Acronyms and Key Word Definitions

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Acronyms

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Definitions of Key Terms

Action (Stages of Change): the fourth stage of the behaviour change process where people start practicing the behaviour, experiencing its benefits as well as costs (e.g., time, effort, money, opinions of others). Individuals in the action phase may be taking steps towards change, however, may not have fully stabilized in the process (e.g., a person started keeping their animals in a shelter at night, and it requires regular cleaning which hasn’t become routine yet).

Affirmations: statements that affirm a person’s positive strengths, skills, values, efforts, accomplishments, aspirations and/or traits. These are inferred based on what a speaker has communicated and then framed as an affirming statement that is reflected back to them.  

Adult Learning Theory: Developed by Malcolm Knowles in 1968, Adult Learning Theory or andragogy is the concept or study of how adults learn and how it differs from children. It aims to show how adult learning is distinct and identify the learning styles which suit them best. It is important to ensuring training programs are most effective by being developed with adults in mind.

Animal Ethics: Animal welfare ethics seeks to determine how animals should be treated. It draws on multiple streams of information to reach a moral judgment. Ethical decision making can be challenging and often the 'right' outcome is not clear. Ethical frameworks can be used to guide ethical decision making, weighing up the costs and benefits of a particular action

Animal Sentience: Animals are recognised as sentient beings that can be aware of their own feelings and emotions. This includes both negative feelings like pain, frustration, and fear as well as positive feelings like comfort, enjoyment, and contentment.

Animal Welfare: The World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) defines animal welfare as animals having the opportunity to be healthy, comfortable, well nourished, safe, able to express innate behaviour and the absence of suffering.

APEASE Criteria: criteria used to inform selection of behaviour change intervention strategies based on consideration of an intervention’s affordability, practicability, effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness; acceptability, side-effects/safety, and equity.

Attitudes: are feelings or opinions about something or someone, or a way of acting that is caused by such opinions or feelings.

Automatic Motivation: Motivation refers to the internal processes which influence our decision making and behaviours, Automatic Motivation: automatic processes, such as our desires, impulses and inhibitions.

Barrier Analysis/COM-B Diagnosis: The act or process of identifying or determining the nature and cause of a specific behaviour, as well as the factors that influence or discourage the behaviour.

Behaviour: a person or animal’s physical response to a particular situation or stimulus.

Behaviour Change Techniques (BCTs): BCTs refer to the smallest 'active' component of an intervention that has been designed to change behaviour e.g., self-monitoring of behaviour, restructuring the physical environment, feedback on behaviour. The technique be observable, reliably replicated, and irreducible. BCTs may be used alone or in combination with other behaviour change techniques and may support more than one category of intervention function. For example, the behaviour change technique of providing information about consequences of a behaviour is relevant to the education function, as well as the persuasion intervention functions if communications are invoking an emotional response to persuade.

Behaviour Change Wheel (BCW): the BCW provides a systematic and theoretical guided method for identifying the types of interventions and supporting policies that would be expected to be effective for a given behaviour, context, and target individual, group or population based on understanding of the context in which the behaviour occurs related to COM-B ('capability', 'opportunity', 'motivation').

Beliefs: a feeling of being sure that a person or thing exists or is true or trustworthy or an idea one accepts as being true or real.

Change Talk: “Change talk” refers to communication that supports opportunities for change to take place. Generally, refers to general refers to a person’s statements about their desire, ability, reasons and need for change. Eliciting change talk is an approach grounded in motivational interviewing and supports building motivation through conversations for change based on inquiry and self-reflection.

COM-B Model of Behaviour: framework for understanding behaviours which identifies three determinants of people’s behaviours, of which one or more may be required for behaviour to change to occur: capability, opportunity, motivation. Each of these behavioural components is further divided into two sub-factors including: physical and psychological capability; physical and social opportunity; automatic and reflective motivation.

Community: in the context of the C4A guide community refers to the local population of people who will be engaged in the project, with a shared identity and interests related to animal ownership, care and/or use, typically within a similar geographic location.

Community-based organization (CBO): an organization of and driven by individuals from the relevant community engaged in working together to meet the needs of its members or broader community related to their shared interests or issues.

Community Development: a process where community members come together to take collective action and generate solutions to common problems.

Community Engagement: is both a process (how we do things e.g., ensuring that communities have a say in decision making) and an outcome (to achieve something e.g., build relationships, or build capacity). In the context of the community engagement approach referenced in this guide, community engagement refers to the participatory process through which communities are involved, consulted, and their collaboration sought to make decision about improving their animal’s welfare.

