Paper title: Community Reflection Methodology (Suggested proposal) (Towards downward accountability & collective learning) Prepared by Awny Amer Morsy Monitoring, Research & Evaluation Consultant & Capacity building trainer with INGOs & NGOs Egypt ---------------------------------------- Submitted to INTRAC M&E conference-netherlands-june, 2011 Email: awnyamer@live.com Egypt: Mobile: 002-0101958673 Skype address: awnyamer Facebook: Awny Morsy Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 1
1. Introduction Community Based Monitoring (CBM) is focused on participatory monitoring & evaluation; and, this underpins the process of individual and collective learning. Although there is no unified definition what it is exactly, many development professionals as well as public service agencies tend to define it as a process where concerned citizens, government agencies, industry, academia, community groups and local institutions collaborate to monitor, track, and respond to issues of common community concern. However, CBM is considered as the cornerstone of the participatory Monitoring & Evaluation which mean "a process that leads to corrective actions by involving all levels of stakeholders in shared decision making" CBM has been widely used in many development sectors with much focus on those related to water and sanitation, hygiene and health related practices and education activities as well. Its increasing popularity can be traced back to being a multibenefit monitoring approach as it brings people together from different groups, sectors, and jurisdictions, to form partnerships. Community Reflection Methodology as a key drive to the CBM would be a participatory process to track what changes took place in a community/village in a given period of time. Since communities are unique, any approach to Community Based Monitoring should be appropriate to local context, a continually evolving process, and flexible to change. In other words, CBM needs to be versatile, iterative and adaptive. It involves four key interrelated phases: Community Mapping, Participation Assessment, Capacity Building, and Information Gathering & Delivery. In short, Community Reflection Methodology (CRM) provides the means to work together to gather and deliver information and to adapt to change, not as isolated communities, but as a network that learns from each other and shares resources. A coordinated network of CRM can provide standardized protocols, training support, and data management systems. It can also provide decision-makers with early warnings of health, education, and child s rights issues before they become catastrophes difficult to be contained. Additional efforts and attention should be given to support the community M&E initiatives particularly with the significant democratic/liberation movements and changes happened in some of the Arabic Countries such as Tunisia, Egypt & other Arabic countries. In this regard, the community groups should play a vital role during the crisis times to ensure the quality of programs carried out in the field using ownership principles. 3.0 Rationale (Why?) (Why we use the Community Reflection Methodology)? Any development initiatives initiated by external agents will not last long if the concerned people do not involve and take part. Consequently, programs should focus on the needs and rights of the community, which will ultimately establish people s ownership of the program and build a culture of effective participation. This ownership of the people will bring sustainability of the Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 2
development initiatives while the role of the organization will be as a facilitator during the life of the program/project implementation. Additionally, using such methodology will help us to move from focusing on things to people to promote the downward accountability to be used as drivers for social change. Finally, it is more suitable during the crisis & transitional times. 4.0 What is the Community Reflection Methodology (CRM)? Community Reflection Methodology is a participatory process to track what changes took place in a community/village in a given period of time; what was the situation before, and then to discuss how and why this changes took place. Community people would be able to visualize the changes through some of the suitable PRA techniques and then would discuss the path of changes, reason of changes, etc. So, the Community Reflection Methodology is a combination of some of community M&E techniques and tools. The CRM depending mainly on combining each of the Most Significant Change- MSC technique as one of the participatory M&E tools to capture the outcomes from individual perspective and promote the collective learning while the other community reflection tools such as the H-method, spider-net and the Mood-meter will be used differentially to capture the outcomes from community perspective using participatory /user friendly visual aids. Community reflection & learning Learning from what did not have the desired effect enables you to adjust your mental model of how the project works and work with more valid assumptions. Learning evolves starting with individuals raising important issues & questioning assumptions through group-based analyses that bring out different perspectives & information inputs. So, you'll need to plan for "Learning" through a series of reflective events. The optimal sequence of learning events follows reporting lines & hierarchies of decision making. Critical reflection in a project/program means interpreting experiences and data to create new insights and agreements on actions. Without critical reflection, your M&E data will not help you to manage for impact. Active discussions during meetings with primary stakeholders are vital if M&E information is to be shared, analyzed and acted upon. 5.0 Key players in the CR methodology (Who?) In the community reflection CBO and other community leaders will play the main role with the involvement of CBO members. Sometime participation of other local government representatives, partner NGOs, and government department become helpful. Roles of partners/ stakeholders in community reflection methodology Community Based Organizations (CBOs) will call a planning meeting in consultation with the program staff/ management. The meeting will decide the evaluation process, application of participatory tools. A team will be formed Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 3
