions for reducing costs and increasing benefits to both. This tool is useful if previously agreed community actions are not being adopted due to lack of motivation or high perceived costs.
Undertaking the root causes analysis using T25 tool paves the way to do COM-B behavioural diagnosisto further support the kind of substantive intervention needed to address the desired behaviour change.
The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is sometimes called a problem tree, in which causes are depicted as roots of the tree and effects as branches. This adapted version of the tool provides a visual representation of the relationship between the causes of specific priority animal welfare issues, and the effects of the issues on both people and animals [48]. This tool has proven to be one of the most important and effective participatory tools in this toolkit, as the improved understanding and awareness that results from discussions and outputs of this activity have effectively motivated participants to take action to prevent animal welfare issues, as well as respond to them when they do occur. In particular, the effect analysis portion of this tool can be a key motivator of behaviour change. Consider conducting a pairwise ranking (T8) or matrix ranking and scoring (T9)prior to this one to identify the priority welfare issues.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify and promote participant understanding of the root causes of a specific priority animal welfare issue and their implications for humans and animals. • To generate participants’ motivation to take action or change their behaviour, either collectively or individually, to prevent or respond to animal welfare issues • To identify root causes of animal welfare issues and potential implications on the livelihoods and well-being of animal-owning households.
1.5 - 2 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards or other locally available materials
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings, and Needs; Livelihoods; Compassion / Empathy
Animal welfare cause and effect analysis (or problem tree)
The animal welfare cause and effect analysis is used to analyze an animal welfare issue or problem by identifying the complex contributing factors and any relationships between the factors, as well as their effects on animal-owning households and animals alike. In the context of working animals, this tool has been used to help identify the causes of priority welfare problems such as wounds and overloading, and to discuss the effects of these welfare issues on animals and the people who depend on them. For example, discussing the causes of wounds on specific parts of a working animal’s body may highlight causal factors such as the size and structure a harness or saddle, or the design of a cart or carriage. Effects on the animal could include pain, weight loss and reduced working capacity. Effects of the animal’s wounds on the owner could include less income (from reduced work and increased expenditure on treatment) or lower status in the community.
T26a Animal Welfare Cause and Effect Analysis diagram for an Animal-Owning Community
The above animal welfare cause and effect analysis was produced by a group of working animal owners in a rural community. They were particularly concerned about reducing and preventing wounds on their animals’ backs. Four major causes were initially identified: whipping by users, beating by children, bad road conditions and improper harness fitting. These causes were then continuously analysed to better understand why they were happening, until the underlying root causes were identified. The effects of back wounds on the animals were then discussed and identified as decreased energy, low appetite, pain and increased risk of infection. The resulting effects on the household were decreased income, increased expenditure on treatment and always feeling stressed and worried about where money would come from and whether the animal would recover.
This activity motivated the group to take action on the root causes that were within their influence.
This included:
Petitioning the local government for road repairs between nearby communities and major transport routes
Promoting more humane handling amongst members of their household to prevent wounds from whipping and beating
Making their own welfare-friendly harnesses from recycled materials
Animal Welfare Cause & Effect Analysis
Step 1
Ask participants to identify the animal welfare issues they feel are a priority and select one issue to explore in depth with this exercise. Consider referring to animal welfare issues and priorities previously identified using T25 Problem Animal,T8 Pairwise Ranking or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring, if available. Make sure that the issue is not broad, such as ‘wounds’ generally.
Step 2
Have the community helper draw a circle on the ground or on a large piece of paper and ask him/her to draw or write the priority welfare issue in the middle of the circle using a symbol, picture, or word.
Step 3
Begin the discussion by asking the group what they perceive to be the major factors that cause this problem. As main causes are identified, each cause is added below the priority issue, using symbols, pictures, or words, and connected to the problem with arrows.
Step 4
Once all initial causal factors have been identified, start with one causal factor, and have participants identify the sub-causal factors by asking them why that causal factor happens? Show this sub-cause below the major cause it is associated with, connecting it with an arrow (see Figure T26). Continue asking why each sub-cause happens and continue adding sub-causes - spreading out like the roots of tree - until the group reaches a stage where no further sub-causes can be found. As a rule, these probing using “why” questions may need to be asked 3-5 times per cause, before the root cause is finally identified.
Please note: It is common for participants to discuss, and debate causes. These discussions often create shared learning opportunities, whereby participants learn from one another as they discuss and seek agreement on the true causal factors. As a facilitator, you should allow and encourage this discussion without inserting your ideas. However, you may need to ask probing questions or take the time to teach participants about the real causal factors if they get stuck or their lack of understanding prevents them from identifying true root causes. You may also need to intervene if they struggle to resolve their differences in beliefs themselves.
Step 5
Once all the root causes of the welfare issue have been identified, facilitate the same process to analyse the effects of the welfare issue on the animal and the animal-owning household. Start by having the helper add two circles above the welfare issue: one representing the animal and the other representing the animal-owning household.
Step 6
Ask participants to identify the effect of the welfare problem on the animal. As effects on the animal are identified, linkages to the animal-owning household will naturally emerge and the discussion can quickly turn to effects on the household.
Please note: The facilitator should allow the discussion to flow naturally, ensuring full exploration of effects on the animal AND household. It is common for participants to identify only a few main effects on the animal, especially in contexts where animals are not viewed as sentient beings. Here, the facilitator’s role is to ask probing questions to promote discussion around the animal’s feelings and experience of the welfare issue. It may be helpful to frame questions in terms of, “If you had this issue, how would you feel?”
Please note: When discussing the effects on the animal-owning household, encourage participants to consider potential effects on all household members, including men, women, and children. Ask: do the identified household effects effect all household members equally? Make sure effects on different household members are accounted for on the diagram.
Step 7
When the diagram is complete, ask participants to reflect on what they have discussed and mapped. Some discussion questions may include: Support the community to identify possible solutions if needed, either in this session or in a follow up session as time and resources permit.
Step 8
Once complete, take a photo or record the outputs on a piece of paper. Ensure that the community has a copy for their records and facilitator has a copy for future reference or planning.
Finally, have the community record any root causes and activities to address the causes in the community action plan. Make sure to include any resources/materials needed to achieve this, including who will monitor it and a realistic timeline. Record the actions, activities, and proposed linkages into your project action tracker, and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
Facilitation Notes
The facilitator should have a good knowledge of animal welfare and be able to recommend solutions to address issues, including community-based collective action ideas. Participants may ask for advice on actions to address root causes.
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. This is important when their roles and responsibilities related to animals differ, and/or they use/depend on animals differently, as their perceptions and concerns may differ.
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 and culturally appropriate.
If it is not appropriate to conduct this activity with men and women together in the local context, or if it could prohibit participation and freedom of discussion, consider conducting this activity separately.
This exercise can take considerable time, so discuss this in advance with the group and agree a suitable time to set aside for doing it.
Avoid using your own examples; encourage everyone to express their individual views.
This exercise requires patience from the facilitator in order for deepest causal factors to emerge from the discussion. Allow time for participants to discuss their experiences.
Next Steps
The cause and effect analysis is useful for action planning, especially when combined with:
Animal welfare transect walk (T22) to monitor changes resulting from actions related to animal body issues, resources and environment, and management practices
If the group is struggling to understand that animals have feelings and identify them as sentient beings, consider conducting the T19 Animal feeling analysis again.
If monitoring identifies that the solutions to root causes are unable to be adopted or behaviours go unchanged, conduct a T15 Cost benefit analysis to explore the cost of continuing negative behaviours or practices and benefits of positive behaviour change.
Follow up with resource or service providers needed to help the group carry out their activities. Revisit the activities in the next meeting to monitor progress and if further support is required.
Results may also be useful to informing inform project planning and/or identify potential for partnerships to support:
Identification of community capacity building support to address the root causes of priority animal welfare issues
Addressing priority root causes which may be external to communities’ e.g. changes in policy
Identification of potential livelihood or human wellbeing indicators which could be used in monitoring to assess changes in people’s lives as a result of actions taken to improve animal welfare.
Working animals’ (e.g., donkeys, horses, oxen etc.) welfare is often overlooked in comparison to other livestock/production animals who have a more direct and understood role in supporting communities’ livelihoods. This tool is specifically designed to be used to aid communities in realizing the critical role and importance of these often-overlooked working animals to improve their motivation to similarly meet these animals’ welfare needs.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
To increase community members' motivation for better meeting the welfare needs of working animals by understanding their valuable contributions to their lives and/or livelihoods.
2-3 hours
Materials needed:
chart paper, index cards or sticky notes, pens/markers, chalk and/or locally available materials.
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Change: Contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Compassion/Empathy, Community Change Agents
Increasing perceived importance of animals
Step 1
Take the community through the process of identifying the general resources and services important to meeting their households’ needs and supporting their livelihoods which their animals either directly or indirectly contribute to obtaining (e.g., water, fertilizer, education, transport, health care, animal health services, agricultural products, income, food, feed for animals etc.). Write or draw these ideas on cards or paper until all are listed for all to see. The resources and services listed need not be limited to animal-related resources or services.
Step 2
Once these important resources and services are identified, ask participants to identify the animals which directly or indirectly contribute to obtaining them e.g., livestock/production animals, working animals etc.). Write or draw pictures of each animal on a card and place them on the ground. Then write the list of the resources or services they support /contribute to the family beside each of the animals.
Step 3
Then ask participants to identify which of the roles listed against each animal are important to them. They can rank them in order of priority. Each listed role should be paired with a picture of the animal that support that role in the household. To aid the participants in identifying these roles, ask participants to think about each animal’s relationship/contribution to all resources identified including(ability to support different resources identified).
Have the community write or draw the roles of each animal on cards or list them on a large piece of paper under each animal identified.
Step 4
Based on the roles and their importance, then ask participants to reflect on which animals they feel are most important/which they cannot live without and why based on the identified roles for each animal. Rank each animal in order of the agreed upon importance based on their roles.
Step 5
Next, support community participants to assess the value & contribution of each animal to their household through a cost & benefit analysis. Use the following discussion points to help facilitate this discussion:
• How much income do they get from their animals? • What are some of the uses of each of the animals? • What are the contributions of each animal in meeting household needs? time savings, social status, labour burden savings? • Prioritize how they spend income and savings from each animal based on the needs of the various household (Distribution of income expenditure at home) • Then consider how much is spent to meet each animal’s welfare needs and compare this to each animal’s contribution to the household income. • Then rank the animals in order of contribution to the household versus what is spent on the animal.
The process helps community members appreciate the value and importance of their working animals in relation to their contributions to meeting the household’s needs. Note which members of the community respond to the various contributions of working animals and lead the discussion for all views and lived experiences are taken, recognized and valued.
Step 6
Summarize the results of the activity and ask community members to reflect on their learnings and motivations for acting to better meet the welfare needs of their working animals. Agree on any actions and activities that that individual and/or the group identified they will take to improve the welfare of their working animals to add to the community action plan and agree on a date to repeat the exercise to assess changes in their perceived importance of their working animals and to monitor any actions taken.
