Getting Prepared: Seven Key Lessons from Remote Community Visits

Getting Prepared: Seven Key Lessons from Remote Community Visits

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Community Works and Ninti One visit Ngukurr to document key achievements of the Stronger Communities for Children program in Ngukurr. Pictured left to right: Ian Gumbula, Daphne Daniels, Kirsty McKellar.

Despite their remoteness, communities in hard-to-reach locations across the Northern Territory are receiving outside visitors as often as every week.

When I visited Ngukurr in Arnhem Land earlier this year, I was surprised to hear about the frequency with which consultants were visiting the community. Once a week or more, government staff, independent consultants and employees from private firms were flying in and out of Ngukurr, often staying for days at a time.

These visitors come to oversee projects their departments are funding, to monitor and evaluate progress and achievements, and to complete independent research or studies, and more. Many come to measure their deliverables, outputs, outcomes and impacts … however we know from our work in the sector that not all spend time considering how to engage with the community in a meaningful, respectful manner.

What struck me in Ngukurr was how appreciative people were around how we conducted our work, leading me to start asking questions about what other people were doing that was so different to our own practice. Below are seven lessons I drew from these conversations.

Check rules of entry

Check rules of entry for whether you need a visitor permit or pass to visit the community. You can find this information online through council or state and territory websites. Some of these communities have strict rules that you must follow. For instance, some remote Indigenous communities are dry communities where alcohol is prohibited.

Complete desktop research

Complete desktop research on demographics; know the Traditional Custodians and/or clan groups, what languages are spoken, the population and any other information that can better prepare you. Many of these details might look different upon arrival, but at least you’ll enter with some sense of the community make-up. You can find some of this information on the AITSIS website, the Australia Bureau of Statistics data website, and regional and local council websites.

Contact appropriate community members

Contact appropriate community members well in advance of the dates you’d like to visit. In some instances, this means connecting with Traditional Custodians, and in others, it could mean finding and speaking with key community leaders. Even better, plan your visit with a local consultant who knows the community and who the community knows and trusts.

Decide together on a suitable date

Decide together on a suitable date for the consultation to take place. Like anywhere, people appreciate being consulted on when they can meet and have time to be fully engaged in the conversation. I have seen situations where dates have been set by consultants, only to be completely rejected by a community because they were not discussed prior. People lead busy lives, and it’s unreasonable to expect communities or local organisations to give up their time at the drop of a hat. Find a time that works for the community. 

Come with an offering

Come with an offering, especially for group meetings such as Focus Group Discussions. An offering like lunch, snacks or tea and biscuits is usually appreciated and demonstrates you value and are thankful for the participants’ time and contribution.

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Remain flexible

Remain flexible throughout the duration of your stay. Remember, people lead busy lives, and a consultation may not be at the top of their priority list. People have paid work, domestic labour and other work obligations, sorry business and other community commitments too. Be open to meeting with people at a later time than planned or on a different day.

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Ask yourself: is my visit necessary?

Ask yourself: is my visit necessary? In many instances, you are likely to get richer, more in-depth and accurate information by speaking with communities in person. The community may also prefer you meet them in-person, rather than correspond online. However, if you feel your work may not require a community visit, you should be weighing up whether you think the benefits elicited through your visit outweigh the disruption to community your stay might bring.

Taking the time to plan out your visit is pivotal to meaningful community engagement built on mutual respect. Working with community stakeholders throughout the process will ensure there are no unpleasant surprises for the community during your visit, and will lead to a better experience for both yourself and the community.

Making MEL easier

Making MEL easier

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Monitoring Evaluation and Learning, often called MEL for short, is the practice of collecting and analysing data on a project or program. MEL enables project progress, impacts and performance to be measured and lessons to be generated for improvement of future work.

So many organisations with which we collaborate or provide support in Community Works struggle to achieve an effective approach to MEL. It is either something they feel ill-equipped to do, a reporting burden or a reluctant add-on to projects that are already underway. Many teams rarely appear that they are comfortably and competently managing MEL as a key part of their work.

For MEL to be truly integrated to project work, this situation needs to change. Part of the problem is that MEL is a professional discipline all of its own and one that is akin to research. But most program staff do not have a research background. When educators or health workers or community development practitioners take up a position with an organisation, they are often not acquainted with MEL because it has not been part of their formal training or even their previous experience. Faced with the complex task of defining indicators to measure, collecting data relevant to each and then analysing the data, it is not surprising that they appear overwhelmed. This is especially true where organisations do not already have their own data collection processes and systems.

So, what can be done? Here are suggestions that draw on our experience at Community Works:

Bring in community voices

Most staff working in community or non-government organisations, or for directly for government agencies, are accustomed to speaking regularly with the users of services or with participants in projects. Part of their job is to build trust and rapport with people in the community.

To make MEL easier, these strengths ought to be harnessed. In other words, some of the data collected should bring the perspectives of the community into the data by asking community members what their experiences have been since the project started. A small number of well-designed interviews and focus groups can provide high-quality data and rich insights into projects and programs.

 

Choose indicators with care

Some changes are complex to measure and may require extensive work to develop indicators and then work out how to collect meaningful data. Examples are community resilience or effective governance.

