Applying place-based approaches to strengthen social and community support systems

Applying place-based approaches to strengthen social and community support systems

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As strategic partners of Spring Impact, we have been pleased to coordinate an international study of place-based approaches to early childhood development this year with support from the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation. The term ‘place-based’ was new to us, but it soon became clear how this way of thinking and doing underpins much of our work.

Place-based approaches shift the focus of development practice from projects and programs to place, meaning a particular sub-national geographic area such as a county, district, or municipality. The logic underlying these approaches is that wellbeing is closely tied to geography, and that improving the situation for people living there requires adaptive, responsive, and cooperative action by a diverse array of actors. Instead of prescribing a particular set of activities to address a complex social need or problem, place-based approaches compel a wide range of people from different sectors and sections of the community to ask, ‘How can we work together to make this a better place?’

This logic links social impact to locally-driven action. If wellbeing is closely tied to geography, and improving the situation for people living there requires adaptive and responsive action, then no one is better positioned to drive that action than the people most closely connected to that place. While many approaches to social and economic development value local participation and empowerment, place-based approaches frame local leadership, information, and decision-making as absolutely crucial to success.

This resonates strongly with our experience in social development settings. For example:

Stronger Communities for Children

The Stronger Communities for Children (SCfC) initiative strengthens capacity in remote Aboriginal communities to give children the best start in life. Working closely with our partners at Ninti One, and funded by the Australian Government, we have aimed to ensure that local people have a real say in decisions made about service delivery. In 2017, Community Works conducted a literature review on Collective Impact that informed the strategic framework used by Ninti One to design and implement SCfC. Since then, Steve Fisher has worked closely with local communities to plan, monitor, evaluate, and learn from the initiative. Their guide for measuring local change can be viewed here.  Listen to community board members discuss their experiences with SCfC here.

Mental Health Friendly Cities  

Community Works has supported the Mental Health Friendly Cities initiative since its inception as a key partner of citiesRISE, a global platform for transforming mental health policy and practice. The initiative focuses on urban municipalities as drivers of change, places where cross-sectoral cooperation to integrate measures for improving mental health can lead broader systems change. Mental Health Friendly Cities facilitate and leverage leadership by young people to change the narrative around mental health, improve access to support, foster social cohesion and create environments that are conducive to wellbeing. Coordinated action at the local level and sharing of knowledge across cities are crucial factors in identifying proven solutions and accelerating their uptake.

Grant Activity Reviews

In partnership with Ninti One, Community Works has been reviewing a government-funded program for socio-economic development in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities across Australia. These reviews are ‘place-based’ in the sense that evaluation teams take a holistic, cross-sectoral approach to understanding the impact of the program in specific remote areas, and determining strategies for improvement that build on local strengths and target the needs and aspirations of local people. Part of Community Works’ role in this work has been to prepare briefing reports that equip evaluation teams with rich contextual information about each place they visit, including local history, demographics, health and education data, culture, and topical issues that should be factored into the review process.

In each of the examples above, we work with our partners to take an in-depth, holistic look into particular places and how they function, in order to empower local people to drive programs and services that produce social benefits for the whole population. 

At Community Works, we understand that strong, healthy and empowered communities are basic building blocks for development. In our experience, place-based approaches are especially powerful when working with First Nations and other communities whose identities and belief systems are closely tied to land. From this cultural standpoint, place-based thinking is highly intuitive.

As national and international development agencies and funding bodies become more interested in place-based approaches, we see great potential for improving the alignment of large-scale initiatives with local agendas, value systems and ways of thinking. Investing in a place-based approach means supporting strong relationships between people working together for positive social change. It means strengthening information flows from communities to service providers to governments and back again. It means trusting the people most closely connected to a place to drive local decision-making, because they are the ones best positioned to lead progress toward a shared vision. For national and international agencies, it means playing a supporting role rather than the lead.

For all of these reasons, Community Works sees place-based thinking as both highly compatible with self-determination and highly pragmatic when it comes to achieving better outcomes for disadvantaged populations.  We look forward to contributing to the emerging evidence base on these approaches, and continuing to work with our partners to support best practice.

Click here to read our report ‘Scaling up place-based strategies to strengthen community early childhood systems’

Young Dark Emu: A new resource for conflict transformation in Australia

Young Dark Emu: A new resource for conflict transformation in Australia

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Over the school holidays, I had the pleasure of attending the launch of Bruce Pascoe’s new book, Young Dark Emu, along with my eight-year-old daughter. Young Dark Emu looks at the highly advanced land cultivation methods developed by Aboriginal people in this country through the eyes of early colonial settlers, who often struggled to make sense of what they were seeing. The book is written for children, but it is also very informative for grown-ups reading it with them.

There are three aspects of this book that make it a wonderful resource for transforming the way that Indigenous and non-Indigenous people relate to one another in this county:

  • What it tells us
  • How it tells us
  • How it links to broader conversations about Australia’s future

What Young Dark Emu tells us

Young Dark Emu tells us that Australia was a place of great capacity and innovation long before boats arrived from Europe. It gives us rich details about farming methods, fishing technologies, and the use of fire to manage the land. It teaches us that bread was invented right here in Australia, and points out the importance of this invention to humankind.