Facilitation Notes
It is helpful to understand how to use processes which support communities in ranking or prioritising, as utilising a ranking process may be helpful to employ if communities’ members struggle to identify priorities through discussion alone.
It is good to note that the discussion/reflection doesn’t lead to the utilitarian assumption that undermines animal welfare.
A group sustainability map is a tool for visually representing the cornerstones for successfully achieving sustainable animal welfare improvements. It enables a community group to visualise the key ‘results areas’ that need to be in place to achieve a long-lasting improvement in their animals’ welfare. It is recommended this activity be conducted in the planning or implementation phase of the project, and then its outcomes referred to during monitoring and reflection and learning processes throughout the project, as well as the exit and evaluation phase. In this way, the tool supports assessment of the extent to which the group can sustain its animal welfare improvements independently and help inform the determination of the group’s readiness for withdrawal of external support.
Sustainability mapping is slightly different from vision or dream mapping which involved visualizing broad goals, with vision statements often drawn by participants in the form of pictures [79]. Sustainability mapping on the other hand, focuses on identifying specific results areas needed to achieve sustainability, then breaking down each results area into the specific activities to deliver them, thereby enabling participants to formulate a concrete action plan for achieving lasting change.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Enable community group members to identify specific results areas that will support their achievement of lasting animal welfare improvements without external support. • Support community action planning by identifying activities community groups need to undertake to deliver each result area and achieve lasting animal welfare improvements. • Support evaluation of group readiness for withdraw of project support.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, coloured cards, markers, or other locally available resources, like sticks, stones, straw, beans, seeds, coloured powders or saw dust, etc.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning Phase, Implementation, Exit and Evaluation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Opportunity
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Group formation/strengthening
Group Sustainability Map
An example group sustainability map is provided in figure T28 below. The map illustrates the results areas identified as needing to be in place for a community group to achieve lasting animal welfare improvements.
Figure T28 Group Sustainability map
The following activities were then identified to support achievement of each results area, followed by discussions about opportunities for carrying them out:
Animal owners, carers, and users with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to meet their animals’ welfare needs
Advocate for and secure training for group members on animal husbandry and management best practices from extension service providers
Raise awareness of animal husbandry and management best practices to others in the community
Provide guidance to those who need it on preventing/addressing animal welfare issues as needed
Model best practices in animal husbandry and management and share experiences with other community members to encourage their uptake
Effective and functioning community group governance structures andsavings and loansystem
Group develops and approves constitution with clear vision and purpose to improve animal welfare
Group elects governing body members regularly as per the governance constitution including ensuring women’s and other vulnerable groups genuine participation and leadership
Group has financial system (e.g. records, audit reports, minutes of decisions, etc.) and strong management to ensure efficiency, financial stability and sustainability
All members contribute to group savings as per constitutionally agreed requirements
Group action plan is regularly revisited and adapted as needed based on monitoring results
Secure training for group members in community group governance from extension service providers
Mechanisms for monitoring animals’ welfare needs within the community
Agree on observable indicators of animal welfare within their group and the community at large that the group can monitor
Conduct animal welfare transect walks at regularly agreed intervals
Securing access/availability to/of quality and affordable resources and services necessary to sustaining their animal’s welfare
Establish good working relationships with key animal resource and health service providers to support the community in meeting animals’ welfare needs through quality service provision.
Facilitate collective bargaining and purchases from animal resource and service providers at reduced cost to support group members and others in the community in meeting their animals’ welfare needs
Advocate for and secure water point maintenance training for group members from extension service providers
Establish, maintain or provide support to a water point management committee to maintain water points or other community-led natural resource management important to the community and their animals
Group Sustainability Mapping
Step 1
Invite community group members to identify what they need to put/have in place (sometimes called results areas) in order to maintain good working animal welfare on their own to sustain lasting improvements in their animal’s welfare without external support. Give the participants coloured cards and ask them to draw or write down their thoughts. Some areas to consider are suggested under Step 2.
It is important to ensure that different community members are invited and have a safe enabling space for them to share their views on what sustainability looks like from their point of view.
Step 2
Next, ask participants to analyse what is on each card and sort them into categories, facilitating their debate until they come to a consensus on the ‘results areas’ which they believe need to be in place for them to achieve a long-lasting improvement in their/their community’s animals’ welfare. Once results areas are agreed and paste the cards comprising each area onto a big piece of chart paper and ask participants to develop a results statement on each area.
Some examples of possible results are provided below for reference: • Animal owners, carers, and users with the motivation, knowledge, and skills to meet their animals’ welfare needs • Effective and functioning community group governance structures and savings and loan system • Mechanisms for monitoring animals’ welfare needs within the community • Securing access/availability to/of key resources and services necessary to sustaining their animal’s welfare
Step 3
Once results statements have been created, ask group members to identify activities which they would need to undertake to achieve each result statement. Ask them to draw or write each activity on the chart under the result area which it contributes to, and discuss the opportunities for carrying out these activities. Once completed, encourage the group to incorporate their identified activities within their community action plan.
Step 4
Document results by either transferring it to a piece of paper or by taking a photo of the completed outputs. Ensure a copy of the sustainability map produced is retained by the community. Record any relevant insights from the community’s analysis in your project action tracker. Follow up with the community to further support their action planning and implementation of identified activities as needed.
Facilitation Notes
Note what different sustainability aspects are identified as priorities by different community members considering their lived experiences.
It is also important to identify what form of group formation and structure is relevant for the intended group sustainability.
Community visioning tools aid animal owning community members in brainstorming and agreeing on what they desire to achieve in the future within their community. Through a facilitated series of meetings, workshops, surveys, and growth-scenario comparisons, the animal owning community members can create a community vision—a written statement that reflects the community’s goals and priorities and describes how the community should look and feel in years to come with regards to how they treat their working animals.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To generate ideas from the community on how the future should look like for them, with regards to working animals’ welfare. • To cultivate a sense of community ownership and buy-in on a shared animal welfare vision for future actions, decisions and regulations around animal welfare in a community.
2.5 - 3 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards, or other locally available materials.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Initiation Phase, Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Motivation
Stages of Behaviour Change: Preparation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Group Formation/Strengthening, Community Change Agent
Community animal welfare visioning
Step 1
Before embarking on a community visioning process, it is crucial to define the geographic boundary of the community and the key stakeholders who are relevant to improving animals’ welfare within the community including those who may be impacted by or influence the project and decisions made by animal owning community members/community group or their ability to improve their animal’s welfare. It is critically important to ensure the inclusion of people who are marginalised for various reasons (e.g. gender, disability, socio-economic status, etc.) and acknowledge the different lived experiences of animal owning communities and ensure their participation through the processes to be used, the discussions and decisions to be made. It is equally important to create an understanding why community animal welfare visioning needs to be done.
Step 2
After defining the geographic community, the next step is to form a vision committee. The committee should include representatives from the animal owning community members, animal health and resource providers, local government extension agents among others to ensure diverse and inclusive representation as well as participation of men, women, and animal owning community members facing marginalization. This committee or a similar nature can further be maintained in the future as a sounding board for the programme/project implementation area; and membership can be rotated. The aim of establishing the committee is to have a representative body and point of contact for the project who can help encourage community participation, organize, and lead meetings, and draft actions that would put the community towards realizing their animal welfare agenda. The wider community can be facilitated to vote for members to serve in the committee from the different groups that need representation. There can be a quota or reserving of seats/spaces to such committee membership roles to ensure representation of diverse community members. See 1 Gender Mainstreaming Checklist for ideas to consider and create a safe space for participants to share their views].
Along with ensuring inclusivity and diversity of animal owning communities, it is important to craft clear questions that will inspire communities and stakeholders what the future could be for themselves and their animals’ welfare including exploring the resources they have to support their animals’ welfare improvement. See 4 on Guidance on Facilitating Conversations for Change.
Some illustrative open questions that can be asked are
• Why are working animals important to you and your families/communities? Why do you care about your animals’ welfare? • What do you wish to see happen after 10 years in your community regarding working animals’ welfare, animal owning communities and related services? What would make your locality a better place for working animals and their owners? What has worked well and how? Who are the key people/stakeholders or resources making it work? • What opportunities currently exist in your locality to help you realize those visions come to life? What do you think will make the greater animal welfare improvement in your locality? How can you create change to realize the vision? What opportunities do you see?
When facilitating such discussions, it is important to actively listen (3 Guidance on Listening to Change Talks) to help you bring the positive forward looking aspirations and the change talks from the animal owners, service providers and local government agents who partake in the committee initial conversations.
Step 3
The next step involves facilitating a visioning process where community members develop a vision of their equine/working animals’ welfare in their community as they imagine 10 years into the future. This process can be made through a series of community meetings if the geographic scope is wider or if separate sessions are required to create an enabling safe space.
The idea is to freely vision what communities wish to see happen 10 years into the future that will enable both the community and animals to enjoy a better/good life. To probe into this, ask the community to identify their strengths, opportunities, aspirations (e.g., what the community is deeply passionate about), and desired results in relation to meeting their animals' welfare and their animal husbandry and management practices. Once results have been identified, then ask community participants to identify impacts of achieving these results, building different scenarios for both the animal owning community as well as their animals.
Examples of potential result scenarios could include allocation of a certain number of water points, expansion of grazing area land, availability of animal feed throughout the year etc.
Once all ideas are compiled as the group starts to develop distinct results visions taking into consideration the community’s identified strengths, opportunities, aspirations and results, and impact. Explain these will then be shared in a public meeting with the broader animal owning community to gain broader community agreement on a preferred vision for animal welfare for their community. Note that this is not about the majority’s views but also valuing the visions of minorities by valuing diversity and their different lived experiences.
If holding a series of community meetings is not possible, the other option is to use the identified diverse and inclusive steering committee to do the visioning exercise and bring it to the wider group for consultation(stated in Step. 5) and validation after undertaking step 4.
Step 4
Next step is to take inventory of the resources in the community. Then identify among the list of the resources, which ones are important to supporting animal welfare, such as veterinary services, land for grazing or animal feed production, water points, shelter for animals, animal resource providers such as feed and equipment sellers for the identified vision. The vision steering committee will play the role of documenting the community discussions and promote participation of all actors, so that everyone’s voice is heard, and their views captured. This discussion should strive to encourage community members to list resources they like, dislike, or want to change, as well as resources the community lacks. They could also identify areas for potential development.
Once created, the community can then vote on the list to rank the priorities, choosing the top 3 priorities to focus on. The community can use 1- 3 dots to vote on the top 3 priorities. The inventory serves as the basis for discussion about animal welfare improvement priorities and provides a framework for which the vision committee can track progress, report to the bigger community, and support the community with taking on board the next priorities (after addressing the first priorities).
Convene a public workshop including the broader animal owning community where the steering committee will present different scenarios of potential visions for animal welfare in 10 years within their community that are collected from the different community group discussions. In discussing these different visions, it is helpful to share the rationale for how they came to be – e.g., what community strengths and opportunities could be harnessed, which community aspirations they speak to, and results and impacts they are likely to achieve, to gives community members the opportunity to choose a preferred scenario. Graphical representation of the scenarios is helpful where feasible to develop and provide.