Rather than trying to design a framework for MEL that encompasses the full complexity of a subject, it may be valid to choose aspects that are more measureable and to focus on those. In the case of resilience, a measureable component is the level of confidence that people in the community feel about the steps they will take when a future emergency occurs. For governance, a key element could be the development of the skills of the chair and other members of a community board.

Use Theories of Change

A Theory of Change (or ToC) describes the key cause-effect relationships that underlie a development intervention. The discipline of focussing on the basic rationale for a project or program can help us decide with greater clarity exactly which data we need to collect.

Working with project teams, I have frequently concluded that more time devoted to discussing a ToC and less time spent on brainstorming indicators will lead to a better plan for MEL. Developing a ToC may be yet another discipline for an overstretched project worker to learn, but the benefits justify the effort. The discipline of developing a ToC can be valuable for anything from a single project activity, like a women’s  group or a learning activity at a drop-in centre, to a major program scheduled over several years.

Less can be more

A few times recently I have been asked to review logical frameworks that represent the designs of projects or programs. Sometimes the column that includes indicators is very long. In other words, there are too many indicators. The impression is that the project team has thought of every single measure that could be applied but nobody has then culled the list to one that is manageable. One to three indicators per activity is usually enough for a logical framework. For a project or program as a whole, then between four and eight indicators ought to suffice.

 We must always keep in mind that practising MEL costs time and money. Focussing on a smaller number of indicators is more efficient and less overwhelming for a team to manage than trying to apply a comprehensive set of measures that cover every aspect of the project. There is little to be gained from adding more indicators if the existing ones already enable effective MEL.

Direction of travel

For positive changes that can take years to realise, such as changes in attitudes and beliefs, it is unrealistic to expect a project of one, three or five years in duration to achieve those changes. In these situations, MEL should therefore concentrate on indicators that represent positive steps towards those longer-term goals. We call this the direction of travel. For example, for an individual or a group of people to show greater awareness of the health effects of smoking is an important step towards a change of attitude towards smoking.

Coupled with use of a Theory of Change, being clear about the direction of travel is valuable in reducing unrealistic ambitions of MEL, making it less daunting and more effective for even small organisations with limited resources to use effectively.

Rather than MEL being a burden for many teams and therefore done either poorly or not at all, it can be made easier. As a result, the value of doing it becomes apparent again. With data on the difference that projects and programs make, we are in a better position to know whether they are actually working. And we also learn why that might be the case and how to improve our work in the future.

The nuts and bolts of strengthening community organisations

The nuts and bolts of strengthening community organisations

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The nuts and bolts

of strengthening community organisations

Steve Fisher

Many years ago I had the opportunity to work with communities of Quechua-speaking people in the high Andes of the north of Peru. In one instance I was part of a team conducting a needs assessment to work out what programs or services a local NGO might be able to offer.

In one of the first communities we visited, we stopped in the street to talk with one of the senior men. It was cold and misty. He was wearing a big hat and a thick poncho. He looked weathered by the climate. We asked him what programs already existed in the community, especially supported or managed by government agencies. His reply was ‘el estado no llega aquí or ‘the state doesn’t reach here’. He seemed surprised we didn’t know that.

This experience, and many others since, have often led me to think about ways in which social development needs are best met if the government doesn’t arrive, which is the situation for most needs in most communities in many countries. The other options are the private sector, non-government or civil society organisations or the community itself.

Of course, the state might not be the best option anyway. During a recent project, I learned that a single department of the Government of Victoria (a state in Australia) has contracts with over a thousand NGOs, funding them to provide access to social services. Of course, this arrangement depends on the government having the resources, the mandate and the responsibility to support services in this way. Without budgets, then NGOs are not in a position to sustain services. And if service users are not able to pay the full cost, then the private sector cannot sustain a viable service either.

And so we arrive at local or community-based organisations. There are many very effective examples which are unknown beyond their own location. Two years ago in rural Colombia, my colleague Carolina and I visited an organisation that provides education and support services for children with disabilities. Their work is largely sustained through volunteers and contributions from local people and businesses. While we were working there a store owner delivered a donation of food and our accommodation was provided free of charge by a nearby hotel.

The Community Works team often discusses with community organisations how they can strengthen their work. We have been volunteers ourselves and so we have insights too. Faced with the day-to-day challenges of supporting their participants, few organisations have the time to reflect. Sometimes they don’t know what they don’t know. But given space to think about ways to strengthen their work, we commonly hear the same questions, which I share below with comments on approaches that have previously been effective in my experience.

How can we build our technical capacity?

If we take the example of community mental health and its myriad sub-divisions like suicide prevention and support for people who are lonely and isolated, organisations can often feel lacking in clinical skills if there is no trained mental health specialist on the staff. The same applies to a number of fields that benefit from or require specialist technical knowledge, which in the social sector include aged care, disability services, early childhood development and many others.

Without suggesting there are easy answers to any of these challenges, in a situation where technical capacity is lacking a sector development strategy can be a worthwhile option. This means that organisations work together as a group and seek external advisors to support the sector as a whole. The economies of scale can make specialist technical support more affordable and the prospect is more attractive to specialists because they have the opportunity to support a wider range of situations. I have seen versions of this approach work well in India and Sri Lanka, for example.