At the launch of his book, Bruce Pascoe explained that when he was growing up, he was taught at school that Aboriginal people were hunter-gatherers who roamed the land seeking opportunities to kill animals and pluck berries in order to eke out their subsistence. As he grew older, he began to realise that what he had been taught at school sat very awkwardly with what he learned from his grandparents and other Aboriginal elders, who described long histories of intentional cultivation of the land, and management of steady and reliable food sources. This tension prompted him to research the historical accounts of early colonial settlers to learn more about what they saw when they arrived.

Pascoe’s research sought a truer history of Australia, and Young Dark Emu makes this history accessible to children.  Its focus on land management and cultivation sheds light on a key point that has fuelled conflict in Australia since colonial times:

Before the British claimed Australia as their territory, they declared it terra nullius – which means ‘land belonging to no one’. Although they knew Aboriginal people lived here, the British argued Australia was not settled because there was no evidence of houses, towns, roads or farms. Britain used this reasoning to claim Australia (p. 44).

Young Dark Emu teaches us that houses, towns, roads, and farms did exist, along with a thriving economy and a grain belt that stretched across the entire continent. It also teaches us how the arrival of hooved and hungry animals decimated that grain belt and the economy it supported.

Speaking truth to conflict is well recognised as an important component in peacemaking processes, and has been identified as a crucial factor for reconciliation in Australia. Truth-telling is embedded in the Yolngu concept of Makarrata put forward in the key document produced by the First Nations National Constitutional Convention in 2017, The Uluru Statement from the Heart:

Makarrata is the culmination of our agenda: the coming together after a struggle. It captures our aspirations for a fair and truthful relationship with the people of Australia and a better future for our children… a process of agreement-making between governments and First Nations and truth-telling about our history.

Young Dark Emu is a powerful tool for Makarrata. Not only does it speak truth to conflict, it does so in a way that peacefully engages people from all walks of life.

How Young Dark Emu talks to readers

Speaking truth to conflict can be a painful process, and one that can either escalate or transform tensions. Research on communication in conflict settings suggests that howwe say things is even more important than whatwe say (Putnam 2006). Strategic communication requires careful attention to the emotions involved, the relationships between different people involved in the conflict, and the intended impact of the communication (Cloke & Goldsmith 2000). When we engage in truth-telling processes with the aim of transforming relationships between people with histories of conflict, it is extremely important to take care in how we express ourselves and, crucially, how our expressions of truth will be heard by people who are emotionally involved in the conflict.

Young Dark Emu expresses the truth about Aboriginal and colonial history in a way that is gentle and engaging. It recounts the stories of early settlers with empathy for their struggle to make sense of the new world they were exploring. For example, Pascoe acknowledges that:

Aboriginal farming would have looked very different to farming in England. Aboriginal people grew crops that were native to Australia and used tools and techniques suited to their environment (p. 33).

He speaks about colonial settlers in a way that refrains from spite, and gives credit where credit is due:

Charles Sturt was a good bushman and a great writer (p. 47).

At the same time, he exposes how entrenched racism limited the ability of many settlers to appreciate the advanced technologies of Aboriginal people. Rather than expressing his own thoughts on this, he offers the words of the settlers for the reader to judge. For example, after a detailed description of a fishing tool that automatically catapulted fish out of the water and onto a riverbank, one settler remarked that:

I have often heard of the indolence of the blacks and soon came to the conclusion after watching a blackfellow catch fish in such a lazy way, that what I had heard was perfectly true (p. 41).

When my daughter read that passage it stopped her in her tracks. ‘Lazy!?! How could he think that was lazy? That thing he was using to catch fish was genius!’  This opened a door for us to talk about prejudice and stereotypes, and laid groundwork for my daughter to broaden her perspective on race relations.

How Young Dark Emu links to broader conversations

Reading Young Dark Emu clarified, for me, how much all Australians have to gain from learning the true history of our country, and how much we have to lose from teaching Australian history as if it is something that really only began when Captain Cook landed here.

Recognition of Aboriginal history reinforces how important a First Nations Voice is to all Australians. I refer, again, to the Uluru Statement from the Heart:

We seek constitutional reforms to empower our people and take a rightful place in our own country. When we have power over our destiny our children will flourish. They will walk in two worlds and their culture will be a gift to their country.

By showing us examples of sustainable land management and food cultivation, Young Dark Emu demonstrates some very important aspects of the gift that a First Nations Voice offers us all.

By gently exposing the opportunities missed by early settlers to learn from agricultural technologies specifically developed for the new land that was confounding them, Pascoe’s work also shows us how racism and fear of ‘the other’ can derail human progress. It prompts us to imagine how life might be different if Australia’s first European settlers had embraced Aboriginal farming methods early on, if they had taken steps to preserve native food supply and carefully constructed aquaculture systems, if they had acknowledged critical fire management techniques.