Once presented, ask community participants to select their preferred vision for animal welfare, for which the steering committee will then draft a community vision statement that identifies and explains specific community goals and expands upon how the preferred scenario satisfies those goals. If there are some modifications required, it is good to facilitate the discussion to ensure a buy-in by all. Good to note that this is not about the majority's views but also valuing the visions of minorities by valuing diversity and their different lived experiences. The statement should also include a description of the existing animal welfare situation, as well as details about how the visioning process unfolded. The vision statement should be broad in scope and clear in vision. This needs to be written as well as read out loud considering the different needs of participants (catering to illiterate or people with different disabilities).
The steering committee should present the draft statement to the community for review; after comments and feedback are incorporated, then it will be adopted as the community vision. Ideally, other key institutions within the community such as school and business associations will also adopt the statement, helping ensure that all major community entities follow the same guidelines when making animal welfare decisions.
Step 6
The visioning process and vision statement allow a community to clearly articulate its values—however, without proper implementation, they are generally ineffective. Once developed, the vision statement can then be used to identify members of the community who are interested in working to improve their animal’s welfare in accordance with the vision, serving as a basis for community group formation around this shared vision and for working with the project to take collective action to achieve their vision. In addition, it can inform discussions, planning future next steps and identification of potential stakeholders that need to be engaged to support realization of the visions e.g., non-profits, business associations, and other key entities (e.g. veterinary service providers). Document key insights and interest to engage with the project within the Project Action Tracker to help inform project planning.
Facilitation Notes
A steering committee should represent a diverse range of stakeholder groups from all segments of the community to help keep the committee accountable to the community, ensures that no voices are left out of the visioning process as this boosts community participation and buy-in.
Encourage aspiration, communication and open sharing; the participants should not go into the visioning process with a defined outcome.
Community participation is critical for a successful visioning process; after all, the goal of the process is to create a vision that reflects the priorities and concerns of people in the community, and that cannot happen if they do not speak up.
As the community visioning discussion might become more than animal welfare, facilitator needs to refocus the discussion on animal welfare.
Livelihood’s vulnerability analysis is a method of assessing the impact of hazards on community livelihood resources. The tools help with planning for improving community resources.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Identifying the hazards that have the most serious impact on important livelihood resources. • Determining which livelihood resources are most vulnerable. • Identifying current coping strategies and beginning to identify opportunities for adaptation. • Informing an understanding of local values of ecosystem services in relation to livelihoods and well-being and how these may change because of the threat of hazards.
1.5 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, note cards, markers, or other locally available resources, like sticks, stones, straw, beans, seeds, coloured powders or saw dust, etc.
Specific Topics: Livelihoods; Vulnerability / Resilience; Group Formation / Strengthening
The figure below shows an example of a community vulnerability map showing the different livelihood resources/assets and what makes them vulnerable. The process enables the community to understand how their resources can be vulnerable and put in place a plan to address the vulnerabilities to reduce the negative impact they would have on the resources they depend on.
Figure T31: An example of a livelihood’s vulnerability matrix
Livelihood’s vulnerability analysis
Step 1
Ask participants to brainstorm and identify the most important livelihoods resources for them. It may help to organise the livelihood resources or to have a checklist based on the 5 livelihood assets (or resource) classes commonly used in Sustainable Livelihoods frameworks (human, social, physical, natural, and financial) The definitions provided below are from the Brookes Livelihood Position Statement and Guidance notes.
i. NATURAL CAPITAL refers to natural resources, which includes land, soils, air, water, and all living organisms. EXAMPLE: equids, water, soil conservation for feed/fodder production, agriculture production/feed/fodder
ii. FINANCIAL CAPITAL income, savings, loans and/or other economic resources needed to meet their needs. EXAMPLE: access and availability of savings, credit/loans, livestock insurance schemes
iii. PHYSICAL CAPITAL tangible, man-made goods that support the creation of a product or service EXAMPLE: cart, harness, roads, ploughs, market shelters/resource centres, water points, boreholes
iv. SOCIAL CAPITAL is defined as what we share with others, such us our family, friends, and community as values, norms, and trust, that enable us to move developed as individuals and collectively such being in as savings groups. EXAMPLE: self-help groups facilitate working together towards collective action to produce/buy feed and at reduced cost, advocate for needs and accountability of service providers, as well as amongst community members themselves regarding their treatment of animals.
v. HUMAN CAPITAL refers to the skills, knowledge, and experience possessed by an individual or population. EXAMPLE: knowledge and skills to address the equid welfare issues identified as impacting communities’ livelihoods i.e., knowledge and skills to keep animals healthy and prevent/treat disease and death, building competencies of animal health practitioners
As this is likely to create a long list of resources, ask participants to then identify up to six resources that they consider to be MOST important in meeting their animal’s welfare needs.
Create a matrix by first listing these priority resources down the left side column of the matrix, using words, symbols, or graphics to represent the resources for all to understand.
Step 2
Next ask participants to identify the greatest hazards to their livelihoods. Hazards may be natural or man-made. It is important to be specific in the hazards, and to ensure that the issues identified are hazards. Participants may identify conditions such as “food insecurity” as hazards. Ask the group to break down these conditions to determine if they are caused by hazards (e.g., food insecurity may be the result of a drought, which is a hazard). Similarly, some groups may identify scarcity of resources, such as “lack of money”, as a hazard. In this case, it should be determined whether the lack of a resource is the result of a hazard, or in some cases, whether the resource should be added to the list of priority resources identified in the previous step.
Step 3
Once completed, ask participants to identify up to six hazards they consider to be the MOST The five most important hazards should be listed horizontally across the top of the matrix, again using symbols if necessary.
Step 4
Participants should then decide on a scoring system for assessing how vulnerable their animal dependent livelihoods are because of their livelihood resources being impacted by each hazard, identifying significant, medium/moderate, low and no impact from hazards. It is vital that all participants understand the scoring system. An example is provided below for reference:
3 = hazard significantly impacts the resource 2 = hazard moderately impacts the resource1 = hazard has a low impact on the resource 0 = hazard has no impact on the resource
Stones, symbols, or different colours of markers (e.g., red = significant risk to resource, orange = medium risk, green = low risk, blue = no risk) could also be used.
Step 5
Consider each resource in turn, support participants in discussing and agreeing the degree of impact that each of the hazards has on each of the resources. Any inconsistencies or differences of opinion should be discussed and resolved, if possible (either through discussion or by exploring the reasons for these differences and preparing more than one table if necessary).
Step 6
Discuss and analyse the results, noting different perspectives from different participants. An example is provided in the table T31.
The following questions can be used to guide the discussion but should be adopted and adapted according to the focus of the exercise.
• Are there any trends in the impact of hazards on livelihood resources? • Which resources are most affected and why? • Are there any resources that are more resistant to hazard? • What coping strategies are currently used to deal with the hazards identified? Are they working? • Are there different strategies that you would like to adopt which would reduce the impact of hazards on your livelihoods? • What resources do you have that would help you to adopt these new strategies? • What are the constraints to adopting these new strategies?
Step 7
Once complete, take a photo or record the outputs on a piece of paper. Ensure that the community has a copy for their records and facilitator has a copy for future reference or planning.
Record the actions, activities, and proposed linkages into your project action tracker, and support the community by linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
Facilitator's Notes
It can take time for people to understand the concepts and thus good facilitation will be needed to engage them.
There is need for the facilitator to be well versed with the five domain of animal welfare sufficiently prior to conducting this exercise as this is necessary to enable them to help the community identify resources important to meeting their animals' welfare needs.
Be aware that sensitive issues may not be discussed or clear to an outsider.
Local participants should be encouraged to build as much of the diagram as possible without interruption and to suggest anything else that should be recorded.
Consider having different groups based on gender, social status (re marginalized groups) when conducting the discussions.
Animal welfare conversation tool involves an open discussion about what animal welfare is and why it is important. The discussion starts by understanding how men and women and other community members view animal welfare, what they need to provide to their animals to ensure improved welfare and identifying the actors responsible for animal welfare.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To improve understanding of animal welfare needs in terms of health, nutrition, behaviour, and environment. • To raise awareness and promote discussion about animal welfare issues • Understand community members’ attitudes, belief systems, perspectives and current accuracy of knowledge about animal welfare, including indicators they feel are important to their ability to understand their animals’ welfare needs
1.5 hours
Materials needed:
Cards, pens, markers, coloured powder, chalk, sticks, tree leaves, coloured cards, pictures different animal welfare conditions and or other locally available materials.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Initiation Phase, Planning Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach, Community Engagement Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Capability
Stages of Behaviour Change: Pre-contemplation Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Community Change Agents, Outreach and Communications, Compassion and Empathy, Animal Handling
Many factors constrain community members’ ability to improve the welfare of their animals. These may include, the Socioeconomic, cultural, and environmental conditions such as attitudes towards animals, community members’ knowledge and skills about giving care for animals, and resources and services determine the welfare status of working animals. Addressing these issues requires engaging community groups in active dialogues and social learning to discuss their animal welfare needs and to find solutions together to improve animal welfare. Figures T32 a, b, and c were images used to facilitate discussions about horse welfare needs in a community using this tool.
T32a Example of an animal with poor body condition.T32b Animal welfare umbrella representing domains of animal welfare important to meeting animals’ welfare needs
Animal welfare umbrella reinforces the fact that animals rely on people, everyone in a household, to provide care for them. In the same way, all household members rely upon healthy and happy animals to increase household members' wellbeing.
T32c Example of meeting animals’ welfare needs
Animal Welfare Conversation Tool
Step 1
Explain the purpose of the community conversations on animal welfare. Ask community groups if they have questions before proceeding.
After introducing the focus of the community conversations, facilitate a discussion about what community members describe as animal welfare.
You can prompt the discussion with the pictures in figure T32a above by asking the community members to discuss in pairs. Ensure men and women participate in the discussions separately to ensure their views don’t overshadow each other’s. Obtain feedback from a few men and women participants on the below questions:
· What can you see from the animal in image T32a? · What do you think this animal is feeling? Do you think the animal is cared for? Why or why not? · How might this image reflect the lives of animals in this community?
Using the picture in figure T32b, ask the community members to discuss this image in pairs and answer the following questions · What can you see from this image (T32b)? · What is happening to the animal in the image? What do you understand from each of the 4 domains? · How does the image reflect the animal welfare situation in this community? (General reflections/understanding on animal welfare within their community using the image)
Step 2
Facilitate a discussion around the responses received on what giving care means to men, women and youth. Take note of any additional resources people think that the animal needs. Discussion questions can include: Obtain feedback from a few men and women participants:
• In which of the images (T32a or T32b or both) do they think the animal is cared for? Why? • What is giving care to animals mean? • Is it important to help your animals feel good? Why? • What does an animal need to be happy, healthy, and productive for your family? • When your animal is not feeling good, how does this affect you and your family members? • What does animal welfare mean to you? • What do you do to care for your animals? • What are the social or cultural values related to giving care to animals? Is there any saying or expression in your community related to animal care giving?