Collaborate (Spectrum of Participation): work in partnership with communities in each aspect of decision making of the project including developing alternatives and identification of preferred solutions. Requires two-way communication flow between agency and communities to build trust, with cooperation observed as a strong sign of partnership. An example may include working together with a community to develop solutions and incorporate their advice and recommendations to the maximum extent feasible.

Collective Action: collective Action is a central theme of community development and refers to people working together to solution common problems or to achieve a shared goal that will have wider benefit than would be possible if individuals were to act alone.

Compassion: defined as the feeling that arises when you are confronted with another's suffering and feel motivated to relieve that suffering.

Compassionate Handling: Compassionate handling describes any interaction between humans and animals that avoids or minimises animal suffering and promotes animal wellbeing.

Consult (Spectrum of Participation): This level of participation requires information flow two way, both from organization to the community, as well as feedback or confirmation from the community side. Example may include keeping community informed, listening to their concerns and aspirations, seek their input on any proposed decisions or actions, and provide them with feedback about how their input influenced decisions. Consultation helps to build rapport with the community and develops connection.

Contemplation (Stages of Change): the second stage of the behaviour change process when people are aware of the problem related to their behaviour and are considering acting by weighing the pros and cons (e.g., a person doesn’t take preventative measures against animal disease despite being concerned about the health risks diseases pose). An individual may see the possibility of change, while also being ambivalent and/or uncertain about it.

Descriptive norms: Are people’s perception of what others do. They describe how people typically act, feel, and think in each situation.

Diversity: refers to the composition individuals who may participate in any given process, or rather the representation different groups’ perspectives, knowledge, skills, and lived experiences. Processes in which diversity is promoted recognise, respect and celebrate differences in people’s backgrounds and mind-sets, and as result facilitate greater creativity and innovation.

Ego States: transactional analysis defines ego states as the way in which we think, feel and behave, which make up our personality at a given time. There are three ego states which comprise how we think and feel including: Parent, Adult, and Child ego states.

Emotions: a conscious mental reaction (such as anger or fear) subjectively experienced as strong feeling usually directed toward a specific object and typically accompanied by physiological and behavioural changes in the body. Or a state of feeling.

Emotional Intelligence (EI): the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, and those of the people around you. People with a high degree of emotional intelligence know what they're feeling, what their emotions mean, and how these emotions can affect other people.

Empathy: capacity to see things from other’s people’s perspective and understand their experiences and how they feel. It involves sharing in others’ feelings and showing you understand rather than setting yourself apart from their experience and feeling sorry for them.

Empowerment/Empower (Spectrum of Participation): In the context of this guide, empowering refers to when people can take control over their lives/animals’ welfare by setting their own agendas, gaining skills (or having their own skills and knowledge recognized), increasing their self-confidence, solving problems and developing self-reliance. The community decides where it is now, where it wants to go, and plans to reach these goals, based on self-reliance and sharing of power. Most importantly, it breaks the mind-set of dependence on others, so the community acquires the ability to decide its own path. All decision-making lies with the community. An example is supporting communities to implement what they decide.

End-state Behaviour refers to the behaviours that produce the desired outcome. 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?” If another behaviour before needs to be performed before the desired welfare outcome can be achieved, the behaviour you have identified is not an end-state behaviour.

Equality: refers to each individual or group of people having the same resources or opportunities, and being treated the same regardless of their differences.

Equity: equity refers to treating people fairly based on their respective needs. Although this may mean that treatment will be different, it will also be fair. Equity has the goal of providing everyone with the full range of opportunities and benefits – the same finish line (as opposed to the same starting line sought by equality). Equity provides a means to achieve equality, by understanding the inequalities that exist and working to address them so that all groups have what they need to have equal opportunities.

Exit and Evaluation Phase: the exit and evaluation phase of a project is the phase out stage where the project has completed activity implementation, assesses monitoring results, and evaluates the project based on pre-identified criteria for exit, to determine whether to bring the project to a close. Alternatively, a determination may be made to adapt the strategy and continue the project to achieve additional animal welfare improvements and desired behavioural change.

Financial Capital: refers to a type of livelihood asset related to the financial resources people require to meet their livelihood needs including income, savings, credit, and collateral goods.