jointly by the community (Community M&E team that the author formed at where the CRM has been applied) and the concerned program staff and nominate the persons to involve as evaluation team member from the respective organizations. Community people will play the main role in the evaluation. Plan staff will introduce and facilitate the process. Men and women of all age groups, occupations will be encouraged to participate in the evaluation. CBO leaders will inform the group members about the date and time of evaluation. NGO &, Govt. dept. Staff Community people Children, adolescent, adult, leaders Partner organizations/ Collaborator Advocate/ Lobby 6.0 Community reflection tools- How? Organization Program staff coordinator Participatory tools are used to conduct evaluation. The tools are generally visual and help all categories of people specially the illiterates to participate actively in the process. Some important participatory tools are presented below. It is suggested that the team should not use too many tools. Rather use of minimum tools with critical analysis of the outcome will give better results. The Community Reflection Methodology (CRM) is proposing the following two components that include 4 tools/techniques as follow: (1) Most Significant Change ( MSC) technique: The most significant change (MSC) technique is a form of participatory monitoring and evaluation to follow up and monitor the qualitative outcomes. It is participatory because many project stakeholders are involved both in deciding the sorts of change to be recorded and in analyzing the data. It is a form of monitoring because it occurs throughout the program cycle and provides information to help people manage the program. It contributes to evaluation because it provides data on impact and outcomes that can be used to help assess the performance of the program as a whole. The philosophy of using MSC is to promote collective learning among program participants stakeholders. It was designed originally to capture the outcomes resulted from the application of the different program interventions with the target groups. It involves the collection of Significant Change (SC) stories emanating from the field level, and the systematic selection of the MSC stories by panel of designated stakeholders or staff in addition to partners & beneficiaries. Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 4
(2) Participatory Community Reflection evaluation tools: Participatory tools are used to conduct evaluation. The tools are generally visual and help all categories of people specially the illiterates to participate actively in the process. Some important participatory tools are presented below. Rather use of minimum tools with critical analysis of the outcome will give better results. 2- A) Mood Meter: The Mood-meter is one of the Community Reflection Methodology tools & exercises that were designed to evaluate the performance of the program by a community. It can be used in both of small and large groups (5-20 persons). It is particularly useful/ appropriate for evaluation work at the community level and work with diverse groups of program beneficiaries. 2- B) H-Method: The H-method is a relatively easy participatory community reflection technique for generating data from participants to evaluate the achievement of objective of the program. This tool incorporates elements of ranking, consensus-building and evaluative approaches to a given issue. The appropriateness of this tool lies in its sequence and clear framework. The H- Method: Enables individuals and/or groups to record their own views and ideas in a non-threatening and open, yet structured, way. Foster individual expression as well as common understanding & consensus. Can be used in meetings, workshops, conferences & other group discussions. 2- C) Spider Diagram: The Spider Diagram is a relatively easy participatory community reflection technique for generating data from participants to evaluate the achievement of objective of the program. This tool incorporates elements of ranking, consensus-building and evaluative approaches to a given issue. As noted that this tool playing the same role of the above tool but the key difference between each of them that through using the spider diagram, you can evaluate and assess more than program at the same time on the national level of the organization scope of work. 7.0 Reporting & documentation Results of the participatory evaluation will be shared with all partners and primary stakeholders to understand the results of interventions. The partners Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 5
and the stakeholders will be encouraged to give feedback on the contents, process and the outcome of the evaluation. All findings of the evaluation including the lessons learned will be properly documented for future use. Exercise done during interaction with the community people will also be copied, documented and preserved at CBO and the program staff. Data compilation: combining MSC and Community reflection Changes recorded through MSC and information gathered using community reflection process would be combined to get a clear picture of the development and impact of the program at community level. Impact assessment using combined MSC and community reflections: Impact of any intervention can be seen as the benefit derived at secondary level or next higher level. It is just above the achievement of the program. Information and related analysis made through of MSC and the community reflections should be brought in the same platform to see the impact of the program intervention in the community. The individual stories of changes will be compiled according to domains. Similarly the achievement of the programs mentioned in the community reflections also compiled for each domain. Using of different participatory tools and critical in-depth analysis by the people will enable program staff and the CBO leaders to view both positive and negative impact of the interventions. The following flow chart will help the users to understand the process. MSC stories Community reflections Document changes due to interventions Document achievement of the program Domain-1 Domain-2 Domain-3 Domain-4 Domain-5 Social Impact of livelihoods of the community people Economic Environmental Institutional Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 6
The results/ changes can be recorded and documented with the following format: Domain/ Interventions Changes (MSC outcome) Achievement (Community reflection) Impact Conclusion The following chart diagram shows the summary of the implementation of the CRM as explained above. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 9.0 References Robert Chambers (2008). Revolutions in Development Inquiry: Institute of Development studies. Earthscan, London. Sterling, VA. UNICEF Regional office for CEE/CIS e in partnership with IDEAS, DevInfo, The World Bank and MICS (2009). Bridging the gap: The role of monitoring & evaluation in evidence-based policy making. CH 1211 Geneva 10 Switzerland, 2 nd reprint. Jennifer Rietbergen-McCracken & Deepa Narayan (1998). Participation and social assessment (tools & techniques). Library of congress cataloging-in-publication data- The international Bank for Reconstruction and development/the World Bank. Washington, USA. Marie-Therese Feuerstein (1986). Partners in Evaluation: Evaluating development and community programs with participants. Macmillan Publishers Ltd, London and Basingstoke. Perpetua Kirby, Claire Lanyon, Kathleen Cronin & Ruth Sinclair. Building a culture of participation. Department for Education and skills- National Children's Bureau, UK. Prepared by Awny Amer, May2011 Page 7