Step 3
The next step is to take the community through a discussion which will enhance their understanding of what is needed for their animals to have a good basic level of welfare. The examples provided here can be used as a guide for the facilitator to discuss the most relevant animal welfare issues in the specific community. Use figure T32c above to facilitate the discussion using the discussion questions below:
• Thinking about your animals, what do they need from you to be happy, healthy, and productive?. • What care do animals need? Who gives this care in your household, within your community, or at your place of work? • What can you see being provided to animals in this image? Are these important? Why? Why not?
These questions will help identify the resources people think their animals need, and who the household members are who influence their animals’ welfare.
Step 4
After image T32c has been discussed, follow up by asking: “Do all animals in your household need the same things or feel the same way?” Prompt the discussion to make sure you have asked questions about: • Healthcare • Feed and water • Behaviour (human – animal interaction and behavioural interaction among animals) • Shelter/shade (depending on your context)
Step 5
After the discussion has progressed, handout the 'animal welfare umbrella', Figure T32b. Explain to the group that this image helps to convey that giving care to animals involves consideration of their health, nutrition, behavioural, and environmental needs. It is important to acknowledge that all animals need this care, and that good animal care benefits the animals as well as people. Ask participants to discuss in pairs: • To what extent are you currently able to provide each of these things for your animals? • Which of these things do you find it easiest to provide for your animals? Why? • Which of these things is it difficult for you to provide for your animals? Why? • What things on this image didn’t you know animals needed? Are any of these things new ideas for you?
After the discussions, ask for feedback from both female and male participants. The question below can be used to prompt feedback: 'What did you learn from the picture and the discussion?' Ask a few participants to share their responses and write them on a flip chart.
Step 6
Use the responses from step 5 to highlight human animal relationships. • Ask the participants to share what they think are the benefits to the animal owners and their livelihoods when the animals are provided with care as depicted in T32b?
Summarise by sharing with the group that whilst animals rely on people to provide them with the things they need, doing this well means that animals are better able to help us with the things that we need from them. If our animals are happy and healthy, they can better help us at work, at home, and in our community.
Step 7
Once the discussions are complete,take a photo or record the outputs on a piece of paper. Ensure that the community has a copy for their records and facilitator has a copy for future reference or planning.
Facilitation Notes
Identify the local term for animal welfare and consistently use the term throughout the discussion. Pay attention to differences in terms among men, women, and youth, and agree on one term.
Pay attention to differences in perspectives/understanding among men, women, and youth about animal welfare. Listen actively and probe as necessary.
Depending on the conversation topic, you can substitute other images or stories to facilitate the discussion.
You can also use this tool by focusing on one domain in one meeting (using separate meetings to discuss each of the domains) (Figure 32b) and repeating steps 4 – 7. E.g. focusing one session on behaviour you can encourage the community participants to reflect on their interaction with their animals including focusing a discussion on their observations of good and bad animal handling practices, and the impacts of these practices on both the animal and its owner/carers/handers, users and service providers. This is provided that communities are willing to meet frequently and/or prefer to focus on one animal welfare domain at a given time and have deeper conversations, reflection and learning.
Next Steps
Continue building on these initial conversations about animal welfare by supporting community members to identify their priority animal welfare issues and the individuals responsible for meeting their animals’ different welfare needs using tool T33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis.
The tool supports discussions with community members about their animals’ welfare needs, the challenges they have in meeting them, and potential actions that may improve their animals’ welfare.
The tool enables the community to identify specific animal welfare issues, and the constraints they may experience when addressing these. Animal welfare issues are ranked in terms of their importance, to enable the community to decide on actions to be taken to address them. This tool builds upon initial discussions introducing animal welfare, which can be facilitated by tools such as the T32 Community Animal Welfare Conversation Tool and T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities. The tools is also a precursor to community animal welfare action planning (T34) tool as it provides the platform/ a pathway to planning to take action to improve animal welfare.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• To identify resource constraints influencing the welfare of their animals, the issues it causes, and how this affects both animal welfare and households. • To help with prioritizing the most important issues affecting animals and households in terms of severity and frequency, disaggregated by gender. • To understand the similarities and differences in gender perceptions of priority welfare issues. • To Promote understanding of the animal welfare domains.
2 hours
Materials needed:
Different counters, e.g., beans and corn, graphic of animal welfare needs (e.g., T32b/or five domains of welfare graphic, flip chart or clear ground, marker pens.
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services; Community Change Agents
An example is provided below of a sample of community identified responsibilities related to animal welfare (Table T33a) and an example of community prioritization ranking (Table T33 b).If you have done T5 Gender Roles and Responsibilities, T8 Pairwise Ranking and Scoring or T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring, you can also remind the community participants to the findings of the discussions and the priorities identified by them provided they want to continue to work on those priorities.
Animal Welfare Need
Who is responsible for meeting the need
Comments
Adult Men
Adult Women
Young Men
Young Women
Feed and Water
○○
○○○
○○○
○○
Adult women and young do most of the feeding responsibility
Providing Shelter
○○○
○○
○○
○○
Adult men are mostly responsible for providing Water
Wound care and seeking medical services
○○
○○○
○○
○○
Adult women do most wound care related issues
Allow the animals to be free and express their natural behaviour
○○
○○○
○○
○○
Adult women tend to be responsible for taking care of behavioural issues
Table T33a. Example of animal welfare needs and who is responsible for meeting them
Welfare issue
Men
Women
Comments /reasons
Feed shortage
○○○○○○
○○○○○○
Water shortage
○○○○○
○○○○○
Lack of veterinary services
○○○○
○○○
Poor shelter
○○
○
Diseases
○○○
○○○○○
Table T33 b. Example Animal Welfare Issue Prioritization Ranking
Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis
Step 1
Explain the purpose of the activity is to discuss the needs of participants’ animals, the challenges they face in meeting their animals’ needs, and who in their households is responsible to meeting these challenges/animal needs. Depending on the number of equine participants in the meeting, divide them into sub groups of 3-4 and have them discuss at least the priority 3 animal needs that have been identified and share the discussions in plenary. This should allow the rest of the participants to input into the presentations of the smaller sub groups.
Begin by asking participants: ‘What problems do your animals experience?’ Probe further to ask why this is a problem for them and their animals. If the challenges identified are many, let the community members prioritize the most common animal need by the community. Pick this to discuss the following discussions.
Examples of probing questions could include:
• Does the problem cause their animals to stop working? • Does the problem take a long time for their animals to recover from? • Could this problem cause their animals to die? • Does this problem change their animals' behaviour? • Is the problem challenging or expensive to manage, or do they find it unpleasant?
Step 2
Then, ask participants, ‘Who in your household cares for your animals’ needs?’
Draw a matrix, and list all given household members along the top row, or if conducting this activity with a large group instead of a household, list categories of household members e.g. women, youth, men etc.
Next, ask participants ‘What do your animals need to be happy and healthy?’
Encourage them to consider their animals’ needs in terms of their health, nutrition, environment, and behaviour. List their ideas in the matrix in the first column.
Then ask: 'Who in your household is responsible for meeting these animals’ welfare needs?’
Encourage responses from both men, women, and youth (see facilitator notes below on who to conduct this session with). Explain that to see how much each household member contributes to meeting the households’ animal welfare needs, you will use scores. Use different counters to represent men's, women’s, and youth's scoring. For example:
• A score of 3 means most of the time. • A score of 2 means sometimes. • A score of 1 means occasionally. • A score of O means not at all.
Refer to the table T33a above for an example of how this can be done.
Step 3
Ask participants:
'How well do you think you're meeting the needs of your animals right now?'
Ask for a show of hands to demonstrate ’poor’, ‘OK’ and ‘very well’. Ask a few men, women, and youth participants to give examples of good animal welfare actions that they have undertaken.
Record responses on a flip chart. Probe further and encourage a discussion around what good and poor animal welfare examples they see in the community. Find out differences among the participants.
Step 4
Then, ask participants:
'What is preventing you from meeting your animal's needs?'
Invite men, women, and youth to share their challenges in meeting the needs of their animals. Write responses on a flip chart. Possible responses could include resource limitations, lack of awareness, attitudes about animal welfare etc.
Encourage a focus on good handling, feed, water, and wound care if needed.
Step 5
Extend the discussion further to specifically cover the issues and constraints participants face in the areas of:
• Health/disease • Feed/Water • Footcare and lameness • Shelter and shade • Wound care and injuries (E.g. from tethering, etc.) • Harnessing, compassionate handling and training • Veterinary services and euthanasia • Time/need, etc.
Capture the commonly given issues and constraints within each of these themes. As issues of nutrition, water access and wound care come up, share extra information with the group as needed.
Step 6
From the discussion, create a list of the commonly given animal welfare issues and constraints, and collate these into their overarching topics/categories such as health, feed/water, shelter/housing, wound care, handling etc. You will use this list to help the community to prioritize their welfare issues. The example provided in T33b above illustrates what this may look like. To conduct the prioritization, divide the participants into groups of men and women. Explain and demonstrate the ranking exercise before starting, and ask participants if they have any questions. Follow the steps below:
• On clear ground or on a flip chart, draw a matrix with the common animal welfare issues topics/categories identified during the previous discussion written on the vertical axis. • Community members in the meeting must agree on a maximum of seven issues – ensure that both men and women have participated in this discussion and agreement. • Write ‘men’ and ‘women’ on the horizontal axis, as indicated in the example T33b above. • Split men and women into two groups and give each group 20 counters. Ask each group to distribute the counters across the issues. The group should agree on the relative importance of each animal welfare issue, and allocate counters to the issues to represent this importance. • When each group has given their scores, probe for reasons for the highest scores and the lowest scores. Take note of the groups' justifications for their scoring. Probe if their prioritization is affected by resources or seasonality. • This tool will reveal similarities and differences in gender perceptions of priority welfare issues.
Step 7
Discuss the importance and relevance of the issues prioritized. Some issues may not be identified by participants as the most serious, but they are likely to affect a very high number of animals, are relatively easy to manage and will affect both welfare and productivity. However, ask about the scenario in this village as resources or seasonality may affect how common or severe these issues are and how they can be addressed. Make sure to reflect back if such factors were not considered so that they are considered in the ranking activity.
Discussion questions:
• Which issues affect the most animals/are most common? • Which issues are the most severe (not necessarily for the greatest number of animals, but which conditions cause the most suffering)? For example, disease outbreak may cause mortality in a per cent of the herd, but undernutrition may affect more animals for a longer period. In this scenario, disease outbreak may be uncommon but severe, whereas undernutrition may be more common but less severe.
From the ranking exercise, encourage a discussion about important welfare issues that cause suffering for animals. This will invite a discussion amongst community members which can help motivate and inform their development of action plans to improve the welfare of their animals (e.g., using T34 Community Animal Welfare Action Planning).
Step 8
Finally, record the community discussions on the prioritization and the justification given along the different gender perspectives into the actions plan into your project action tracker, and support the community by supporting them to develop action plans using T34 Community Animal Welfare Action Planning to linking them to any necessary stakeholders.
During this session, reinforce the learning points of prior conversations on animal welfare e.g., T32 Animal Welfare Conversations Tool, Be sure to ask questions and prompt for the impact the issues have on an animal's behaviour or their feelings.