Five Domains: The Five Domains Model for welfare assessment recognises the dynamic integration of the basic functional processes within the body, the experiences animals may have and interactions between function and experience. It recognizes that positive welfare states can result from enhancing positive experiences as well as by minimizing negative ones. In this the way, the framework is useful for guiding the way animals are cared for by promoting they be provided with good nutrition, good environment, good health, appropriate behaviour, and positive mental experiences.

Five Freedoms: refers to a welfare assessment framework that looks at welfare outputs in terms of the ideal situations for animals which we should work towards achieving (the five freedoms), where each freedom is then linked to the inputs (resources and management practices) which are needed to reach that freedom. The freedoms include:
• Freedom from hunger and thirst through ready access to fresh water and a diet to maintain full health and vigour.
• Freedom from discomfort by providing an appropriate environment including shelter and a comfort-able resting area.
• Freedom from pain, injury or disease through prevention or rapid diagnosis and treatment.
• Freedom to express normal behaviour by providing sufficient space, proper facilities, and company of the animal’s own kind.
• Freedom from fear and distress by ensuring conditions and treatment which avoid mental suffering.

Focus Group Discussion: a technique where a group of individuals discuss a specific topic, aiming to draw from the complex personal experiences, beliefs, perceptions and attitudes of the participants through a moderated interaction.

Frame of Reference: a complex set of assumptions and attitudes which we use to filter perceptions to create meaning. These form a particular set of beliefs or ideas which we use to inform our judgment of things or how we evaluate information, communicate ideas, and regulate our behaviour.

Gender: refers to the socially constructed roles, responsibilities, behaviour patterns and attributes that a society considers appropriate for, and assigns to, men, women, boys, and girls. This social construction of roles and responsibilities creates the gender division of labour, and influences men’s and women’s access to resources, opportunities, power and decision making, which in turn influences power relations and reinforces gender roles.

Gender Accommodating: an approach to gender integration in which acknowledge projects/programmes/policies work around gender differences and inequalities to achieve project objectives. It often involves targeting men and women to participate in areas relevant to their traditional gender roles. Although this approach may result in short term benefits and realization of outcomes, it does not attempt to reduce gender inequality or address the gender systems that contribute to the differences and inequalities.

Gender Analysis: this is a technique used to gain a gendered understanding of the context in which a project or programme will take place. It is an important step in gender mainstreaming to develop gender responsive programming. Gender analysis seeks to examine:
• the differences in men and women’s lives
• the differences between gender roles
• the different needs, constraints, and opportunities, among other things.

Gender Aware: refers to projects/programmes/policies which examine and address the set of economic, social, and political roles, responsibilities, rights, entitlements, obligations and power relations associated with being female and male and the dynamics between and among men and women, boys and girls. Gender awareness may take the form of three approaches including exploitative, accommodating, or transformative. The overall objective of being gender aware is to integrate gender considerations so as to ensure projects/programmes/policies are not Gender Blind, and move away from exploitative approaches towards more transformative projects/programming/policies which promote greater equity and equality for all.

Gender Blind: refers to projects/programmes/policies which are designed without prior analysis of the culturally-defined set of economic, social, and political roles, responsibilities, rights, entitlements, obligations, and power relations associated with being female and male and the dynamics between and among men and women, boys and girls. Gender blind programs/policies ignore gender considerations altogether, and may be unintentionally exploitative or accommodating. They are much less likely to be transformative, as this presumes they would be proactive and intentional in their effort to promote gender equality.

Gender Exploitative: refers to projects/programmes/policies which intentionally or unintentionally reinforce or take advantage of gender inequalities and stereotypes in pursuit of desired outcomes. This approach is harmful and can exacerbates inequalities as well as undermine the objectives of the program in the long run. Under no circumstances should programs/policies adopt an exploitative approach since one of the fundamental best practices in CE and CD processes is the principle of “do no harm.”

Gender Mainstreaming: gender mainstreaming is a strategy for the achievement of gender equality which involves ensuring that gender perspectives and attention to the goal of gender equality are central to all projects and programming decisions including programme substance, processes and structures, and staffing. Perspectives of men and women should be understood and used to inform policy development, research, advocacy/dialogue, legislation, resource allocation, and planning, implementation and monitoring of programmes and projects at all levels.

Gender Relations: refers to the socially/culturally determined ways of relationship between men and women, including how power and access to/control over resources is distributed between the sexes.