As our country reckons with the growing challenges of climate change, we can no longer afford to refuse the gift of a First Nations Voice. The concluding page of Young Dark Emu presents our children with an impression of what is at stake:

Baiame, the creator Spirit Emu, left the earth after its creation to reside as a dark shape in the Milky Way. The emu is inextricably linked with the wide grasslands of Australia, the landscape managed by Aboriginal people. The fate of the emu, people, and grain are locked in step because, for Aboriginal people, the economy and the spirit are inseparable. Europeans stare at the stars, but Aboriginal people also see the spaces in between where the Spirit Emu resides (p. 73).

Pascoe shows us throughout this book why listening to the people whose culture evolved in tandem with the land we now share is crucial to building a sustainable economy. More importantly, he gets us to listen by teaching our children to take pride in the rich flora, fauna, and cultural heritage of the land where they live.

Young Dark Emu, along with Pascoe’s more in-depth publication, Dark Emu, are important tools for helping Australians embrace the gift of a First Nations Voice, give thanks, and pay our respects to the people it represents. In my ten years of practice with Community Works, it has been a privilege to witness and learn from the great ingenuity and innovation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. We welcome opportunities to support the traditional custodians of the lands that make up Australia, and commit to listening to their voices and following their lead.

Visual methods for working with community groups

Visual methods for working with community groups

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Visual methods

for working with community groups   

Steve Fisher

This article responds to requests we have received for more information on visual methods that enable productive conversations with community groups. These conversations may be around problems they are seeking to tackle, the planning of a project, the airing of views on a particular subject or other situations in which someone is facilitating a session with a group of local people.

Rather than provide a detailed description of each method, I will provide an overview and the key principles that underlie it. There are variations to each one and different ways they can be adapted to meet particular situations. I am not claiming that these methods have been developed by Community Works, although we have certainly come up with visual tools and adapted existing methods. But often good ideas have emerged from discussions and planning of workshops with our clients and partner organisations and tailored to the specific situation. This is especially the case over several years of working with Ninti One. Some of the methods described here have also been inspired by specialists in a particular subject. The best-known proponent of mind maps, for example, is Tony Buzan.

Timelines

We have written about the River of Time method in a separate article about working with Minyerri community with Enterprise Learning Projects. It involves a group of people drawing the key events relating to a project or a place in a river depicted by two parallel and winding lines on flipchart papers. The river then becomes the overall flow of the history of the project or place. During an evaluation for Amnesty International, we had a similar experience of inviting activists and staff in Latin America to draw their journey through the program we were evaluating. Some chose to draw a road, others a river and some presented a set of events linked together.

Another example of a timeline came from a training workshop we facilitated for Enterprise Learning Projects in which Aboriginal small enterprises participated. One of the most valuable parts was when we drew and discussed a visual timetable for setting up a new enterprise, from sitting under a tree to discuss the idea to opening to doors of a café or a used clothes shop, for example.

Whichever timeline method is used, the value lies in a group of people discussing what has happened over time as they draw it together and then, with the help of a facilitator, making overall sense of the story and learning from it.

stakeholder maps

This method is well-established in development practice. It is easily adaptable to different situations. The basic idea is to draw shapes that represent individuals, groups or organisations that have relationships with each other or to another organisation (such as your own). The lines and arrows that connect them, the colours used to draw them, the distance between each one, the size of each shape and their position within the scheme as a whole can be used to denote aspects of the current stakeholder landscape. For example, a government department might be a large shape while women’s groups in neighbouring communities might be depicted as small shapes with close and strong links to each other, if that represents reality.

We have used this method many times. Ninti One devised a sophisticated version shown in the photo below and which grouped service providers in a community according to the sector in which they worked (such as health or youth services). The groups in this workshop then moved individual stakeholders to show how they planned to manage relationships for the future benefit of the program.

Again, the value of the method is in the conversation that ensues. If people have a different view on how the pieces of a stakeholder map should be drawn, then we can all learn from those differences and why they have occurred. For example, a government department might communicate quite differently to the CEO of an organisation than the community-based workers.

Mind Maps

We have used mind maps to encourage and record discussions on specific subjects with groups of widely-varying numbers, from three people to eighty. They work well when the purpose is to encourage discussion on a single topic, like community attitudes on road safety or the quality of housing. In these situations, the topic is written in the middle of a large sheet of paper and the facilitator invites comments from the group. Everything spoken is recorded on the map and this encourages participants to become active in the conversation, because they can see their ideas being heard.

This kind of visual mapping is especially valuable for small group work in training workshops, for example, or with boards or committees. In focus groups, drawing the conversation on a whiteboard helps people who may be reticent to speak to people they may not know. Facing the whiteboard to do the exercise, rather than each other in a roundtable setting, can be easier for everyone at the outset, depending on local cultural considerations too. It can become a lively process as the group helps the facilitator draw the conversation and then develop and connect the branches of the map as it develops.

Mosaics

Using the principle that all these methods are simply ways to have a productive conversation that helps a community analyse, plan or better understand an issue, mosaics work well because everyone can easily get involved. The best recent example was the model of governance we worked on with participants at the recent Knowledge-Sharing Seminar for the Stronger Communities for Children program. As people suggested components or principles or good governance, we built up a mosaic on the floor that was then presented back to participants in a visual report produced afterwards.

Mosaics, tiles or jigsaw-based methods are very flexible too, as the pieces can be moved around and the words written on each piece can be changed as the conversation develops and new ideas emerge.

Trees

Given that most development work is about growing something (capacity, knowledge, products, confidence, etc.), a tree is a very effective visual method. We have found that they work well as a way for a group to become active early in a meeting, when we might all be a little shy and apprehensive. If there are many people in the room and likely to be others arriving late, drawing a tree shape on the wall and asking people to stick notes on the branches that represent achievements or results of a program is positive way to break the ice. People arriving after the session has started can easily pick up what is going on and join in.

Being clear about the purpose is important. For example, asking people to write the results of the project so far as leaves that are stuck on the tree is a good, strengths-based exercise. To be more analytical, fallen leaves could represent unfulfilled ideas and flowers or fruits could be skills, relationships or unexpected benefits that have been achieved. A watering can could be the ongoing work required to make the tree, and therefore the project, develop and grow. A lot can be done with the use of a simple tree device, so long as time is taken to properly read and share the contributions that everyone in the group has made and to reflect on what they mean for our understanding or the project as a whole.

 

All the methods above require one or more people to facilitate them. The role of the facilitator is to introduce the exercise, explain the purpose, encourage and support people to get involved, tackle any problems or doubts that arise along the way and then draw out the key insights.

Using visual methods without facilitating the process properly is risky. If participants lose confidence in the process, then it can be very difficult to maintain their commitment to further conversations and to achieve the purpose for which people have come together.  The facilitator helps the group gain most from the methods by encouraging them to learn from the information produced by each visual method.

Review and reflection instead of evaluation

Review and reflection instead of evaluation

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All development projects and programs need and deserve to be evaluated. A good evaluation measures impact, generates new knowledge on program design and provides insights on how to improve the work. An even better one engages participants and beneficiaries in the research required to conduct the evaluation.  

Sometimes an organisation will want to achieve some of these benefits but without a full evaluation. The reasons may be varied, including that their program is not fully implemented, they are trialling an idea with limited resources or they prefer an approach that is more exploratory than a typical robust third-party evaluation. In our experience, situations in which a more limited review or analysis of a project is being sought by an organisation are quite common. While a rigorous independent evaluation is valuable, there is also a role for more modest processes. The following examples come from our work:

Perspectives of users

The Eritrean Community in Australia asked Community Works to provide an overview of the views of the participants in their programs and the users of their services. We conducted surveys and interviews with a cross-section of people and provided the results in a summary report that enabled the organisation to gain insights they could not otherwise easily achieve.

Review of program strategy

Engaged by Prahran Mission, we undertook a short review of an existing program that was being replicated in a new location. The organisation wanted advice on what was working well and what could be improved. We reviewed program plans and reports, conducted interviews of key individuals and compared the strategies being used with good practice examples internationally.

Support to internal reviews

Organisations may consider they have the necessary skills to review a program, but require advice on the design and management of the process, the data to collect and how best to analyse it. We recently performed this kind of support role for an NGO that implements rural education programs, enabling them to research and review their programs using existing staff skills. The idea was not to replace an evaluation, but to reflect on the work to inform a new strategy being developed for the organisation.

Understanding a problem

Working for a client of Ninti One, we assisted the organisation to work out why a group of vulnerable people in remote Aboriginal communities were not making use of government services designed to assist them. By locating the individual residents and inviting them to talk to us about their lives, their needs and the suitability of the services on offer, we helped Ninti One produce the necessary analysis and recommendations that would enable improvements to the services to be made.

Case studies

It can be very useful for the story to be told of an individual or a family who has benefitted from a program. Working on a program review in Nepal, we went to visit former participants in a mental health initiative and asked if they could share their stories for the purposes of in the form of a case study. Achieving a story of this kind requires trust to be developed between the story-teller and the story-writer, which means that more than one visit is certainly necessary. The end result can shed light on ways in which an organisation can best anticipate future challenges faced by participants. In mental health, this may include overcoming discrimination from others that creates barriers to work.

In all these examples, and many others, a critical starting point is to define the question the organisation is seeking to answer. For the example above on understanding a problem, the question is obvious since the client needed to know why services were under-used. For others, bringing rigour to the process commences with identifying the right question. For example, a review might seek to know ‘how does our work compare with current leading practice elsewhere?’ or ‘how can we more closely meet the needs of the community?’.

As well as the methods described above, there can be a role for group work in mapping and analysing the work of an organisation. Please see our separate article on visual methods for working with community groups, which provides further examples.

San Isidro; diversity and organisation

San Isidro; diversity and organisation

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Carolina and Steve were invited to meet with people of San Isidro, a community in the Cauca Valley, Colombia. The purpose was to understand their achievements and priorities. In this way, we would also gain an appreciation of their work with Ecofuturo, who facilitated the meeting. Community Works is starting a conversation with Ecofuturo about how can we work together in the future.

San Isidro sits high in the diverse and hilly region of Cauca, at an altitude of almost 1,900 metres. The population is 144 people and most of the houses, church and other buildings are situated along a sloping main street. At the lowest point of the main street and the first building a visitor encounters, is Palo e’ café, an important space for local meetings and a café managed by women who live in the village. This is where we met a group of around eight men and women of different ages with the purpose of learning about San Isidro.

One key feature the group immediately talked about was the way in which the smallholdings of the community were managed in a way that integrated them with the forest areas to be found at this altitude. They described their ‘finca reservas’ or farm reserves in which they grew a multitude of fruits and vegetables, They showed as a display of the current products including coffee, bananas, yucca, tomatoes, avocados and citrus fruits. While we were there, a truck arrived to collect the latest crop of bananas.

‘Our fincas are productive’ said one of the community members ‘but prices for crops taken to market are low. To overcome this problem, we want to process our coffee here, for example, so we add value to the coffee beans by drying, roasting and grinding them into retail coffee’. They showed us some bags they had produced. ‘But the cost of taking the beans to a processor is high and the investment in our own machinery is too much. So we have started using a hand grinder here in San Isidro’.

Ecofuturo is a non-government organisation that implements projects with communities to increase the long-term sustainability of their productive activities. San Isidro was a founder member of the organisation some twenty years ago. The farm reserves initiative is typical of their work and they showed us other projects including the planting of wildlife corridors between paddocks used for cattle and a place where a biogas digester has been built. We saw the Reserva Natural Campo Hermoso, which focuses on sustainable cattle farming and the Reserva Natural Vista Hermosa, which is for household food security. We also spoke with women who work in the Reserva Natural Pescadores.

One aspect of San Isidro that really stands out to a visitor is the degree to which the community organises itself. There are various groups and associations that enable the interface between people and natural resources to be managed in line with the objectives of the community. An example is Ayuda Mutua (Mutual Help). As the group explained, ‘Ayuda Mutua is a time each week that all the owners of smallholdings in the farm reserve work alongside each other so they can share their labour, offer each other advice and solve problems together’.

Despite the progress the community has made, they perceive a threat. Local people have been leaving the area. The population of the district has fallen by nearly a third in the last thirty years. Those with land have been selling their smallholdings to companies that combine them into large avocado plantations, some of which occupy the catchment for the river that supplies water to several communities in the region. People in San Isidro fear that high levels of use of agro-chemicals for large plantations will damage the local environment, especially through contamination of the water. ‘All existing vegetation will be removed to make way for avocados’ they said ‘It goes against the idea of diverse plantations that we have been cultivating for many years’.

As we left San Isidro and descended to the town of Bolivar, we could see rows of stakes in the ground and stretching into the distance. They marked the places where each avocado tree would be planted.

Steve Fisher, 23rdSeptember 2018

Some reflections on mental health for World Refugee Day

Some reflections on mental health for World Refugee Day

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World Refugee Day. My mother was not a refugee, but she wanted to be.

My mother was not a refugee, but she wanted to be. Her family applied for protection visas to escape the war unfolding all around them in Europe, but by the time they gained entry to the United States the bombs had stopped dropping. They fled to Austria from Germany, where my grandfather had been the conductor of the Radio Berlin Orchestra. The year my mother was born, he was dismissed from his position for refusing to fire Jewish musicians. Sensing the growing dangers in Berlin, the family moved to Salzburg, where the Nazis soon expanded their occupation. My mother spent the early years of her life running from air raids, hiding in caves and under bridges, scrounging to get enough food, and fighting to survive serious illnesses that kill many children of war. Today, as she turns 81, she is putting the finishing touches on a novel based on this history, dovetailed with the history of my father, a U.S. soldier who ran through blood-red water at Normandy on D-Day and then survived the Battle of the Bulge.

When I was growing up, both of my parents still struggled with their mental health and wellbeing as a result of their wartime experiences. They were both plagued by terrifying nightmares, episodes of depression, and irrational fears concerning my safety. My father was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) when I was a teenager, and the illness made our home life extremely tense and unpredictable. It also had economic impacts as he became progressively incapacitated by the condition, and was no longer able to maintain his small business. My mother was pulled in all directions at once: caring for him, caring for me, and trying to keep a roof over all of our heads. This compounded her own challenges to mental health and wellbeing, and her resilience during the final years of my father’s life – and indeed the years following his death – still astounds me.

As a product of this environment, it is no surprise that I have spent much of my career studying peace, conflict, mental health and wellbeing. This year, the intersection of these elements has featured prominently in our work with the World Psychiatric Association (WPA). Last year, the WPA announced a new direction that prioritises the mental health and wellbeing of people facing conditions of extreme adversity, including the traumas inflicted by war. With most of the world’s 25.4 million refugees living in countries with less than one psychiatrist for every 100,000 inhabitants, community-based initiatives will be vital to this effort. For this reason, the WPA has sought research and advice from Community Works to develop its implementation strategy.

As part of this work, I was pleased to prepare a briefing paper to support a WPA planning workshop held in Madrid earlier this year. Specifically, the paper was created as a resource for the Alliance Project, which is being developed in partnership with the Juan José López-Ibor Foundation to better address the mental health needs of people affected by war, natural disasters, and other emergency situations. The paper reviewed the international evidence surrounding post-emergency mental health and wellbeing, and provided examples of how psychiatrists have supported communities to integrate psychosocial interventions into emergency response systems.

The work of the Alliance Project is important because war and other emergencies interrupt life for the people and communities affected by them on multiple levels:

  • Individuals who survive the initial trauma often face physical and practical challenges such as homelessness, hunger, injury, and disease.
  • At the same time, many also face the emotional distress of losing loved ones, livelihoods, and their sense of safety and stability.
  • Socially, survivors are often left with a narrower and less predictable support network as their family, friends, and community members struggle with similar physical, practical and emotional challenges.
  • Many of the people who engage in the task of supporting survivors are also survivors themselves, adding yet another level of challenge (Cohen 2002).

Left unaddressed, these complex psychological and social challenges can compound to generate further impacts at the community level, including endemic family violence, political and economic instability, and barriers to long-term peace (Whiting 2015).

Young children, in particular, require better psychosocial support following violent conflict, a point that stood out strongly in the literature we reviewed. In places with little mental health infrastructure, interventions designed to fill the gap face great challenges reaching entire populations of children. A systematic review of mental health and psychosocial support interventions for children affected by armed conflict in low- and middle-income countries found that:

Overall, interventions appeared to show promising results… However, these positive intervention benefits are often limited to specific subgroups. There is a need for increased diversification in research focus, with more attention to interventions that focus at strengthening community and family support, and to young children, and improvements in targeting and conceptualizing of interventions (Jordans et al. 2016, p. 8)

As the work of the WPA and the Alliance Project moves forward, it will continue to build from the existing evidence base to develop better support systems for communities affected by war and other widespread emergencies, with special attention to generating better outcomes for children and young people.

My role in this work will be to continue providing research support and evidence-based guidance. This includes coordinating a publication that Community Works will produce in partnership with the WPA and citiesRISE to inform mental health and psychosocial interventions for people facing conditions of persistent, extreme, and complex adversity.

Community Works will share that publication later this year, and I especially look forward to sharing it with my mother, who knows first hand that children who live through war need all the support they can get.

To all the refugees out there, I pay tribute to your strength, resilience, and determination to seek out a more peaceful life. I encourage you to tell your stories, which the world very much needs to hear. And to my mother I send wishes for a very happy birthday.

The complex mosaic of health promotion

The complex mosaic of health promotion

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World Tobacco Day

Tobacco smoking is a major contributor to cancers and respiratory diseases, but also has an impact on cardiovascular health of people worldwide. It is a key risk factor for the development of coronary heart disease, stroke and peripheral vascular disease. Since 2015, Community Works has contributed to the work of the National Best Practice Unit for Tackling Indigenous Smoking or NBPU-TIS. Tackling Indigenous Smoking (TIS) is a major program with the aim of reducing the numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who smoke. Professor Tom Calma is National Coordinator for Tackling Indigenous Smoking and he regularly draws our attention to key facts on smoking on Australia, including the information below from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
The Australian Government, through the Department of Health, supports TIS. Nearly forty organisations have joined this national effort and their teams design, implement and monitor a range of activities to raise awareness of the health effects of smoking and reduce numbers of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people who smoke. The more we work on this program, the greater insights we gain on the complex and inspiring efforts of health promotion workers across the country. They run groups for pregnant women, produce and distribute materials in various forms, support champions and ambassadors for quitting smoking, promote smoke-free events, homes and workplaces, run social media campaigns and lead a wealth of creative activities all around Australia. As with good community development practice, it is often the ‘entry point’ to a discussion that is the most critical part of the process. Some organisations offer make-up sessions for women as a starting point for a discussion about health. Others have developed innovations like breakfast meet-ups to encourage men to think about the start of the day, which is often when smoking can replace good food, having further impacts on health. This year, the role of Community Works with the NBPU-TIS has been in the facilitation of six state and territory workshops for TIS plus one at national level, together with the delivery of training activities for health workers and related materials. This year World No Tobacco Day is on 31st May. The theme of the day is the impacts of smoking on the health of your heart. Coordinated by the team from Bega Garnbirringu Health Service, participants at the recent Western Australia state workshop and training day produced a video for World Tobacco Day. We are pleased to share it here:
Why workshops about Development Practice?

Why workshops about Development Practice?

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Workshop in Cochabamba, Bolivia:
“Five Key Questions for Effective Development Practice”

Sometimes when designing or implementing development projects I get the feeling of how easy (and dangerous) it is to forget that we are not alone in this. It is easy to forget how other practitioners might be facing similar challenges and how communities around the world might be having similar needs and interests, despite the particularities of their cultural context.

With this in mind, our team has seen how workshops about development practice serve as a space for sharing experiences, as well as exchanging ideas about tools and frameworks that might help to improve practice. An example of this is the workshop organised by the TIA Foundation and offered by Community Works at the start of this year (2018) in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

When the workshop was first advertised, staff, members, founders and directors from local non-governmental and civil society organisations expressed their interest in participating. Due to the high demand, a second session was offered in order for all the 40 people to be able to participate. The level of interest, summed to the participation and the results of the evaluation forms, helped us to understand the value of these events.

Importance for development practice

The Cochabamba workshop was structured around five key questions that CW often hears from non-governmental staff and volunteers from the development sector. Thus, having an idea of topics that could be relevant for development practitioners. The information from the evaluation forms filled by participants after the sessions in Cochabamba, made us think about how these topics are important for people working in this sector.

Participants were representatives of different civil society organistaions, working in areas such as education and health, with different groups of people including the elderly and people with disaiblities. Despite their areas of focus, it was evident how they had similar challenges, needs and questions. For example: How can I best design a project? Or, what methods for community engagement should I use?

When filling the evaluation, participants mentioned a shared view about the importance of the components of the workshop for the work they do. Some of them agreed about the importance of evaluation, impact analysis and participatory evaluation. Others referred to the importance of the Sustainable Livelihoods framework, specifically to the asset pentagon as useful a tool when working with communities.

Value for other actors

The case of Cochabamba showed us how this type of workshops might have a ‘snowball effect’, since it is valuable for participants as well as for other actors and organisations related to them. 100% of the participants responded yes to the question about the workshop being valuable for other people they know. The largest group said it would be valuable for other people from their own organisations, others mentioned people working in the social area, universities and communities with which their organisations work. This also made us think about the potential for building/strengthening a network in Cochabamba.

Moreover, participants also referred different opportunities for applying the content of the workshop, including internal processes happening in their organisations, project design, reflecting about their work, specific projects (Eg. working with youth, housing processes). Someone also mentioned how this content might motivate change in development practice.

Wanting to continue and learn more…

Throughout the evaluations, participants also expressed interest in wanting to learn more about some of the topics as well as continuing the interaction with Community Works. Some participants proposed continuing having workshops, access to more information and one mentioned the possibility of having consultancy from CW.

For example, Some of the topics people would like to continue learning about include Monitoring and Evaluation; Replication and scaling up strategies and Project Design. Also, specific tools such as the Asset Pentagon since it allows groups and communities to visualize the capitals they count with when developing projects.

Commonalities within development practice…

While working with civil society organisations and communities I have questioned myself about the pertinence of using similar frameworks, approaches, tools and methodologies with socio-cultural groups that seem so different between them. There is always the option of ‘cultural adaptation’, but I have wondered if this is enough. However, while I was preparing the materials for the workshop, as well as while analysing the evaluation forms and writing the report, it was evident how despite differences and particularities of contexts, there are some shared challenges, needs, and priorities, that evidence the importance and value of sharing, even if we are from opposite sides of the world.

Accordingly, the workshop served as a space for identifying commonalities amongst development practitioners, including shared challenges, priorities and needs.

Thinking Development Practice and approaching reality as ‘a whole’

Perhaps because of funding, effectiveness and practicalities, we might end up focusing only on a specific area, topic or targeted population of the social sector. This might lead to a fragmented view of reality and sometimes we also miss the value of strengthening networks and tools that could improve our practice by sharing experiences and tools for this common trail.

In this case workshops appear as a space that help us bring all of this together, share similar challenges and discuss common denominators, rather than looking at specific situations in an isolated matter and hence approach social reality and development practice a whole. The expression of wanting to continue the work with Community Works also showed us the relevance of strengthening our relations and networks with Latin America, building bridges between countries around the world.

  • Do you think that creating these spaces for sharing might enrich development practice as a whole?
  • If this is something that works, how can we create more spaces to share, reflect and strengthen networks between development practitioners around the world?

You can read about the content and evaluation of the workshop in the following report:

Read the report in English
Leer el informe en español

The art of making toolkits

The art of making toolkits

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In the development sector, toolkits refer to a set of information that is brought together with the aim of providing guidelines for best practice or to orient the implementation of a model or service.

The art of making toolkits

During the past six months I have been involved in the process of developing a toolkit while working as part of the team of Community Works. In the development sector, toolkits refer to a set of information that is brought together with the aim of providing guidelines for best practice or to orient the implementation of a model or service. They contain one or more documents that present procedures and methodologies related with a given approach, as well as practical exercises, reflection questions or recommendations to be used as tools by implementers. Toolkits are helpful for organisations that are expanding or scaling up their model, serving as a way of transmitting the information and orienting decision-makers or program managers. Also as a training guide or textbook for field-based workers.

Throughout this process I noticed two ideas and I would like to share them with you. First, the knowhow and experience of Community Works has led its team to develop toolkits as an art. Knowing what needs to be done, Community Works has the capacity to facilitate a consultation process – not as a method that follows rigid steps, but as an artistic endeavor oriented to create a document as a product. This is similar to the case of an architect who goes through a creative process with the aim of designing a building or structure with a functional design.

Second, the toolkit development process has the power to generate an intangible and sometimes unexpected result: the growth and development of the organisations and actors involved. Besides creating documents and materials, the process itself operates as a platform for organisations to reflect and discuss, as well as bring together experiences and ideas. Toolkit development serves as a ‘mirror’ – reflecting gaps, strengths, and points where operational decisions need to be made. Although this might be confronting, it also serves as an invitation for development and growth.

Toolkits as an art

Approaching toolkit development as an art relies on the ability of learning the rules first. Throughout the experience of creating toolkits, Community Works’ members have learnt what works best. Examples are the importance of doing fieldwork and talking to those delivering and receiving the service, asking for the necessary documents and materials and knowing how to ask the right questions. Once it is clear how to combine these elements and how to navigate oceans of information, the possibility for creation intensifies. With experience comes the ability to identify patterns without trying to control the non-linearity and other characteristics that require an artist’s mindset to approach this process.

  • Non-linearity: Developing a toolkit requires constant consultation and discussion between the client and Community Works. Spoken dialogue is a key element of the process, especially at the early stages of the project. This might include Skype discussions, in-person workshops or phone conversations. Additionally, written drafts might go back and forth, exchanging comments and feedback. In some cases, it is necessary to come to previous versions and even re-write some sections. Rather than trying to look for a linear process, I learnt to embrace this non-linearity and sense the richness that this ‘messiness’ brings to the table.
  • Bringing the threads together: Creating a toolkit involves bringing together information from diverse sources as well as ideas from different people. Also, different clients and projects may require different approaches and it is only until the work begins that this becomes evident. There is no model for how to do this, so it requires the intuitive skill of an artist, weaving the threads that might seem ‘loose pieces’ to make a design that effectively delivers a message.
  • Language and writing style: Finding the appropriate ‘toolkit language’ and writing style requires time and sensitivity, as well as consultation with the client organisation.
  • Graphics, images and text: Every element of the toolkit has a reason for being there. It is meant to complement in a creative way the rest of the information in that same page. Finding the right balance is also part of the art.

The non-linearity of the process, the diversity of voices and information, the language, as well as the challenge of finding a balance between graphics, images and text, require more than following a recipe’s steps. Connecting the dots and bringing the different threads together is not the work of an isolated artist, or of Community Works on its own, but a process in which all the actors involved are immersed.

Toolkits as a mirror

Understanding toolkit development as a mirror, allows us to grasp its potential. Toolkits become an opportunity for growth since it is through the process of ‘telling the story’ that strengths, gaps and inconsistencies become evident. Besides allowing organisations to materialize their models, information and procedures to be shared with others, it serves as a platform for internal growth.

Has it happened to you that when ‘telling the story’ to others you might notice new elements you were not aware of before?

Well, something similar happens when developing a toolkit. Although things might seem clear and defined – divergent perspectives or things to be defined often show up. Furthermore, this process might bring together voices of people within an organisation that might have not shared a common space before. This is why toolkits might generate this ‘mirroring effect’, which might generate discomfort to the people and teams involved, including Community Works!

It was surprising to see how this ‘mirroring effect’ transcends the client/consultant divide, and turns into a process in which everyone is involved. In some cases Community Works asks questions or give recommendations that might contribute to the process of the client. However, in some occasions this happens the other way around. The questions and recommendations of the client end up enriching the content of the toolkit.

However – despite the temporary discomfort the process might bring, the good news is that it offers an opportunity for working out those situations. The urgency of decision-making needed for developing a toolkit, encourages the actors involved to discuss, reflect and decide what will be communicated in the documents. For example, some members of the client organisation might argue how partner organisations should follow the same data collection tools, while others will claim this is something for Project Managers to decide. During the process of making a toolkit this divergence might be identified, and members of the organisation are encouraged to make a decision with the aim of presenting this topic in a clear way.

Participating in a toolkit development process has been an inspiring experience, evidencing the richness that comes when bringing together different teams and groups of people. At the end, the mirror that reflects towards both sides evidences the power of dialogue between two individuals or groups of people. It is from this interaction, questioning and mirroring that gaps and tensions are identified. Although the process might be confronting, it also offers the possibility of growth by opening a space for discussion and negotiation. This also shows how dialogue serves to navigate chaos and messiness to arrive to a more clear, beautiful and functional design.