Provided you have the time to frequently meet with the community groups or households, once they have identified and prioritized issues, you can do step 4 to 8 for different issues in subsequent meetings. E.g. if you have done the first meeting on Health/disease focused issues provided it is prioritized by community members or households, then you can follow up with the second prioritized issue in another meeting
It is important that this conversation is presented in a way that encourages and supports community members to improve their animals’ welfare, but not solve all problems at once. To accomplish this, focus on activities that community members are doing well, highlighting positive examples of animal welfare that they gave. Ask probing questions when these are identified e.g. How common are these to the community? If it is not common, how easy would it be for more community members to adopt activities that have resulted in better animal welfare?
Ideally, conduct this activity at the household level, and with men, women, and youth present – as they may have different roles, perspectives and priorities which it is important to capture. If it is not possible to conduct this activity at the household level, you may wish to consider conducting the exercise with separate groups of men, women, and youth, as they may influence each other’s responses if the activity is conducted as a large community group. If you are conducting this at a group level, ensure that you have divided the large group into smaller groups to enable everyone contribute to the discussion. If not possible to do together as a group or household, then consider doing it separately at different time convenient to respective groups.
Next Steps
Continue to build on these discussions and support community members to address identified priority animal welfare issues by conducting community action planning using the T34 Community Animal Welfare Action Planning tool.
This community action planning tool supports communities in developing actions to address their priority animal welfare issues and has been adapted from Community conversation on animal welfare: A guide to facilitators [71]. This tool can be informed by outcomes from other tools such as:
Once animal welfare issues are prioritised, this tool can be used to facilitate discussions with community members to identify strategies and actions to address priority animal welfare issues, and help them identify knowledge, skills, and/or resource they required to enable them to take action to improve their animals’ welfare.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Support community to reflect on their identified priority animals’ welfare issues and identify actions they can take to address them. • Identify the knowledge, skills and resources communities need to take action to improve their animals’ welfare.
1.5 hours
Materials needed:
Chart paper, note cards, markers, or other locally available resources, pre-printed pictures, or visual aids of priority animal welfare issues (optional), pre-printed pictures or visual aids on improved animal welfare practices relevant to identified animal welfare issues (optional).
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Engagement Approach; Community Development Approach
Stages of Change: Preparation Stage, Action Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Documentation and Reporting
Specific Topics: Animal Husbandry and Management; Animal Handling; Animal Welfare, Feelings and Needs; Animal Health and Services Community Change Agents
Community Animal Welfare Action Plan
Table T34 below shows an example of a community welfare action plan developed to address priority animal welfare issues identified through discussions using T33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis.
Priority Animal Welfare Issues
Actions to be Taken (Household and / or community level)
ExpectedChanges /Indicators of Success
Resources / Support Required to implement planned actions
Who Monitors / When?
Feed shortage
Community grow fodder for donkeys
Owners then feed the donkeys the recommended portions as needed throughout the day (as donkeys do not feed a lot at once)
Improved donkey health indicators: • Increased feed volume available • Feed available in all seasons • Improved body score condition • Happy and productive animals
Fodder production requires seeds.
Training on fodder production and storage
Improved understanding of donkey feeding best practices e.g. what types of feed, when/frequency of feeding, and how much to feed
Owners do the monitoring monthly
Animal welfare team assessing body score condition quarterly
No access to veterinary services (for preventative treatment and prevention)
Community mobilization based on scheduled vaccination/ deworming programs.
Owners supported by each other to seek veterinary services whenever their donkeys are sick.
Owners vaccinate donkeys on recommended schedule
Improved Health Indicators: • Reduced incidence of donkey’s sickness • Reduced time lost by owners due to animals being unable to work
Animal health providers have access to vaccinations.
Information on how to identify illness in donkeys and when they should not be worked
Owners assessing how their animal is feeling if it is sick or not daily, while ensuring that the animals are vaccinated yearly
Donkeys have access to water
Owners provide their donkeys with water at regular intervals during the day
Improved donkeys’ health indicators: • Improve body score condition/ health • Improve hydration
Access to safe drinking water for donkeys
Daily monitoring of donkeys status, if its thirsty or okay by the owners.
Table T34a: Example of Completed Community Animal Welfare Action Plan
Work with the community to rank 2-3 of the most important issues one by one. T8 Pairwise Ranking and Scoringor T9 Matrix Ranking and Scoring can be used to support identification of priorities, or results from these activities may be used if previously conducted.
You can prompt the discussion with prep-prepared outreach materials if you have developed them to discuss possible actions for improvement and benefits of acting. An example is provided in figure T34(a) of how to go about manging wounds that you can refer to develop any other animal welfare issues you need to help the community to plan to address (refer to the steps for cleaning wounds in figure T34a as an example).
Step 2
Hand out the pre-prepared outreach materials (pictures or illustrations), illustrating the selected priority animal welfare issues, and ask community members to discuss them. Ask: what do you think about and what feelings do you have when you think about taking steps to improving these animal welfare issues? If communities struggle to answer this, you can use the steps below to prompt this conversation if helpful:
• Step 1 - Observe: Look at the animal shown and identify the welfare issue it is facing. (For example, the image illustrates an animal with wounds.) • Step 2 – Question: Ask yourself, what could an animal in that condition be feeling or experiencing? (E.g. Anxiety, confusion, struggle, pain, distress.) • Step 3 – Reflect: What do you think needs to be done to address the animal welfare issue shown? Do you currently have all the things you need to address the welfare issue? Do you need assistance in sourcing something to help address this animal welfare issue from somewhere else? • Step 4 – Discuss action: What could you try doing to address this animal welfare issue? (Such as cleaning the wounds using the available material within the household, such as salt and water). If these actions turn out to be successful – great. If they don’t – you will reflect and adjust the plan.
If you have prepared outreach materials on solutions to the animal welfare issues in advance, hand them out and discuss them for consideration (refer to the example on Figure T34a on wound management).
Step 3
Ask community members to share what they would do to manage the wound issues in step one in their animals. Or you can remind participants of the first prioritised animal welfare issue from the ranking exercise the community previously completed duringT33: Community Animal Welfare Needs Analysis .
Ask community members to share what they could do to address/respond to this priority animal welfare issue. Probing questions to guide this conversation include:
• Is there someone in the community who already responds to this animal welfare issue well? What do they do, to do this well? • What can be done at the household and community level to respond to this animal welfare issue? • What are the challenges that people face to solve this issue? • What are the benefits of acting on this animal welfare issue? • What are the potential costs or constraints to acting on this animal welfare issue?
Make notes of responses onto flipchart paper. Repeat Step 3 for each of the priority animal welfare issues previously identified by the community
Step 4
Use community reflections from Step 3 as prompts to facilitate completion of a community animal welfare action plan. Facilitate a discussion to identify the following key elements:
• Which prioritised animal welfare issues are community members committed to addressing at this point in time? (Not every animal welfare issue needs to make it onto the community action plan, if community members are not committed to addressing it yet). • What are the actions they realistically commit to taking (at both household and community level) to respond to the selected animal welfare issues? • What are the expected changes (indicators of success) that the community would like to see from their actions? • What resources and support do they require to implement these actions? • How/who will monitor whether these actions have been taken and when?
Document the plan into the community animal welfare action plan table (see example in Table T34a). Ensure that the community are left with copies of the plan in a language/format appropriate and requested by them. Finally, record the community discussions and their agreed actions into your Project Action Tracker
Facilitator's Notes
Ensure that as a minimum the following key elements of a community animal welfare plan are agreed by the community during this exercise, using participatory and gender aware facilitation:
What are the priority animal welfare issues community members are committed to addressing? E.g. some priority issues might have been identified, but there isn’t true commitment from the community yet for addressing these.
What are the actions that participants can realistically commit to taking (at both household level and community/group level) to address selected priority issues?
What are the expected changes/indicators of success of their actions?
What resources and support to they require to implement these actions?
How/who will monitor whether these actions have been taken and when? Be realistic.
Communities will likely require further support and input from you/other organisations in order to implement their action plans. It is vitally important that during the community action planning session you are clear with community participants about what it is realistic and appropriate for you and other organisations to provide, and that you ensure these provisions are sustainable. If a request doesn’t fit these requirements, explain this to the participants and help them to develop a more suitable request.
Next Steps
To support community members in implementing their action plans, it will be important to resources and support identified by community members as needed to implement their action plan are secured, and you may need to consider holding meetings with other relevant stakeholder e.g., local government officials, animal health and resource providers to secure their support as needed.
Community Score Card is a widely used citizen’s led accountability tool. It is a highly participatory tool that allows community members and the service providers or local government agents who have a duty to provide services to collaboratively assess the quality of service provision. There are various services animal owning communities may rely on to support them in meeting their animals’ welfare needs, including: animal health services, equipment makers, feed sellers, extension agents etc. This tool can be used to promote constructive dialogue and joint action amongst communities and respective service providers to improve services important to meeting animals’ welfare needs. The tool is designed to be used with a specific service provider and one issue at a time so as to enable meaningful discussion and action.
This tool can be used to further support discussions about animal service and resource providers including as a follow-up to activities such as: T1A: Mapping Resources and Services, T3A. Local Animal Service Provider Venn Diagram, and T9 Matrix ranking & scoring, or T9B Matrix Ranking and Scoring of Animal Service Providers. Through these activities, community members will have identified the local animal health or resource service providers they rely on, discussed their satisfaction or preferences, as well as identified criteria they use to judge their local service providers competence and/or satisfaction with services which can provide a useful foundation for informing use of this tool. In addition, if you conducted T5: Gender Roles and Responsibilities, referring to this may help you develop discussion questions and facilitate discussion amongst community members about different opportunities and constraints faced by men and women in their interaction with different local service providers.
Tool purpose:
Time needed:
• Identify gaps and levels of satisfaction in local animal service provision in terms service quality, availability, affordability, accessibility and adaptability • Promote shared understanding amongst community members and local service providers of common issues and solutions related to service provision and use • Improve accountability and motivation to improve animal service provision and use amongst local animal service providers and community members. • Support identification of indicators for assessing service quality and user satisfaction, and participatory monitoring of local animal health service quality and improvements. • Improve dialogue, feedback, and collaborative working between local animal service providers and communities,
2 hours for community scoring; 2 hours for local service providers self-evaluation scoring; 2 hours for a joint interface meeting. Time may be shortened to 4 hours if the community scoring and local service provider self-evaluation scoring is conducted simultaneously
Materials needed:
Chart paper, coloured sticker dots and/or coloured markers, coloured index cards or sticky notes, meeting halls to post papers for scoring.
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase: Planning, Implementation, Exit and Evaluation
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B): Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Monitoring and Evaluation, Documentation and Reporting
Specific Topics: Animal Health and Services
Community Scorecard Process
As this tool is about a service provider and the animal owning communities who are using such services, it is important to properly layout the process with adequate care to have a negotiated and empowering results both for animal owning communities and the service providers. Focusing on one service provider at a time removes confusion and to properly identify gaps and recommendations.
