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. |
Keyword Search Tags
Project Phase:
Initiation Phase, Planning Phase, Implementation Phase, Exit & Evaluation Phase
Approaches for Working With Communities: Community Engagement Approach, Community Development Approach
Behavioural Drivers (COM-B):
Behaviour Change Diagnosis and Planning
Stages of Behaviour Change:
Preparation Stage, Action Stage
Project Support: Participatory Learning and Action Tools, Needs Assessment, Gender Analysis
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 |
| Welfare issue | Men | Women | Comments /reasons |
|---|---|---|---|
| Feed shortage | ○○○○○○ | ○○○○○○ | |
| Water shortage | ○○○○○ | ○○○○○ | |
| Lack of veterinary services | ○○○○ | ○○○ | |
| Poor shelter | ○○ | ○ | |
| Diseases | ○○○ | ○○○○○ |
| 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. |
Facilitation Notes
- It is important that participants have a foundational understanding of animal welfare prior to undertaking this activity. Consider conducting T32 Animal Welfare Conversations Tool, and/or T17 If I Were an Animal, T19 Animal Feelings Analysis, T22 Animal Welfare Transect Walk, prior to conducting this activity.
- 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.
Tool adapted from [71]