Gender Roles: refer to the sociocultural expectations of behaviours and responsibilities deemed appropriate for males and females to exhibit in the private and public realm as a result of their sex, such as the distribution of labour burdens in terms of productive, reproductive, and community roles.

Gender Transformative: this is an approach to gender integration in which projects/programmes/policies seek to transform gender relations to promote equality and achieve program objectives. This approach attempts to promote gender equality by:
1) Fostering critical examination of inequalities and gender roles, norms and dynamics,
2) Recognizing and strengthening positive norms that support equality and an enabling environment,
3) Promoting the relative position of women, girls and marginalized groups, and
4) Transforming the underlying social structures, policies and broadly held social norms that perpetuate gender inequalities

Group Formation: a process of bringing individuals together to work together towards collective achievements involving:
• Forming: the first step in the stages of team/group formation involving the initial formation of a group or team. This usually includes basic introductions, getting a “feel” for your team members and who will work together well, and identify potential early problems.
• Storming: “Storming” can be thought of as “weathering the trying times that will come with the stresses of a project.
• Norming: the norming step simply implies settling down of members and finding their roles. They have accepted their position, they understand what’s expected of them, and can see how their position contributes to the completion of the project.
• Performing: At the performing stage, each team member does their duty, understands their role, can navigate conflict between team members with relative ease, and knows when to ask for support from higher-ups and when it’s not necessary.
• Adjourning: During this stage, the group members are concerned with wrapping up activities rather than task performance.

Human Capital: refers to a type of livelihood asset encompassing the skills, knowledge, the ability to work and good health people require to meet their livelihood needs.

Implementation Phase: The implementation phase of a project focuses on supporting the implementation of action plans, including monitoring and further capacity building as needed to achieve and sustain desired results. Depending on the length and nature of the project, adaptive management informed by monitoring may also be included in this phase.

Inclusion: Inclusion means creating an environment where everyone feels welcome and valued. An inclusive environment can only be created once we are more aware of our unconscious biases, and have learned how to manage them. Inclusive processes are those in which different groups’ contributions, presence and perspectives are valued and integrated.

Inform (Spectrum of Participation): provide objective information to promote understanding of a problem, alternatives, opportunities, or and/or solutions. The information flow is one way, whereby members of the community are provided information which is assumed to be useful for their benefit. This is more of sharing of information whereby communities are recipient of information. This level of involvement mainly supports in opening the communication channel. An example includes keeping a community informed about possible solutions to their animal disease issues.

Initiation Phase: in the initiation phase of a project, animal welfare issues, community interests and needs, and opportunities for behaviour change are identified.

Intersectionality: Intersectionality is understood to mean that social categories such as gender, ethnicity, nation or class cannot be conceptualized in isolation from each other, but must be analysed in terms of their “interwoven” or “intersections”. It refers to the interconnected nature of social categorizations as they apply to a given individual or group such as race, class, and gender amongst others, which act to create overlapping and interdependent systems of discrimination or disadvantage. Using an intersectional lens provides a framework for understanding the complexity identities different people or groups may have which different social groups within a community may face that may contribute to their differential access to resources, opportunities, influence and decision-making power.

Intervention Function: refers to nine broad categories of means by which an intervention can change behaviour including: education, persuasion, incentivisation coercion, training, restriction, environmental restructuring, modelling, and enablement. These intervention functions along with policy categories can be linked to the behavioural diagnosis resulting from COM-B analysis within an evidence-based framework for behaviour change called the behaviour change wheel (BCW).

Involve (Spectrum of Participation): work directly with communities to throughout the process to ensure that their concerns and aspirations are consistently understood and considered. This involves the creation of two-way communication with high levels of community participation in addressing issues that affect them is observed, Example may include ensure concerns and aspirations are directly reflected in any alternatives developed and provide feedback on how their input has influenced decisions.

Key Informant Interviews: are in-depth interviews of a select (non-random) group of experts who are most knowledgeable of the organization or an issue.

Life Positions: in transactional analysis, life positions are the basic beliefs about self and others, which are used to justify decisions and behavior There are four life positions described by transactional analysis which include: I'm OK—You're OK. I'm OK—You're not OK. I'm not OK—You're OK. I'm not OK—You're not OK.

Livelihood: A livelihood refers to a means of making a living, encompassed by people's capabilities, assets, income, and activities required to secure the necessities of life.

Livelihood Assets: refers to the resource base available to people to secure the necessities of life including the following interlinked assets: human capital, natural capital, financial capital, physical capital, and social capital.

Maintenance: The fifth and final stage of the behaviour change process where people are practicing the new behaviour and may require investing effort to continue it in the long-term (e.g., despite the ongoing effort required, a person continued guiding their traction animal without whipping for at least 6 months).

Motivational Interviewing (MI): Is a collaborative, guided style of communication which is designed to help elicit and strengthen people’s own motivations for change, and is particularly useful when people have mixed feelings about changing their behaviours. The foundational principles MI include 1) taking a collaborative partnership approach between the practitioner and client, 2) honouring the client’s autonomy to change, 3) evoke the clients own motivations for change, and 4) exercise compassion for meeting clients’ needs. The practice heavily relies on the skilful use of open-ended questions, affirmations, reflective listening, and summaries.

Natural Capital: refers to a type of livelihood asset related to the natural resource stocks from which resource flows and services (e.g. nutrient cycling, erosion protection) useful to livelihood are derived e.g. land, forests, water, air, biodiversity etc.

Non-Divisible Behaviour: refer to behaviours that cannot be divided or broken down into further actions. [31]

OARS: open questions, affirmations, reflections, and summaries (OARS) are the basic interaction techniques and skills that are used “early and often” when engaging with people to elicit their own rationales and generate their motivation to change. They reflect the foundational skills used within motivational interviewing (MI).

One Health: Is an approach that recognizes that the health of people is closely connected to the health of animals and our shared environment.

One-Way Communication: one communication is communication which goes only one way, from sender to receiver, and serves to inform, persuade or command, therefore meeting only the lowest participation goal of inform on the spectrum of participation. Due to its one way nature and lack of meaningful community participation, it is not considered a best practice in participatory community engagement or community development processes.

One Welfare: Is the concept that animal welfare depends on and influences human welfare and environmental sustainability.

Participatory Learning and Action (PLA): refers to approaches, tools and methods which enable and empower communities to share, analyse and enhance their knowledge of their life and conditions, and to plan, act, monitor, evaluate and reflect. Participatory Learning and Action (PLA) tools are often used to support participatory rural appraisal (PRA), which is an approach used to incorporate the knowledge and opinions of rural people in the planning and management of development projects and programmes.

Personal norms: refer to the individual's sense of self-ethical obligation to perform an action. They reflect the individual's sense of responsibility for implementing a specific action.

Patriarchy: Is a system of relationships, beliefs, and values embedded in political, social, and economic systems that structure gender inequality between men and women.

Physical Capability: Refers to having physical strength and ability/or developed skill to carry out the behaviour.

Physical Capital: refers to a type of livelihood asset related to the basic infrastructure that people need to make a living, as well as the tools and equipment that they use. For example, transport and communication systems, shelter, water and sanitation systems, and energy.

Physical Opportunity: opportunities related to the physical environment or resources which enable/hinder behaviour e.g., time, resources, locations, cues, physical ‘affordance’.

Planning Phase: The planning phase of a project focuses on further understanding the issues and opportunities for change identified during the initiation phase, and develops strategies, action plans, and indicators of success for improving animal welfare and changing behaviours. Preparation for implementation of action plans including capacity building as needed is also undertaken.

Pre-contemplation (Stages of Change): the first stage in the process of behaviour change in which people do not think that their behaviour poses a problem and have no intention of, or interest in, changing it (e.g., a person doesn’t feed their animal daily and doesn’t think it’s a problem). The individual is not yet considering change or is unwilling to change.

Preparation (Stages of Change): the stage in the behaviour change process when a person see the benefits and is motivated to change their behaviour to address the problem, and plans to act (e.g., a person is convinced of the benefits of grooming their animal but lacks the materials to do it). An individual is committed to changing, however may still be considering what to do.

Policy Categories: seven categories of policy of the Behaviour Change Wheel that could be used to enable interventions that affect behaviour including: service provision, legislation, communications and marketing, fiscal incentives, guidelines, regulation, environmental/social planning.

Psychological Capability: Refers to having the knowledge or understanding or emotional or cognitive or behavioural skill to practice the behaviour.

Reflective Motivation: Refers to reflective processes involving plans (self-conscious intentions), evaluations, beliefs about what is good and bad, and understanding weighing benefits and consequences.

Reactance: refers to the idea that people become upset when their freedom is threatened or eliminated, so much so that they attempt to reassert their lost freedom.

Reflections: reflections involve attentively listening to what someone says, understanding what they are saying, and then responding with a statement which reflects your guess about what the person meant, as opposed to asking the person question about their meaning. Often a question statement can be turned into a reflection by removing the inflection at the end and any query words at the beginning.

Relapse: Relapse is when a person reverts to practicing the problem behaviour, and may occur at any time, within any stage of behaviour change process.

Resilience: the ability of people to cope with external stresses and shocks by anticipating them, preparing for them, responding to them (either by resisting or adapting), and recovering from them.

Safeguarding: Safeguarding refers to protecting people and the environment from unintended harm caused by sexual exploitation, abuse, harassment, and bullying. The aim is to protect people, particularly children, at risk adults and community stakeholders engaged with a project, from any harm, abuse or exploitation that may be caused by them meeting anyone working for the project, or during the project’s work.

Self-Efficacy: people's confidence or beliefs about their ability to successfully perform a behaviour or execute a plan of action. Self-efficacy is influenced by a person’s a person's attitudes, abilities, and cognitive skills which are shaped by their lived experiences, social influences, and emotional and psychological states, and highly dependent on their ability to exert control over their own motivation, behaviour and social environment.

Social Mobilization: involves planned actions and processes to reach, influence, and involve all relevant segments of society across all relevant sectors as needed to create an enabling environment and effect positive behaviour and social change. It relies on participatory processes to involve community members in organizing for collective action toward a common purpose, and typically driven by the values and priorities of community stakeholders at the grassroots level as a means to achieve improved delivery of resources and services and meet community needs.

Social Capital: refers to a type of livelihood asset related to the social resources that people draw on to make a living, such as relationships with either more powerful people (vertical connections) or with others like themselves (horizontal connections), or membership of groups or organisations. Generally relationships of trust, reciprocity and exchange that the poor can draw on in times of need, and that lower the costs of working productively together. Like human capital, social capital has an intrinsic value; good social relationships are not simply a means, they are an end in themselves.

Social Opportunity: the interpersonal influences, social cues and cultural norms that influence the way that we think about things and act as barriers or motivators to behaviour change.

Social norms are the informal rules and understandings everyone abides by. They inform group members how to construe a given situation, how to feel about it, and how to behave in it.

Spectrum of Participation: The Spectrum of Public Participation was developed by the International Association of Public Participation (IAP2) to help clarify the role of the public (or community) in planning and decision-making, and how much influence the community has over planning or decision-making processes. It includes five levels of participation visually laid out from left to right including: involve, consult, involve, collaborate, and empower. The further to the right on the spectrum you go from inform to empower, the more influence the community has over decisions. It is important to note that each level can be appropriate depending on the context, and that they are levels and not steps.

Stages of Change Model: refers to Transtheoretical Model (TTM) of behaviour change which operates on the assumption that behaviour change is not linear, but rather a cyclical process in which individuals move through five stages of change: pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action, maintenance. Depending on which stage of change people are in, different intervention strategies will be effective at moving individuals to the next stage of change until they reach the final stage maintenance, the ideal stage where the behaviour is sustained. However, this model also recognizes that the potential for relapse is possible at any stage of change.

Summaries: a summary is a special type of reflection statement that brings together content from two or more statements someone has made. They encourage us to listen very carefully to what a person says, and when made, show a person that you remember and value what they say.

Sustain Talk: language which reflects a person’s desire for the way things are, their feeling of being unable to change, and/or their reasons for keeping things the same or needing to keep things the way they are.

Transactional Analysis (TA): a theory and method developed by Dr. Eric Berne which enables the examination of relationships and social interactions (or “transactions”) through determination of the ego state of the communicator (whether parent-like, childlike, or adult-like) as a basis for understanding their behaviour.

Two-way communication: two-way communication involves information being exchanged by both sender and receivers, where both sender and receiver listen to each other, gather information to work towards mutually satisfactory outcome.

Values: these are basic and fundamental beliefs that guide or motivate attitudes or actions. They help us to determine what is important to us.

Vulnerability: the diminished capacity of an individual or group to anticipate, cope with, resist and recover from the impact of an external shock or trend such as a natural or man-made hazard.

Zoonotic: A zoonosis is an infectious disease that has jumped from a non-human animal to humans. Zoonotic pathogens may be bacterial, viral or parasitic, or may involve unconventional agents and can spread to humans through direct contact or through food, water or the environment (WHO).