Some of these processes can be done simultaneously. The community scoring, the service providers own scoring and the joint interface meeting between the animal owning communities and respective service providers can each take 1.5 to 2hrs. It can be scheduled all in one day or can be done in consecutive days. If you have enough facilitators the animal owning scoring and the service providers scoring can be done simultaneously giving enough time for both facilitators to have a reflection time in between to help them frame the agenda and leading the interface meeting.
If you want to find the views of vulnerable members of the community, you can hold separate sessions with them. So you can make any number of animal owning communities scoring separately and bring the scores together for the interface meetings. (E.g. you can have a women only, youth only, or a specified community group members’ organization, etc.) The essence is to help you understand the perception and the real barriers for them in relation to their lived experience with the LSPs and the kind of services they provide including how they interact with them.
Figure T35: Community Score card processes adapted from [90]
Community Score Card Process
Step 1
Plan and Preparation The first step is to do the preparatory work to the community score card process for the identified service.
Input tracking and planning the process. This includes who gets to be part of this process (identifying key stakeholders from both community and service providers side) and make logistical arrangements like meeting halls, scoring materials, scheduling for the meeting; and allocating separate rooms if the community scoring and the service providers scorings are going to take simultaneously.
When identifying community members that will participate, organizers need to ensure that vulnerable community members understand the community score card process; and enable them to understand and encourage their participation. It is critical to take into consideration that different segments of the community participate and an enabling environment is created for them to share their views in a safe space whereby each of their individual views and scores are taken into consideration, and their experiences valued. At times, depending on the context and the culture as well as preference by the vulnerable groups, separate sessions could be organized for them to do the community scoring. If separate meeting halls or times need to be set up for women and men groups, ensure this is already planned and agreed with the community or have an additional conducive meeting hall/space for both meetings.
To ensure community participation, it is important to create an enabling space and demystify fears around participation for fear of retaliation by service providers and/or local government bodies.
Step 2
Mobilizing community, developing the performance scorecard and scoring
Start by explaining the purpose and process of the exercise and then ask participants (from the community members) to identify the parameters of good quality service (depending on the animal welfare local service identified to be focused on).
This must be an empowering process for communities. Therefore before the actual scoring, it is important to have preparatory sessions with communities by providing appropriate information about the purpose of undertaking community score card, their rights and expectations from the service providers; and the roles and responsibilities of the service provider that is in focus. The discussion needs to be focused on the connection between the service provision and why lack of or limitation in the identified service exacerbates the animal welfare issue; and what quality service looks like and how it will benefit them in addressing animal welfare problems/issues. This is to help them to be focused on the service provider and the quality of service that is relevant to address the animal welfare problem. It is important to have a properly facilitated session to enable them to share their expectation of the kind of quality, affordable service and their satisfaction as clients who own equines.
Limiting Indicators and Prioritizing among them: It helps to have a limited set of indicators that represent the different aspects of quality service. In case that more indicators are suggested, it is important to try to categorize them and create an understanding on the amended indicator. If coming to amending them is not possible, then it might be good to prioritize which criteria to use depending on the issue at hand. Either way, it is important to note the discussions generated during such discussions.
As the literacy level of community members could be mixed, it is important that you be prepared to provide support to them by reading it for them and reminding them what the scoring rates are (whether using smiley faces, or using rating scales in a way they can understand). The scoring should be properly explained and repeated to community members when each of them come to do the scoring so that there is a clear understanding on that among all. Facilitators need to have locally made scoring materials (beads, beans, etc.) or cut out some sticky materials (e.g. dots, etc.) - enough for all participants to score per each identified scoring criteria, and with clear scoring definitions. If such materials are not available or if writing on flipchart is easier, then it is important to do each of the members' scoring and write it down immediately.
Once the individual scoring by each community member is done, discuss among them the potential reasons/justifications for such scoring. Based on the scoring and the discussion, prioritize issues that are pertinent to them, and the kind of solutions they are proposing. The prioritization will help if and when the scoring by the service providers list is different and if the need to narrow down to a maximum of 10 indicators are going to be the focus for the joint action planning, then it will help you to easily identify and take the first top 5 issues for the joint meeting. Include these proposed recommendations for each of the issues, or put them in a separate sheet whereby you will be able to easily refer to/use them during the interface meeting.
Step 3
Developing and scoring the self-evaluation scorecard by respective service provider
It is best practice to focus on a single service provider to make the discussion and scoring more focused. Start by explaining the purpose and process of the exercise and then ask participants who are service providers to identify the parameters of good quality service (depending on the animal welfare local service you have identified to focus on). It is ideal if the facilitator knows and has overall understanding regarding the role of the service providers regarding equine welfare needs, the legal/policy and implementation frameworks that guide the kinds of service the service provider need to provide and the equine owning community’s main concerns regarding the service.
Before jumping into indicator selection by the service provider participants, it is good to brainstorm first on their overall roles and responsibilities to shape the discussion and the indicator selection to focus on their type and quality of service provision. (E.g. is it only to do treatment or are they mandated to provide education or follow up etc. as part of their role, etc.) Such discussion will help to make the discussion and the scoring comprehensive as much as possible.
It is ideal if the facilitator that leads this process needs to have an overall understanding of the service providers’ roles in the animal welfare improvement and the kind of services they provide,
It is good to create an understanding with the service providers (whether they are public/government or private service providers) on the reason for doing and process of community score card. It is good to reiterate that it is to create a smooth interaction for joint action and monitoring of progress with their stakeholders, who are equine owning communities. The discussion should not result in making them feel cornered or be defensive; rather this process needs to also be empowering for the individual service providers. If there are female service providers, ensure that their views and challenges in discharging their roles to provide quality service is also captured during the indicator identification, scoring and recommendation generation.
Depending on the literacy levels of the service providers, it is suggested that facilitators have alternative scoring materials available to accommodate literacy levels as needed (beads, beans, etc.), or have some stickers or similar materials (e.g. dots, sticky notes etc.) in sufficient quantities to support scoring of all identified criteria by all participants. Facilitator may need to read the scoring criteria out loud during the scoring process depending on participant literacy levels.
Once the individual scoring by each community member is done, discuss among them the potential reasons/justifications for such scoring. Based on the scoring and the discussion, prioritize issues that are pertinent to them, and the kind of solutions they are proposing. Include these proposed recommendations for each of the issues, or put them in a separate sheet whereby you will be able to easily refer to/use during the interface meeting.
Step 4
Interface meeting to develop action plan
Ensure that you have ample space to accommodate both community and service providers, and that it is a safe place for all to be. Facilitator(s) need to go through the indicators and scorings, with the commonality and the unique indicators identified by respective groups, the level of score, the prioritized issues and the recommendations before the meeting to structure the meeting with a feedforward mentality.
Start the discussion by reiterating the purpose of doing the score card and the need for this interface meeting. As one of the purposes is to create a shared understanding among community and service providers for a consultative dialogue to generate joint recommendations and action plans, set the meeting tone with that. Display the scoring of both groups so that each of them see the indicators they have identified and the scores they have provided.
Start with a brainstorming session and explore and focus on the common themes to start the discussion. The spirit of the discussion is to get to a common understanding and focus on what can be done in the future. Hence, ensure that both groups present their findings and why they think the issues they have identified are critical. Through the discussions, ensure there is no blame game rather an understanding on the constraints both communities and service providers face, and frame the issues for them to tackle together.
Next write down the prioritized and consensus reached issues/problems to be tackled jointly or separately but will be monitored together. If consensus cannot be reached, it is good to give individual participants a chance to identify what is a priority for them through scoring on the key issue that is important for them. Ensure that illiterate participants’ interests are catered for as stated in step 2 and 3 above.
Once the issues are prioritized, use the below template/table to document the discussion. As much as possible ensure that the issues identified by equine owning communities and the service providers are captured and joint solutions are sought for them. Indicate who the responsible groups are to champion/lead on prioritized issues to be tackled and try to outline clear steps/actions and when that can be delivered.
Step 5
Implementation and Monitoring of Recommended Actions
Once an agreed action plan is drawn, it is good to show commitment to follow up on the agreed action points. As some of the action plans might need the two groups to work within their own constituencies (e.g. equine owning communities might need to work in their groups, or service providers might need to do an internal budgeting/planning, customer service training to their service provider members, etc.), try to ensure that they follow through their respective action plans as well as help them monitor their joint and constituency-based action plans progress together as a joint taskforce. The purpose of this step is to ensure that agreed joint action plans are implemented and monitored together to improve the service provision as well as bridge the understanding/expectations of equine owners’ on the quality of service.
As part of monitoring, once the agreed action plans have been undertaken, it is possible to do another round of scoring to assess the progress from the initial scoring. Following this is equally important to this is also to celebrate successes as well as organize a similar process of community score card if issues identified are addressed and/or if there are still constraints that need to be further dealt with. The initial and the follow up scorings need to be documented to show progress, stagnation or regress on the quality of service. Moreover, the plenary reflections and the action plans notes need to also be captured and distributed to the equine owning community/groups, the service providers and the joint taskforce (if a separate entity is formed) for their records, future reference and/or action planning. Add a copy to your Project Action Tracker and Community Action Plan Template note on quality of service provision and the services rendered by service providers.
Facilitator's Notes
It is your responsibility as a facilitator to ensure adequate understanding is created among all involved stakeholders about the purpose, process and spirit of this tool in advance. (It is to facilitate conversations rather than shifting blame and pointing fingers)..
It is recommended this activity be administered by a trained community facilitator to ensure discussions result in agreement on joint action plans.
This tool is not only about capturing results, but rather is a process orientated approach that empowers communities, facilitates conversations and dialogue between communities and service providers.
It is important to ensure vulnerable and excluded members of the community are aware of the process and how it will help them to voice their concerns when it comes to being able to access, afford and enjoy quality service provision without explicit or tacit discrimination.
Depending on the issue at hand and the time and convenience of setting the meetings, discussion with the community and discussion among service providers can take place simultaneously before the joint session. However, if the community, service providers are done separately it is recommended there be a time gap in scheduling before reconvening for the joint session. This will enable facilitators to summarize points and identify potential sticky and tricky areas for joint reflection and recommendations for potential actions for consideration during the joint session.
It is useful to examine perceptions of animal-related resource and service providers with different groups in a community as they may rely on, or have different perceptions of resources and service providers. Consider asking both men and women from animal-owning households to participate in this activity; or if it is not feasible or appropriate to conduct this activity with both sexes together, consider conducting this activity separately.
Facilitators could ask probing questions when indicators are identified by animal owning communities as well as during the local service providers own self-scoring to encourage people to think about how the identified indicator relates to the local service provider and animal welfare.
Facilitators should not control or insert their ideas into the community or service provider assessment or scoring process, but rather facilitate the process so that people feel free to do their individual scoring. In contexts with participant illiteracy or where assistance is required, facilitators can provide support by reiterating the assessment criteria to use when it is time for them to do their scoring.
Next Steps
Information on resource and service provider gaps identified using this tool if conducted during the initiation or planning phase of a project, can be helpful to refer to during community action planning discussions.