 

How can we innovate?

Organisations often have many ideas but few tools to develop what has inspired them into a project with objectives, a plan, milestones, resources and a means to sustain itself. Introducing methods like a theory of change, logic models, conceptual frameworks and a structured way of preparing a design document can be an empowering, even liberating experience, because it helps organisations crystallise what they might have been talking about for a long time.

A facilitated workshop can be a very effective way of supporting the process of turning an idea into a project, as I have seen on multiple occasions. Our publication The Facilitation Mosaic, available on the Community Works website, provides guidance on making workshops work.

 

How can we strengthen our management and governance processes?

The ways in which decisions are made and leadership and management works are often greatly influenced by the skills of people with often diverse backgrounds. Many local people who volunteer for organisations or are members of their board often have strong skills and experience, but from sectors unrelated to that of the organisation that are supporting. A foster care organisation may have a local estate agent and a solicitor as board members, for example. This is helpful, but they may lack social or development sector knowledge and will not necessarily know what good practice is, outside the professional disciplines that they come from. For that reason, organisations sometimes worry about whether they are governing and managing in a way that follows what might be called good development or social sector practice.

Again, there are tools, methods and best practice principles that can help. For example, collecting data on participation and impact for the work of the organisation is essential in any effort to build support and funding. Ensuring that strategies exist for community engagement and protocols for cultural safety are other important steps. Grounding the work of the organisation in published research and knowledge of a field of work is essential. All these elements of strengthening management and governance can be achieved by seeking external support or networking with others working in the field. A good example in Australia is SNAICC, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, and the National Rural Health Alliance, both of which hold national conferences that are milestone events for many organisations and their staff.

How can we attract funding?

Many community organisations are not compliant with conditions that apply to philanthropic funding. They might lack a board, a strategy, proper registration or a constitution. And even if they do comply, the skills to prepare a compelling application for funding might not be available to them. We have also seen situations in which organisations struggle to find time to reply to enquiries from interested funders, such are the constraints to their management capacity.

It is too easy to suggest here that training is the answer, but training plus a period of support and coaching for a few months or more can make a huge difference to the ability of an organisation to tell the story of its work in a way that is competitive when it comes to applying for funding. Again, we have seen it for ourselves.

To conclude, this article comes from a belief in the value and the positive impact of community-led initiatives in social development. While their achievements are immeasurable, there is no doubt that so much more can be done when organisations are able to grow and become stronger. How to develop better strategies to strengthen community organisations is a subject worthy of much more attention.

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’

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.

The problem of changing theories of change

The problem of changing theories of change

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The theory of change method of planning has rapidly grown in significance for organisations working in social and economic development.

Wherever I work these days, someone is developing a theory of change and I often get involved in the process.

It’s good because the whole approach helps us all to think about the cause-effect relationships that underlie the design of a project. For example, if an investment if to be made in local decision-making processes for using infrastructure budgets, the underlying theory is that local people will make more effective decisions on the use of funds than outsiders, leading to better results for the community.

Simply stating this theory and discussing it enables us to work out where the weakness in the logic might be found. In this case, can we be sure that local people have the technical knowledge to make infrastructure investment decisions? If not, then the project design needs to be changed to make sure that expertise is available to them in a timely and appropriate way.

I used ‘logic’ above, which is not a word associated with theories of change because they tend to be seen as an alternative to logic models. And logic models continue to be criticised as being linear engineering approaches to tackling messy, complex social problems. But a peculiarity of some theories of change is that they often look like logic models.

We have a problem, which is that the pure form of theory of change is being messed with. As a result, multiple methods are emerging and which have the same name but which are quite different in character. Here are three different types of theory of change I have seen recently:

  • Flow diagrams that show how one activity links to another over time, with boxes joined by arrows and not much in terms of testable theories shown.
  • Vertical logical frameworks turned on their side, complete with the usual input-activity-output connections in the middle.
  • A list of statements on how an action will lead to a result.

All the above were called theories of change.

Here’s a suggestion. Let’s use both logic models and theories of change for project design and planning processes. A theory of change is a way of testing the key cause and effect relationships that underpin the project. We ought to identify those relationships and work out whether there is evidence to support them. This is a good starting point for a conversation with a project team or a community group. For example, I was in a planning workshop and someone said ‘we need to get the elders to talk to young people about their anti-social behaviour’. The theory of change was that senior people talking to young people would lead to less anti-social behaviour.

It only took for this statement to be written on the board for people to start raising questions like ‘How do we know that young people listen to elders?’ or ‘Do the elders even want to do this?’. Once the testing of basic ideas had progressed for a while, we were ready to write a logic model. In this case, one of the activities prior to writing the logic model was to talk to a group of elders to find out whether and how they might be involved.

So, once all the theories of change are worked through, we ought to have a basis for preparing a much better design for a project than would have been the case. After that, using a logic model will be more effective as it should avoid us jumping to simple linear ‘solutions’ for social problems that simply may not respond that way.