Initiate training of change agents in animal welfare principles and practices relevant to their animal improve their understanding of:
the five domains of animal welfare, their animals’ related needs and behaviours which promote meeting them.
the effects on an animal when their needs are not met.
where these effects can be seen on the animal’s body or in its behaviour
initiating conversations for change with their target peer group
PLA tools recommended to promote learning are recommended at the end of this section. If possible, it is recommended to conduct the above PLA activities with change agents and their peer groups in these early stages of the project, as developing compassion and understanding of animals’ needs, and implications of not meeting them for both animals and humans is helpful to generating compassion for their animals and motivation which can help ready them to make changes to improve animal welfare. These tools can help community members identify and analyse their perceptions and practices about animal welfare and discuss how these affect the welfare of their animals and their own lives [72]. In this way, opportunities for dialogue and mutual learning can create new understanding and create the motivation necessary to take action to improve animal welfare [72].
Alternatively, if peer groups can meet, change agents can use the PLA tools above once they are sufficiently trained in these concepts and the use of these tools. However, if their target peer groups are unable to come together, consider developing outreach materials and activities to support change agents in raising awareness one on one with members of their peer network. Draw on insights about the target groups collected during the project’s initiation phase related to what the peer group values and is concerned about as well as their general stages of change in relationship to improving animal welfare to tailor the framing and delivery of communications to different members of the animal owning community as needed.
In addition, CCA should be undertaking ongoing informal conversations with their peer group at this stage to further understand their readiness for change and support continued development of their motivation for change to improve their animals’ welfare generally. Relevant facilitator resources are recommended below.
In addition, consider using the. Societal Outreach and Campaigns Approach to support raising awareness of these topics at a broader scale, particularly if helpful to achieving greater reach and/or supporting future project expansion.
Whatever strategies and activities used to raise awareness and motivate people to promote their animals’ welfare at this stage should be designed with the understanding that the most effective agents of change are emotions, not facts [20]. Thus, it will be important to create experiences that enable them to feel the importance and benefits of promoting their animals’ welfare, rather than simply telling people what animal welfare is and why it is important. Understanding what different groups’ value is therefore important to creating opportunities which elicit the feelings that are more likely to motivate them to act [73].
2.1.2 Conduct participatory animal welfare transect walk
Work with change agents to carry out a participatory welfare needs assessment (PWNA) of households in their targeted peer groups using the Animal Welfare Transect Walk tool. Undertaking a PWNA is recommended as it is a valuable means to further mentor and build the capacity of change agents to identify welfare issues, as well as assess their understanding of these concepts, and general capacity when engaging with their target peer group. In addition, this initial assessment can act as a baseline from which future improvements in animal welfare can be measured, and the animal welfare transect walk can be used in participatory monitoring of community members’ progress in improving animal welfare as the project progresses. During the transect walk, you and change agents will be able to identify the animal welfare issues present within their peer groups, further promote awareness around the concept of animal welfare by involving household members in the assessment process, as well as observe the perceptions of members of their target peer group related to their animals’ welfare issues and be able gain insights on peers’ general stage of behaviour change related to their animal’s welfare issues. Refer to the facilitator resource Guidance on Listening for Change Talk for further information. Take notes on these observations and general stages of change for each household during the activity and discuss in post activity debriefing discussions with change agents. A Project Action Tracker is provided in the facilitator resources to help you keep track of these key insights to support project planning and coordination.
Before undertaking the walk, ask change agents to develop indicators representative of all aspects of animal welfare using understanding from previously conducted animal welfare awareness raising activities.
Prompt them as needed to think about including relevant indicators for the following categories:
animal body, behaviour, and feelings (including disease issues).
management practices and behaviour of owners towards their animals.
animal related resources and services.
Support change agents in undertaking this first transect walk by first modelling the activity, then observing them lead the activity, thereby enabling you to provide feedback to help them improve and support their learning through follow up reflection and learning debriefs once the activity is completed. If it is not possible to involve all the target peer group at the same time, change agents can follow up later to complete assessments with remaining households. Review results with change agents to summarize the findings for each household’s animals within their peer group, as well as across all households of each change agent. Identify the welfare issues which scored red or bad condition for individual households and to generate a list of welfare issues to support targeted households in prioritizing welfare issues to address in the later steps. Results from the transect walk will enable change agents to assess the real welfare issues of animals within their target peer group, and scores for all households visited should be recorded to inform later planning discussions and support regular monitoring and assessment of progress. Be sure to keep a record of the transect walk results for your project’s records as well as leaving a copy with the change agent.
2.1.3 Conduct root cause analysis of animal welfare issues
To help your project and change agents better understand the context in which you are seeking to promote behavioural change, conduct a root cause analysis of identified animal welfare issues to gain an in-depth understanding of the problems using a participatory learning and action tools such as Problem Animal. Conducting a root cause analysis of welfare issues will give you deeper insights into the broader context and potential constraints and opportunities for making animal welfare improvements, as well as highlight potential opportunities for undertaking one health or one welfare initiatives. For example, root cause analysis can help you identify certain issues within the enabling environment which are either beyond the scope of the project or animal owning community to address, or which your project may wish to address to create an enabling environment for change agents and their target peer groups to improve animal welfare. Examples of this could include issues with lack of access or availability of quality affordable animal health services, lack of enabling policies making it difficult for animal health care workers to obtain animal pain medications, or lack of income generation opportunities making it difficult to afford sufficient appropriate nutritious feed for their animals.
Conduct the root cause analysis with change agents, a representative selection of members of the animal owning community, local service providers, and other key informants knowledgeable about the realities of animal husbandry and management within the communities you plan to work. The following insights from discussions with animal owning communities during the initiation phase provide useful insights on potential barriers and motivators to change can be helpful to refer to inform the root cause analysis:
Their priority motivations/concerns both in their lives
Their general level of awareness of animal welfare issues, and interest to change them.
Their existing animal care, management and/or use practices associated with the animal welfare issues, who typically undertakes them, and what they like and do not like about them.
Their access and availability of animal-related services and resources
Understanding the potential constraints animal owning communities may face to improving their animals’ welfare is essential to identifying what is feasible for CCAs to support their target groups in addressing to improve their animals’ welfare. It is recommended to keep of record of the root cause analysis.
Depending on your project/organization’s interests and capacity, you may wish to consider developing additional plans beyond CCA’s community engagement work with animal owning communities, to create an enabling environment necessary for achieving desired animal welfare improvements (e.g. strengthening animal health care systems, water infrastructure improvement projects, strengthening communities’ livelihoods and resilience). As there are likely to be many causal factors underlying animal welfare issues, consider focusing on the causal factors that are likely to have biggest impact on welfare, particularly those which are cross cutting across multiple animal welfare issues. It is also helpful to identify and share these results with other organizations or agencies with expertise on these issues and explore the potential for collaborating or partnering with them if feasible to take a more holistic approach to addressing animal welfare issues.
2.2.1 Identify behavioural changes feasible for project to address
Based on your understanding of the root causes of animal welfare issues and knowledge of the support your project is prepared to provide, identify behaviours which are not beyond the scope of change agent’s capacity and your project/organization to address. Work with change agents as representatives of their communities, as well as other key informants such as local animal health service providers, and experienced animal health and welfare specialists to identify desired behaviours or actions the animal owning community could feasibly undertake to improve the quality of life of their animals relevant to the observed welfare issues and Five domains of animal welfare.
IMPORTANT
It is essential to ensure any potential behaviours or actions identified during this step will not cause unanticipated harm to animals’ welfare. As such, it is highly recommended to invite experienced animal health and welfare specialists from your organization or external institutions to participate in this activity, especially if facilitating staff are not sufficiently knowledgeable these topics. Alternatively, if such experts are not available to participate at the time of discussions with other stakeholders, ensure any identified behaviours or actions that emerge from these discussions are first reviewed by experienced persons prior to being deemed acceptable for the project to support.
When identifying potential desirable behaviours or actions the project/CCA’s could support target communities in adopting, it is useful to consider prioritizing potential target behaviours using the following criteria from the Behaviour Change Wheel: A Guide to Designing Interventions [21]:
How much of an impact adopting the behaviour would have on improving the overall welfare state of the animal in terms of the five domains.
How likely it is the behaviour can be changed (when considering the likelihood of change being achieved, think about the barriers and motivators to change in terms of capability, opportunity, and motivation to change of those who perform the behaviour)
How likely it is that the behaviour (or group of behaviours) will have a positive or negative impact on other, related behaviours.
How easy it will be to measure the behaviour.
Different criteria may be more or less important in different contexts, and you are encouraged to select behaviours which are feasible for communities and the project to address given the local context.
In addition, when conducting this activity, remember that for behaviour change to be possible, identified behaviours need to be as specific as possible (non-divisible) and reflect the end-state behaviour [31]. Non-divisible behaviours refer to actions which cannot be divided further, while end state refers to the behaviours that produce the desired outcome [31]. A simple way to determine whether a behaviour is end-state is to ask, “Will engaging in this behaviour produce the intended animal welfare improvement?” [31]. If communities need to engage in another behaviour before the desired welfare improvement is achieved, the behaviour you have identified is not an end state behaviour.
Because barriers to adoption are often behaviour specific, ensuring behaviours are non-divisible and end state will help you ensure strategies to address them are more likely to address the potential barriers specific to their adoption [31]. Framing desired behaviours as non-divisible and end-state also helps ensure desired changes to improve animal welfare are clearly understood and actionable to CCAs and their target peers.
It also recommended to use this activity and its results to support building CCAs’ understanding of how they can use the different brainstormed behavioural changes and the five domains of animal welfare framework to negotiate behaviour change and support their target peer groups to identify alternative actions for improving their animals’ quality of life even when they feel constrained from being able to address some welfare issues. Consider populating a five domains of animal welfare framework with human behaviours identified as feasible for the project and CCA’s to support for referencing by CCAs as needed during the project. Refer to the Example of Five Domains of Animal Welfare for Donkeys Linked with Human Behaviours provided in the facilitator’s resources
2.2.2 Prioritize desired changes in animal welfare and human behaviour
Once animal welfare issues have been identified and their root causes understood, the next step is to prioritize the issues and desired changes. This section lays out a variety of ways for doing this, recognizing the need to accommodate the differing operating contexts or constraints projects may encounter. As a best practice, the preferences of the animal owning community should inform the identification of priority targets for change. If the individuals who are required to make changes do not have ownership of these decisions, action is unlikely to follow or be sustained. As discussed in the animal welfare learning module, improving indicators of animal welfare across a greater number of animal welfare domains is better for the animal than seeking improvements in the same number indicators within fewer welfare domains. For example, the animal will experience greater welfare improvements if three animal welfare issues are addressed within three domains, than if a similar number of issues were addressed within only one or two domains of welfare. Support communities to understand this and encourage them to prioritize animal welfare improvements across multiple domains, and within domains of welfare not previously addressed, while respecting their right to determine their own animal welfare improvement and related behaviour change priorities.
The following three processes are detailed below along with relevant their considerations to support determining priorities for change:
Option 1:Target peer groups determine their collective animal welfare/behaviour change priorities
Option 3: The Project determines animal welfare/behaviour change priorities These options seek to accommodate the realities projects may face when identifying priorities for change, depending on if it is feasible to bring target peer groups together, or whether the project will be working through individual households, or whether projects have priorities of their own which they are seeking to address. You need only select the option most applicable to your project’s context.
OPTION #1 Target peer group determination of collective animal welfare/behaviour change priorities
If it is feasible, all target peer group households are brought together to agree on priority animal welfare issues based on results of the Animal welfare transect walk/PWNA and identify behaviours/actions they will adopt to address them.
Option #1 Recommended Participatory Process:
Target peer group prioritizes animal welfare issues by either writing the issues on separate cards and agreeing an order of preference (also known as Preference ranking) or using the ranking exercise within the Community Animal Welfare Needs Assessment tool.
identify behaviour/action to be taken to address priority 2-3 welfare issue, making sure to be specific in terms of who is changing their behaviour/taking action, what they will do and any other relevant details (e.g. frequency, time, quantity, duration, place). If participants struggle to identify what actions they can take to improve their animals’ welfare, facilitators/CCAs can suggest ideas based on their knowledge of what is feasible, and the support that can be provided by the project using previously identified behaviours and actions (e.g. making welfare friendly equipment from locally sourced materials).
identify expected changes and related indicators
what resources/support is required for them to adopt these changes (e.g. prompt exploration of capacity, motivation, opportunity)
Ensure participants share the agreed upon action plan with all members of their family and seek their agreement to support carrying out the action plan.
Option #1 Key Considerations:
This approach highly participatory and is recommended because it can promote a sense of ownership by target peer groups, thereby increasing the likelihood they will act.
Bringing the peer group together to reflect on PWNA results and agree on priorities together as a group means they will all be working towards making the same changes, which will enable them to support and learn from each other.
As the target peer group is working to make the same changes, it will be easier for CCAs to support them to collectively make changes as the community engagement strategy will be the same for the whole group.
As the entire peer group is making the same changes, peer group capacity building/trainings can be used to support the entire peer group’s changes, as opposed to needing to be tailored to support each individual household.
Action planning by the peer group as a collective can make monitoring easier because agreed upon indicators will be the same across the entire group.
If members of the CCA peer group are not known to one another, and there is little social cohesion, reaching a collective agreement may not be easy or desirable, and may require more expert facilitation.
It is recommended that opportunities be made to engage both men and women, and/or owners/carers/users in action planning if their roles and responsibilities in animal care and management, and related welfare issues differ. This will ensure certain groups are not making decisions about action to be taken by other groups. In such cases, it is important create safe space to raise concerns and to create dialogues/negotiations for sustainable change.
This approach will take more time as it requires home visits to conduct the same action planning activities with all target peer group households, rather than one or two meetings.
CCAs or community engagement agents can ask probing questions to help community members identify local resources and solutions for addressing welfare issues. They can also recommend solutions/actions community members can consider taking using their knowledge about the type of support the project is able to provide (e.g. capacity building training) and previously identified behaviours and actions for addressing root causes e.g. making welfare friendly saddles from locally available straw at no cost.
OPTION #2 Individual household determination of their animal welfare/behaviour change priorities
If it is not feasible to the target peer group together, CCA’s conduct household visits to seek agreement on each household’s priority animal welfare issues using results of the Animal welfare transect walk/PWNA and identify behaviours/actions they will adopt to address them.
Option #2 Recommended Participatory Process:
Household members are facilitated to prioritize their animal welfare issues by either writing the issues on separate cards and agreeing and order of preference (also known as Preference ranking) or using the ranking exercise within the Community Animal Welfare Needs Assessment tool.
Identify behaviour/action to be taken to address priority 2-3 welfare issue, making sure to be specific in terms of who is changing their behaviour/taking action, what they will do and any other relevant details (e.g. frequency, time, quantity, duration, place). If participants struggle to identify what actions they can take to improve their animals’ welfare, facilitators/CCAs can suggest ideas based on their knowledge of what is feasible and the support that can be provided by the project using previously identified behaviours and actions e.g. making welfare friendly equipment from locally sourced materials.
Identify expected changes and related indicators.
What resources/support is required for them to adopt these changes (e.g. prompt exploration of capacity, motivation, and opportunity).
Option #2 Key Considerations:
This approach is highly participatory and promotes a sense of ownership by target peer group households, thereby increasing the likelihood they will act.
This approach enables individual households to work on what matters most to them, which is particularly useful especially if other members of the CCA peer group are not known to them and reaching a collective agreement with such people may not be desired.
Reflecting on PWNA results and agreeing on priorities individually means households may not all be working towards making the same changes, which means they may be less likely to be able to have shared learnings to the same extent as would be possible if they were brought together to agree on priorities.
As the target peer group households may not be working to make the same changes, it may be more difficult for CCAs as the community engagement strategy may differ from household to household.
As each target peer group household may be working on different individual changes, the CCAs may be required to develop more specialist knowledge and skills to support each one, thereby proliferating the skills/trainings required of CCAs. However, as a result, the CCAs may be more knowledgeable and adept at promoting animal welfare and addressing a broader range of issues.
Monitoring indicators may differ from household to household, which may make aggregating results infeasible. CCAs will also be required to be aware of each household’s indicators and monitor in slightly different ways, and support may need to be provided to ensure this can be effectively carried out.
This approach will take more time as it requires home visits to conduct the same action planning activities with all target peer group households, rather than one or two meetings.
CCAs or community engagement agents can ask probing questions to help community members identify local resources and solutions for addressing welfare issues. They can also recommend solutions/actions community members can consider taking using their knowledge about the type of support the project is able to provide (e.g. capacity building training) and previously identified behaviours and actions for addressing root causes (e.g. making welfare friendly padding for working animals’ equipment from locally available straw at no cost).
OPTION #3 Project determination of animal welfare/behaviour change priorities
Project identifies target behaviours to be promoted by CCAs to achieve animal welfare improvements based on results of the Animal Welfare Transect Walk/PWNA. Ideally this process should be conducted in collaboration with the group of CCAs from similar geographic locations and contexts.
Option #3 Recommended Participatory Process:
The project works with CCAs to:
Prioritize observed animal welfare issues based on the results of the Animal Welfare Transect Walk / PWNA, and your understanding gained from the root cause analysis in terms of issues which are feasible for the project to address. You can also refer the animal welfare priorities of communities discussed during consultations with communities during the initiation phase, incl. results from the ranking exercise within the Identifying Community Animal Welfare Needs by Gender tool, if conducted.
Prioritize desired behaviour/actions to be promoted to improve priority animal welfare issues using the previously brainstormed behaviours/actions to select from, making sure to be specific in terms of the priority target group/who is responsible for the adopting the desired behaviour (e.g. men/women, animal owners/carers, users), what they will do and any other relevant details (e.g. frequency, time, quantity, duration, place)
It is recommended to use a Matrix ranking and scoring tool to prioritize 2-3 desired behaviours for each priority target group, using criteria such as ease of adoption, perceived benefits to the priority target group’s lives, capacity to address group’s priority animal welfare issue. You can refer to the results of the Community animal welfare needs assessment tool, if conducted during consultations with communities during the initiation phase, along with other insights from those discussions to inform your ranking in accordance with different groups’ animal welfare priorities, and potential likelihood of perceived benefits and ease of adoption etc.
Finally, identify the preconditions required for the different priority target groups to adopt and sustain these changes using understanding gained from the root cause analysis and insights about potential barriers and motivators to change gathered through discussions with animal owning communities during the initiation phase. Think about what resources and support do they need in terms of capacity motivation, opportunity). Ensure all preconditions listed are those which the project is prepared to support. If the project is not able to support the meeting of the preconditions identified, replace the target behaviour with another behavioural change priority and repeat the process ensuring the project can support addressing the pre-conditions necessary to people’s adoption of the desired behaviour.
Option #3 Key Considerations:
This approach is the least participatory and least collaborative, and therefore does not promote a sense of ownership amongst the target peer group households over the changes asked of them. As a result, there is an increased likelihood that community members may not be motivated to adopt or sustain the behaviour changes promoted by the project.
This process takes the least time to undertake as does not require meeting with communities and can utilize results from previously brainstormed behaviours; however, these initial time savings may be lost by the potential need to spend more time working with community members to motivate their adoption of changes which they did not participate in identifying, and which may not accurately reflect their interests.
It is highly recommended to focus initial efforts on promoting/prioritizing target behaviours which will be easy wins. This will build CCA’s and their target peer group’s belief in their capacity to change and generate further motivation to tackle more difficult behaviours thereafter, which even more important when communities were not involved in the prioritization of changes they are being asked to adopt.
Specifying target behaviours for CCAs entire peer group (or subsets thereof), may be easier for CCAs because it means the community engagement strategy, they use will be the same for their entire peer group, rather than potentially needing specific engagement strategies for each household could happen if each household instead selected their individual priorities for change.
Bringing the CCAs who work in similar local contexts and geographic locations together as a group to agree on the desired behaviours to promote to improve animal welfare, means they will be promoting similar changes and can more easily support and learn from each other’s experiences as the community engagement strategies will be similar across CCAs.
Involving CCAs who are representative of their target peer groups in this process ensures the perspectives of different groups, including those groups who are more marginalized or vulnerable, inform the prioritization of target behaviours and identification of support and resources needed to adopt changes. This will help the project consider the realities of the local context and different groups within the animal owning community, while also ensuring CCAs have some agency over what is being asked of them. At the very least, always ensure CCAs can provide feedback on the target behaviours, identified support and resources the community needs to support their adoption of new behaviours, and the related assumptions about the community used to identify them.
As the entire peer group in making the same changes, peer group capacity building/trainings can be used to support the entire peer group’s changes, as opposed to needing to be tailored to support each individual household.
Involving CCAs as a group in the selection of monitoring indicators will help ensure the project is monitoring results relevant from the perspective of representative of the community. In addition, monitoring may be easier for CCAs and the project using this approach than using a one-to-one household consultation approach, because similar indicators can be used to monitor across the target peer group rather than need be specific to each household.
Regardless of the process you choose, it is important to ensure a narrow focus rather than attempting to address all issues and related behaviours at once, and therefore recommended to focus on one to three behaviours per target group (e.g. men, women, owners, and carers) at a time to start [20]. However, once changes have been achieved, the process can be revisited and additional priorities for change identified.
2.2.3 Craft behaviour change statements
By the end of the prioritization process, the desired behavioural changes CCAs will support their target peers in adopting should then be precisely defined as behavioural change statements specifying what behaviours should be practiced (not what people should not be doing), including the following components:
Who is taking action/adopting desired behaviour (priority target)
What they will do/specific desired behaviour/action they will adopt
Any other relevant details to the action to be taken…when, where how etc. (e.g. frequency, time, quantity, duration, place).
It is important these statements are clear so that the agreed desired changes which are expected to be achieved can be easily understood by the CCAs, their target peers, and the project. Example Behaviour Change Statements include:
Men within target peer group households provide donkeys with free access to sufficient clean and fresh water as recommended for their species and workloads whenever at home.
Women within target peer group households use a neck harness (rather than leg hobble) to tie their donkeys up whenever they are not in transit/working away from home during the day.
Fill out a table like the template provided in the facilitator resource “Behaviour Change Planning Table“ with information related to the priority group and desired behaviours.
Tools and resources helpful to supporting this step include:
