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HAND BOOK FOR MOBILIZERS
ISBN: 92-1-131401-1 – UN: HS/543/98
How Nature loves the incomplete. She knows
If She drew a conclusion it would finish Her.
Christopher Fry
Preface:
This handbook is the result of six years of mobilization and
community management training in the Community Management Programme,
executed by UN-HABITAT and implemented by the Directorate of Community
Development of the Government. (While originally designed for Uganda,
it is now being used in dozens of countries on five continents).
Many lessons were learned over these years, some by success,
some by failure. Through it all, we have seen the potential strength
and amazing resilience of the communities.
What we have come to realize is that all communities, no
matter how poor, have resources (many that still need to be identified)
that can be tapped, so that they, and all of the society , can develop.
To release and best use this huge national resource, mobilization and
management training are needed.
This handbook (one of three companion handbooks) is intended
to show how those potential resources can be released for sustainable
development.
It is intended for Government, NGO, professional and voluntary
mobilizers everywhere. We pray that it is useful to you.
Phil Bartle, Chief Technical Adviser
Laban Mbulamuko, National Coordinator
Community Management Programme
1992-1998
Introduction:
Community participation does not happen by itself. It must be
stimulated and encouraged. This book is aimed at those who wish to
initiate that stimulation.
This is a "how-to" book, intended for community mobilizers who
want to stimulate social change in a community in the direction of more
development, poverty eradication, better governance, increased
integrity and transparency in the management of community affairs; in
short, empowerment of that community.
There is therefore a minimum of history, theory, ideology and
description here, and an emphasis on the needed skills and
understanding of concepts useful to community workers.
Who should use this book? While this book is primarily aimed
at new mobilizers in the field, we encourage planners, administrators
and managers to read it, if your responsibilities include those same
goals of community strengthening.
This is the first and core book in a series of three companion
handbooks. The others, which complement this, are: "Handbook
of Monitoring and Evaluation" and "Handbook
of Wealth Generation".
At the end of the document are a series of links to guides and notes for trainers using this hand
book.
1. Getting Prepared:
Before you can successfully stimulate self help development in
a community, you must prepare yourself. You must be clear and
knowledgeable about your goals; you must know about your target
community; you must have the required skills; you must understand the
fundamental concepts of mobilization.
The first thing to do now is to start a journal. An
inexpensive school notebook is OK. You might wish to use four notebooks
and title them: (1) Goals and Concepts; (2) The Target Community; (3) Mobilizing
Skills, and (4) A Day-to-Day Journal record.
However you choose to organize yourself, it is important to
start making notes and records now. Write with your replacement in mind
as your reader.
This chapter informs you of the things that you need to get
prepared. Do not assume, however, that you can get prepared "once and
for all." We mobilizers are continually learning more and more about
all the things mentioned in this chapter. It is a never ending process,
and we will be doomed to failure if we ever think we know it all.
1.1. Know Your Goals:
One of the slogans we use in management training is, ."If you
do not know where you are going, then any road will do." (See "Slogans.") This applies to you, too, in
preparing for mobilizing.
It is easy to run around, looking busy, arranging meetings,
getting latrines constructed, talking to community leaders, moving
advocacy groups, stimulating action, without moving forward in
accomplishing genuine community strengthening. You need to clarify your
goals, first to yourself, then on paper, then to those around you.
Here you should begin writing in your journal, or the section
of it you have set aside for goals and concepts. You must set them as
your own goals, not think of them merely as a list of someone else's
ideals.
The goals of mobilization
to develop a community may vary from person to person, community to
community. Nevertheless, there are common elements. These include: poverty eradication, good governance, change in social organization, community capacity development, empowering low income and
marginalized people, and gender
balance.
As you go along, reading this hand book, engaging in
mobilization, you will see that each of these goals becomes more
interesting and challenging, the more you know. Go back to your journal
often to update, refine, and add details to all these goals.
Poverty reduction, for
example, is more complex and challenging when you work with it, in
contrast to just listing it. We learn to avoid "poverty alleviation" because that
merely temporarily alleviates the pain and discomfort, and does not
lead to a durable solution.
Poverty is not merely the absence of money (as you will see later in these
handbooks) and attacking the causes of
poverty means fighting apathy,
ignorance, disease, and dishonesty. That is only one
example where your understanding of the goal expands through experience.
Similarly, good governance does not simply mean strong leadership
and efficient administration. It also means transparency, people's
involvement, trust, honesty, and a vision for the future.
You will learn, also, that you can hardly expect community
leaders to be (or become) transparent in their use of community
resources if you yourself are not transparent in your community
activities.
Look in the: Glossary of Key Terms,
for introductory discussion about these goals (poverty reduction,
community development). Compare them to your notes in your journal.
1.2. Know Your Target Community:
Another proverb that we use in community development is, "The
potter must know her/his clay." Your clay is the community. You want to
mould it, develop it into something strong.
To do so, you must know a lot about the community (and about
the nature of communities in general). You must know as much as
possible about its social organization, economy, languages,
layout (map), problems, politics, and ecology.
Your research should not be merely to get a list of unrelated
facts; you need to analyse them to understand the nature of community
as a social system. (See What is Community?).
A good start is to make a map.
Where do people live? What facilities are in the community? (eg roads,
paths, water supply, clinic, school, sanitation, market and other
communal facilities and services). Think about how the different
elements are related.
Later, when you lead community members through an assessment
of the community situation (resources, needs, opportunities, problems);
you will guide them in making a community map.
Doing one now for yourself will help you to prepare for that
participatory activity later.
Put your notes into your journal. Make observations
about the community's: Social organization, economy, language(s), politics, shared values, traditions, and its
relationship to the physical environment (ecology). Continue to analyse
how the different elements relate to one another.
You will learn that a community is not merely a collection of
individuals, but a system that transcends those individuals. As a
system it has various dimensions,
technological,
economic, political, institutional, ideological and perceptual.
People come in and go out of the community, by birth, death and
migration, yet the system persists. And it is always changing.
Your job is to understand that system so you can nudge that
ongoing change in certain directions (as indicated in your goals we
discussed earlier). There is a lot you can learn about your target
community, and you should never stop.
1.3. Know the Skills You Need:
The skills that you need as a mobilizer are not exceptionally
difficult to learn, but can be very powerful tools. They can be
misused. As an analogy, think of the skills of a lock smith. A
locksmith performs many useful and valuable services, but they can be
misused for breaking, entering, and theft.
As you learn mobilization skills, use them for the benefit of
the community, not to benefit yourself at the expense of the community.
Since your target group is the community as a whole, most of
your needed skills belong to communication
abilities. You need to learn how to be a public speaker, but not just
any kind of public speaker. The kind of public speaking you need to
know is the kind needed for leadership and facilitation.
You must learn how to draw information and decisions out of a
group, which requires a full understanding of your goals and a relaxed
confidence in front of people. You must be able to recognize preaching,
lecturing, and making speeches, and avoid those styles.
The technical skills you need as mobilizer include: public
speaking, planning, managing, observing, analysing, and writing. The
best way to learn these is through being self taught. You also need to
develop a personal character that is honest, enthusiastic, positive,
tolerant, patient and motivated.
You have to know how to listen and understand when people
talk. You have to know how to ensure that information is accurate. You
have to know how to illustrate a point and make it interesting to a
listener. You do not preach like a preacher; you do not make speeches
like a politician; you do not lecture like a professor.
You need to learn how to remain confident while sensitive to
others while standing among or in front of many people. You need to
know how to know and to like people. You need to know how to avoid
being self centered, vain, or arrogant. You need to know how to lead a
discussion without being bossy, dictatorial or sarcastic. Teach these
to yourself.
You learn these skills by doing
(not by just reading a text book). If you went to classes in community
development, and only sat and took notes, you did not get the best
training. You should practice, first in front of your classmates, then
in front of a community group.
Since you must organize
community groups and form executive committees, you need some
organizational skills. Since you also strengthen by giving management
skills, you need management
skills. Since you guide community groups through their own
planning, you need some planning skills yourself.
Since you guide community groups through their own planning,
you need some planning skills yourself. financial
records and accounts, you need some accounting skills yourself.
Since you guide groups in writing reports
and need to write your own reports, you need writing skills. Learn by
doing.
You need to know how to learn a language fast, (see An Aural Method to Learn an Oral Language) and to
become familiar with several languages in a community.
More than just technical skills, you need to have some
personality characteristics that are necessary for success as a
mobilizer. (Look at the training handout: To
Be a Mobilizer).
Your reputation is
your strongest asset. If you are known to be honest, diplomatic, fair,
hardworking, moral, clean living, tolerant, enthusiastic, humble, and
forthright, your reputation will assist your mobilization efforts. If
you are not, seek a different calling or vocation.
1.4. Know the Basic Concepts:
What is development? Community development? Community participation? Poverty? Community?
Empowerment? Transparency? Sustainability? (These words are
discussed in the "Keywords.")
To be a successful mobilizer, you need more than a few
technical skills in public dialogue and organizing groups for action.
You need to know why to use those skills. You need to know principles.
If your target is a community, then you should know some sociological concepts about the nature
of communities and the nature of social change (including development)
of communities. This means that you need some understanding of social
organization, the subject matter of sociology, anthropology, economics,
politics, and the forces and processes that belong to those
disciplines. (See "Culture.")
Right now it is not necessary to have a university degree, but
you should teach yourself the principles and knowledge of those
subjects.
If you want to strengthen (empower) a low income community,
you must understand the enemy, which is the dependency syndrome. (See: "Dependency").
If your aim is the removal or eradication of poverty, you need
to know more than the symptoms and results of poverty. You also need to
understand the causes of poverty, in order to support and promote
changes that will counteract those causes.
You must see that poverty alleviation merely reduces the pain,
temporarily, but does not contribute to poverty eradication. Poverty is
not merely a question of money, and
money alone will not eradicate poverty. (See the companion to this: "Handbook of Wealth Generation").
If you look in "Key Words," you
will find a fairly comprehensive list of basic concepts for the
community worker. (Hyper links to all the appendices are listed below).
With each you will not find a dictionary definition; you will
find a few notes relevant to the purposes of this hand book: how to be
a mobilizer.
Do not memorize those notes. Think about each concept. Discuss
them with colleagues at meetings, conferences, workshops. During your
relaxing times, after work with friends, take a little time away from
discussing football scores to talk about one or two of these concepts.
Trying to learn "once and for all," is like trying to eat,
"once and for all." Learning, like community development, should never
end. When you stop learning, you are dead.
1.5. Outside Resources:
As a mobilizer, you will find that it is difficult to find a
balance between resources that originate outside the community, and
those from within. You and the community executive will be under
considerable pressure to bring outside resources into the community.
Donor agencies want to help, while community members want to
receive. You know, however, that bringing in outside resources
contributes to the dependency syndrome
and reduces the chances of sustainability and self reliance.
Yet there are ways to maximize the strengthening ability of
using outside resources as illustrated by the story of Mohammed and the
rope. (See Telling Stories).
If you can convince an outside donor to provide some costs of skill
training, management training, and mobilization, and assist the
community in obtaining most of its own construction resources, you can
contribute to self reliance and sustainability.
If the Prophet had merely given food to the beggar, he would
have been training the beggar to be a beggar; by giving him some advice
and capital instead, he assisted the beggar to become self reliant.
This handbook does help you in obtaining outside resources, as
in Project Design, which can be used
for preparing effective proposals. Like any powerful tool (eg fire),
these skills can be misused, and may contribute to poverty in the long
run. Use them well, and for the correct ends.
2. Getting Started:
In the previous chapter you read about some of the things you
need (as a mobilizer) to do and learn in order to get prepared. In this
chapter you will read about getting started, yourself.
You do not get the community into action until you take action
to prepare it for action. Your getting started phase is the community's
getting prepared phase.
After raising awareness among the authorities, and getting any
necessary permissions for you to do your work, your next task is to
raise awareness among the target
community or communities that you want to mobilize and strengthen.
Raising awareness among the authorities mainly means (1)
explaining your goals and (2) methods, and (3) convincing them that
they can benefit from your success. Remember that you will find
resistance to social change, and often those with the most vested
interests are among this target group.
Raising awareness among the target communities means
explaining your goals and methods, and also means taking positive steps
to prevent the raising of unrealistic expectations. Ensuring accurate
information and interpretation will be your biggest concern here.
This chapter shows you how to get started.
2.1. The Mobilization Cycle:
There is a logical and functional social process of
strengthening a community. It varies in length and some details, but
the pattern remains basic. Your role is to initiate the process and
follow it through.
The Mobilization Cycle here
is just one example, borrowed from the Uganda Community Management
Programme, of the process. Yours
will vary from community to community, from time to time, and according
to your resources available, your employer's policy, or other
circumstances.
The essential process is something like this: First you get
permission and authorization to do your work. Then you start raising
awareness in the community that there are problems. You caution against
people assuming that you will solve the problems but point out that the
community has the potential resources to solve its own problems. All it
needs is the will, and perhaps some management skills which you can
help them get. You facilitate their community unification, assessment
and agreeing on a priority goal. You help them to organize an executive
committee, or revitalize an existing one. You help them prepare an
action plan and project design. You cheer them on as they, not you,
implement it, ensuring that there is transparency, monitoring,
reporting. You help them celebrate its completion, then evaluate the
results.
The second assessment starts the process all over again, which
is why we call it a cycle. The
second time they are stronger and more self reliant, and perhaps you
have identified local mobilizers who will help sustain the cycle as you
slowly withdraw.
You repeat the cycle as appropriate.
2.2. Clearing the Pathway:
Before you begin working in your target community (or
communities), you must have obtained both the needed permissions, and
also the active co-operation, of the authorities and leaders
responsible for the area.
Remember that you really have two targets (beneficiaries), not
only (1) the community but also (2) the authorities who are responsible
for the area that the community is in. Your goal for each community is
to strengthen it by promoting self-help actions. Your goal for the
authorities is to work towards sustainability by moving towards an
enabling context or environment (political and administrative) around
and above the community.
Your goal for leaders (political and informal), administrators
("bureaucrats"), and technical experts is to persuade them from being
"providers" to becoming "facilitators of self help by the communities."
This is no small job. When politicians can claim they "provide" (eg to
provide any communal facility), then they obtain popularity and votes.
They are likely, therefore, to have a vested interest in the "provision
approach."
Likewise, when administrators and technocrats can claim they
"provide," then they believe (often rightly) that they will enhance
their careers and obtain promotions. They may have a vested interest in
not changing to "facilitators." Your strategy is to demonstrate and
convince them that they will benefit by abandoning the "provision"
approach and moving to a "facilitating" approach.
The truth is that, if they shift from a "provision" approach
to an "enabling" approach, in time, they will benefit. That is because
every community has hidden resources
that will not be identified and used so long as outside authorities are
expected to provide all the resources.
If the community gets the responsibility to provide its own
facilities and services, and given management training to do so, many
hidden resources are revealed and used. If leaders and responsible
authorities shift to an enabling approach, the resulting strengthening
of the communities can become the bases from which they can obtain
their popularity, votes, career advances and promotions.
It is your duty to demonstrate that the "provision" approach
may benefit leaders and authorities in the short run, but is not
sustainable, whereas the "enabling" approach contributes to genuine
development and growth which benefit them in the long run.
To the extent to which you can convince the authorities of
their benefits from strengthening communities, you will more easily
obtain permission to work, obtain their active co-operation, and
counteract vested interests that would seek to hinder the strengthening
and self reliance of the communities.
To obtain clearance or permission from the authorities, it is
useful to provide them with some documentation, referring to official
policy, agreements and memoranda of understanding (MOU), that you might have. (This depends
upon your circumstances). As you do, explain to them how they will
benefit from having stronger, self reliant communities in their areas
of responsibility.
If your budget and work plan allow, this is the time to
organize a workshop for sensitizing authorities.
2.3. Awareness Raising:
After you have prepared yourself, and obtained clearance from
the authorities, it is time to encourage the community to take action.
You begin this by calling for a public meeting with all members of the
community. This starts the "awareness raising" phase of the cycle.
You may find a tendency for only some persons to show interest
in attending a meeting. Maybe men will come and assume women should
not. Your job is to ensure that women attend. The same with other
people who need to be encouraged: the youth, the disabled, the ethnic
minorities, the shy people, the religious minorities, the illiterates,
the very poor, and the marginalized.
When you start talking about community problems, and asking
what their priority problems are, there will be a tendency to assume
that you are there to solve their problems for them. You must
counteract this assumption and explain that they have to solve their
own problems; you can only assist and guide them, not do it for them.
Similarly, they may assume that you will provide resources.
Quickly and firmly squash that assumption, explaining that they must
identify and provide their own resources; you can only assist and guide
them in doing so.
You will learn to use stories, proverbs and analogies to
illustrate your points. One of those is: "Do not ask a cow to give you
eggs; do not ask a chicken to give you milk." You are there to provide
management training and encouragement; you are not there to provide
money, pipes or roofing material.
You can not expect people to avoid making assumptions. They
will. You must actively and publicly contradict those assumptions that
will falsely raise their expectation (that you provide resources). If
you do not, then you will find destructive disappointment later that
will undo all the work you have done. People will claim that you
promised them resources but that you failed to keep your promise.
So if you want to raise awareness, then awareness about what?
Remember that your goals differ from the goals of the
community. They may want a water supply, clinic, school or road. You
want the community to become strong and self reliant, reducing poverty,
increasing gender balance, improving governance.
The awareness you want to raise is that, no matter how poor
the community is, it has the potential to solve its problems, to become
stronger. All it needs is the willingness to do so, and the management
training that you can provide.
Providing accurate information is important (avoid raising
false expectations).
2.4. Unity Organizing:
I mentioned above that you should ensure that women attend the
community meetings you call (exception: conservative Islamic
communities). Also: the disabled, the youth, the aged, the very poor,
the disenfranchised, the marginalized, the shy and retiring. This is
part of your strategy of unity organizing the community.
See Unity Organizing. Every
community has forces pulling it apart.
These may be based in differences in clan, ethnic group,
religion, class, gender, age, education, physical and mental abilities,
occupation, income, wealth, land access (owner, tenant, squatter,
other) and other characteristics that divide people.
It is important that, as a mobilizer, you are seen as neutral
(like a referee), not allied to or favouring any faction. This means
you must know the community very well. If you spend much time with some
people, others may feel you are biassed.
Do not be afraid in public to mention the differences and
factions in the community, but then quickly point out that you are not
aligned with any faction or factions.
Remember, too, that you are not aiming at making the community
homogenous (all the same), but unity of the community means all
factions are loyal to the community as a whole and, in an atmosphere of
tolerance, all people understand and respect all others, irrespective
of religion, class, clan, gender, ability, wealth, ethnicity, language,
or age.
A unified community is a pre-requisite to identifying a single
community priority problem and goal.
2.5. Public Dialogue:
For both raising awareness and community organizing, your main
tool is a public meeting in which discussion is the central feature.
Here it is very important that you are thoroughly informed and
conversant with your mobilizers' goals, as indicated above in chapter
one, and the key concepts, as in Key Words.
And more. Do not memorize definitions; reinterpret all those concepts
as you understand them, and debate them in your journal and with
colleagues.
Do not preach sermons like a priest; do not make speeches like
a politician; do not lecture like a professor, avoid pontificating,
haranguing, or dictating. Facilitate. Ask questions. Guide. Your best
role model should be that renown educator of ancient Greece, Socrates,
who taught by always asking questions, never giving answers. He was a
great facilitator, guiding people to think (analyse, observe) for
themselves.
Appear relaxed, confident and informed. Draw questions out of
the participants. Especially ask the quiet and shy ones for their
opinions. Do not allow the over confident and dominating ones to take
over or control the discussion.
In the public meetings you also introduce the brainstorm session, which you will use
again in planning sessions of the executive committee. Explain that
different kinds of sessions have different ground rules. The open
dialogue, where you guide by facilitating and questioning, allows for
debate and cross talk; the "brainstorm" does not.
In a brainstorm you emphasize that there is no debate, no
criticism, no cross talk. You will call for suggestions and write them
on the board, all of them, even the silly ones, and later prioritize
the list of suggestions. The "brainstorm" is very structured and
focussed and the participants must learn and practice the ground rules.
Never tell a community group what to think or what to do. You
may want to, for you have your goals of empowering them, fighting
apathy, ignorance, dependency, disease and dishonesty (the causes of
poverty). But you have to facilitate them in coming to their own
realization, and their own decision. You must take this facilitation
approach if you want to empower or strengthen them. (Avoid lecturing
and preaching).
2.6. Challenging the Community:
While you want the community to develop strength, you do not
passively and automatically accept at first what appears to be the
community's priority goal.
Resistance produces strength; your arm muscles become strong
when you do push-ups. If your muscles never meet resistance, they will
grow weak. If you do too much for a community, it will not become
stronger.
The first suggestion of a priority by the community might not
be well thought out, and if you challenge it, they may think more
carefully about what action they would take.
Let us look at a hypothetical example. Perhaps the community
members say that their priority goal is to build a clinic. "Fair
enough," you reply, "But what is your reasoning behind that choice of
goal?" "Does the community have the capacity to build and maintain a
clinic?" "What problems will the clinic solve? And what problems will
it cause?" Strengthen them by letting them defend their choice.
If it turns out that community members want a clinic because a
rival community down the road has one, that their main motivation is
pride, then you can clarify that. "Remember that it is your own
resources that will go into building it; is that really how you want to
spend your money?" you say. Perhaps it then comes out that babies are
dying, and that is their primary concern.
Here is your opportunity to point out an important principle
of PHC (primary health); that
prevention is much better than cure. Children are dying mainly from
diarrhoea caused by water borne diseases.
A clinic may help in curing disease, but it is more humane,
cheaper, and less risky to reduce water borne disease by a combination
of three things: (1) hygiene education leading to behaviour change, (2)
a clean potable water supply, and (3) effective sanitation that keeps
human wastes away from the drinking water.
By being challenged to analyse its problems and search for
practical and feasible solutions, the community may respond by
re-examining its priority problems and re-defining its priority goals.
Do not passively accept their first choice of goal.
2.7. Community Chooses Its Action:
The focus of your public dialogue and awareness raising will
be the community choice of action to take. It is very important to your
success that the final decision is that of the whole community, not
merely the desire of one or two factions within the community.
There will be a great eagerness, and pressure, to complete the
action, be it construction of a latrine, clinic or water supply, new
legislation protecting tenants rights, or some social work service. Do
not be diverted by the eagerness and pressure.
The community has its goal (eg latrine) while you have your
goal (community empowerment). They are not the same. You assist and
guide the community in obtaining its objectives, the right way, however
long it takes.
Politicians, journalists, and administrators will try to judge
you by the community goals (eg building the latrine). Do not be
deceived by that. The latrine construction is your "means" not your
goal. If it is constructed without empowering the community, without
increased gender balance, without increased transparency, without
increased self reliance, then you have failed to reach your objective.
It is relatively more easy to pump resources into a community
(eg money, pipes, roofing materials) to build the physical structure,
but it is not likely to be sustainable; the community members will not
feel they own it, and not feel responsible for maintaining it. You may
reach the short term objective of the politician or journalist to
provide a latrine for the community, but you will fail to reach your
own long term mobilizer's goal of strengthening that community.
If it is not done correctly, it is not worth doing at all. The
"provision" approach weakens the community and contributes to the
socially debilitating "dependency syndrome."
Once the community has been prepared (awareness raised, unity
improved, information accurate, priority action chosen), it is now
ready to go into action. The next chapter shows you your role in that.
2.8. Organizing for Strength:
While there are many factors that contribute to strength,
capacity, or empowerment, the one
that most concerns a mobilizer is "organization."
Other factors being equal, the level and effectiveness of organization
determines the strength of a group, agency or community.
Let us use a foot ball team as an example. If you have two
football teams, with the same number of individuals, the same range of
skills, physical condition, and technology (eg quality of shoes), they
would be equal. Let us say one team is not organized; there is no
division of labour, no co-ordination, no recognizable social structure.
The other team is organized, has a coach with authority, has different
roles for goalie, defence, left and right wings, centre forward, and
other division of labour.
Different team members have different roles and practice
playing in an integrated manner (eg passing the football). In this case
it is easy to see that the second team is more powerful, has more
strength and capacity than the first one, even though their other
characteristics are equal. Better organization makes better capacity.
So, too, with whole societies. Take this example (not for the
history it contains, but for the sociological principle). The Akan of
West Africa expanded rapidly during the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries, and rapidly conquered the Guans who preceded them.
The level of technology (including weapons) was about the
same, as were most other characteristics. But the Guan were patrilineal
and lived in dispersed lineages, while the Akan were matrilineal in a
way that organized the different clans into functional alliances, lived
in nucleated settlements, each clan having a different role in warfare
(forward, left, right, rear, domestic, and paramount) and a state
organization. Like in the organizing of a football team, other factors
being equal (technology, skills), the more organized system (Akan, the
epitome of whom were the Ashanti) conquered the less organized.
The point, for you as a mobilizer, is that your goal in
strengthening a low income community, is to help your target group
consciously organize for more effectiveness. You do not form a CBO executive for its own sake, or help
them choose chair, vice, secretary, and treasurer, just to have pretty
titles.
executive for its own sake, or help them choose chair, vice,
secretary, and treasurer, just to have pretty titles.
The following chapter guides you in organizing. Be conscious
of why you organize (to what end?) and let your target group
participate as partners in this noble endeavour (the empowerment of low
income communities).
3. Organizing the Community:
Most educators and trainers know that learning in the
classroom, listening to lectures or presentations, reading text books,
are all less effective than letting the trainees learn by doing. You
want the executive of the community organization to become stronger by
being organized effectively and trained in the necessary skills. This
chapter shows you how to combine action and training.
With the whole community, you organize an executive. (See Organizing by Training). It may have
different names, eg CBO Executive, CIC
(Community Implementing Committee), Project Committee, or Development
Committee. Then, with this executive, you make a detailed participatory
assessment of conditions (including problems and resources) in the
community.
Using brainstorming techniques, you show the committee how to
prepare an action plan. You then guide the executive in presenting
their findings to the community as a whole. Then, using brainstorming
techniques again, the community modifies (if necessary) and approves
the action plan.
You also explain about requesting outside resources (the
skills of writing proposals), warning them of the danger of the
dependency syndrome. You also train them in the importance of
monitoring and have them decide on how it should be done. Finally, you
help them to organize for action; their action.
3.1. Action Training:
The actions the community will now undertake
are to:
- form an executive committee;
- assess community conditions;
- prepare a plan of action;
- obtain needed resources;
- ensure that all community activities will be monitored, and
- organize most effectively for action.
Action by itself will not necessarily strengthen a community,
nor will training. Your task is to integrate community action with
training and guidance of community members.
At all times you are guiding the community, show them that
this is an opportunity to learn. Preparing an action plan may at first
seem to them to be an unnecessary nuisance; you must be enthusiastic in
showing them its importance and usefulness.
The community gets stronger when its members learn by doing
and when you facilitate their self learning.
3.2. Forming the Executive (CIC):
The executive committee must be chosen by the whole community
not just a faction or a few factions. (That is why unity organizing
remains important, see Unity Organizing).
The executive must be part of the community, and be responsible to the
community. CIC.
You, as mobilizer must make this clear to the community
members, using whatever communication skills you have. It is advisable
to repeat yourself in different ways, and to different groups in
different circumstances.
You also need to break down assumptions in this phase. The
choice of treasurer, for example, may be fraught with assumptions. Many
people, especially in rural communities with many illiterates, may
assume that they must select the most educated member of the community
as treasurer. This may have been a school teacher. It has often been
our experience that the school teacher is from a far off district, has
a low salary, has no roots in or loyalty to the community, and absconds
with the community resources he has been entrusted to handle.
Why does the treasurer have to be educated? That is an
assumption. One does not need to read and write in order to count. If
an older woman, a grandmother, deeply rooted in the community and well
trusted, is chosen, then she can be the treasurer, even if illiterate.
As she gets her school-going neighbours and relatives to set
up the books, the accounts are more likely to be transparent, as each
expenditure is explained and discussed. Being treasurer means being
responsible for the money; it does not necessarily mean physically
keeping the books.
Your job is to help the executive get formed by the whole
community. (See "Training as Organizing").
Forming the executive should be a transparent
y democratic (see both those in
the key words).
The process must be culturally appropriate and acceptable to
community members (that is why, explained in chapter one, you must
learn about the community characteristics as much as possible).
3.3. Assessing Conditions:
A community should undertake its activity from an informed
base. See: PAR. The executive
committee should make an on-site assessment, analyse it, then present
their findings to the community as a whole. This is a "situation analysis."
Although you have already made your own assessment, including
a map, as part of your preparation phase, it is important that the
executive committee make its own assessment. Do not do it for them.
They should not delegate this to anyone else.
Set a convenient date for you and the executive committee to
walk around the community. Set aside as much time as possible. Walk
around all or as much of the community area as you can, looking,
talking to people, making notes, drawing sketches. Meet afterwards to
compare observations and draw up a combined assessment report. Ask one
member of the executive (not you, the mobilizer) to write up the
combined findings of the assessment, to be presented to the community
as a whole. Their write-up, or report, is called the "situation
analysis."
If you can make a few copies of the report (at least maps) to
pass around, very good.
In your assessment walk, look for problems and solutions,
resources and constraints. Indicate broken water stand pipes and other
communal facilities. Show roads that need repair. If you (including the
executive) identify an old retired carpenter, determine if he could
give some training to some young people; if he is supported by his
family would he donate his energy and advice, or need a small
honorarium? Look for other potential resources, human and physical.
Note them in the assessment.
After the executive meets to agree upon a combined assessment
and after the report is written (copied if possible) they should
present their findings to the community as a whole. This requires
calling another whole community meeting at a convenient time.
If you, as mobilizer, have a flip chart and news print for
their presentation, to loan them, or can borrow some, all the better.
You should not present their findings. You facilitate the meeting and
let them present their findings to their whole community.
The assessment is a prerequisite to the community plan of
action (CAP; see Acronyms). Ensure
that there is complete understanding among the community members what
the executive observed, and that there is consensus about the nature
and extent of problems and potentials.
3.4. Preparing a Community Action Plan (CAP):
In training and encouraging the community and its executive to
become stronger (more self reliant), you must impress upon them the
necessity of management and planning.
In planning, it is first necessary to have a vision, "Where do
you want to go?" To illustrate that, we often quote Lewis Carroll, the
author of Alice in Wonderland: "If you do not know where you are going,
then any road will do." It is important that the community is unified
in sharing its vision. Your job as mobilizer is to ensure that.
The essence of management planning (detailed
in Management Training) is condensed
into four questions:
- "What do we want?"
- "What do we have?"
- "How do we use what we have to get what we want?" and
- "What will happen when we do?"
The community assessment should answer question two. To answer questions three and four, the community should
prepare a Community Action Plan (CAP). This can be a one year plan, a
five year plan, or some other time period, consistent in length with
district plans.
The action plan should indicate:
- how the community is now;
- how it wants to be by the end of the period; and
- how it intends to get from 1 to 2.
It can make reference to any planned community projects; those are
described below. The action plan should be drafted by the executive committee,
based on community feedback from the presented assessment. The draft
action plan should then be presented to the community as a whole for
refinement and approval.
Again you, as mobilizer, should not present it, but
facilitate so that the executive can present it. Its acceptance must be
by the whole unified community.
3.5. Project Design, Proposals, Outside Resources:
Remember that your job is to fight dependency, where community
members come to rely on outside assistance for community improvements.
Your emphasis should be on community self reliance (where the community
relies mainly on its own resources).
If the community chooses an expensive project, and cannot
expect to raise enough money, you must caution them to be more
realistic (not to depend upon outside charity).
A proposal is a request for
funds from a potential donor. The best proposal is designed like a project action plan, which serves to
justify to the donor why it should donate funds. The same project
action plan should be the basis for submitting to higher levels of
Government to access ceded funds.
Do not do the work of the committee, however tempted you are.
The executive must learn by doing. Illiterates on the committee must be
fully involved in its preparation, verbally, line by line.
A project design can be used as a proposal for obtaining
outside funds. It must be used for getting the approval of the whole
community for undertaking the project. In that sense it is still a kind
of proposal. It might be required by district authorities; it surely is
advisable to give them a copy.
The essence of the project design, like the brainstorm, is to
systematically answer The Four Key
Questions (what do we want, what do we have, how can we use what we
have to get what we want, and what will happen if we do). It is your
duty, as mobilizer, to go through these four key questions in detail
with the executive, putting them into the relevant context, and
systematize the answers into an appropriate document to be written by
the executive.
When discussing resources, you will often hear executive
members saying that the community does not have enough funds. There is
a tendency to rely on one outside donor only. Relying on only one
source increases vulnerability, thus decreases the strength of the
community. With some effort, community members can pull in resources
from many and varied sources. See Resource
Acquisition.
The mobilizer does not dictate to the community that all these
must be provided by the community. Instead, you can mention all of
these, and ask the community members to identify those which the
community can provide.
Sources of support can include:
- Donations: cash, land, buildings, supplies and equipment,
donated by individuals who want to support their community.
(Acknowledged and thanked in public meetings);
- Commercial: gifts from firms and businesses that want to
advertise their good will and support of the community. (Acknowledged
and thanked in public meetings);
- Communal Labour: time and labour donated by community
members, some unskilled (clearing grass, laying bricks), some skilled
(carpentry, masonry), meetings, planning, supervision;
- Agricultural: farmers may donate food for the project: to
communal workers who are working on the project, or to the executive
committee to sell to raise cash for the project;
- Food: people who donate the preparing of food and
refreshments to the community members on communal working days;
- Contributions and fees: for credit club and similar
financial projects, contributions from all members; service fees, such
as for obtaining water;
- Governmental: partial funding from central, district or
local governmental sources. Sources may include district development
committee participation;
- Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs): local community
based organizations, churches, outside NGOs working locally; and
- Anonymous Donors: benefactors who remain unknown.
This list is not complete. Seek suggestions in brain storming
sessions with community members (not only leaders). See Resource Acquisition for more details
about obtaining resources for community projects.
When discussing resources, you will often hear executive
members saying that the community does not have enough funds. There is
a tendency to rely on one outside donor only. Relying on only one
source increases vulnerability, thus decreases the strength of the
community. With some effort, community members can pull in resources
from many and varied sources.
3.6. Monitoring Arrangements:
The word "monitoring"
sounds a bit like technical jargon, and some of your community members
might feel a little threatened by your talking about it. Never fear;
the idea of monitoring is very
simple.
It is also important for community strengthening, and serves
many purposes so long as it is an essential integrated element, not
something separate which was tacked on like an after thought. (See the
companion to this document, "Handbook of Monitoring
and Evaluation").
Again, to get your point across, use a metaphor. The "bicycle"
analogy can be useful here. Ask the group, "How many of you here know
how to ride a bicycle?" We hope and expect at least one says yes. (If
not, you will have to be hypothetical, or ask about any other activity
that requires sight). "Yes"? Good!
"Have you ever tried shutting your eyes while riding a
bicycle?" "If not, can you imagine what will happen?" You can draw out
a number of answers, which should indicate disaster, like running into
a tree or person, going off the track, falling down. Laugh.
Now say that the community is the rider; the bicycle is the
project design; the ride or journey is the community project. The
project design (bicycle) will get you to where you want to go
(objectives), but you must keep your eyes open (monitor your progress).
Every project, large or small, can easily go a little off
track, and usually does. If it is not closely and continuously
monitored (watched), then it will soon go off the road, hit something,
and fall down. If it is constantly monitored, then small deviations can
be quickly and easily corrected, and failure avoided.
The community must be in the driver's seat.
Others will also want to monitor. Any external donors will
want to know if their donated resources are being well used. District
officials will want to monitor for their own purposes. You will want to
monitor to see how well you are strengthening the community.
The community has the greatest reasons for monitoring. Your
job as mobilizer to impress upon the community members the importance
and simplicity of monitoring. (Simple does not always mean easy).
Your job is also to guide the executive in
ensuring:
- that how monitoring is to be done by them is included in
the project design;
- that the monitoring is seen as important as the action
itself;
- the executive is committed to monitoring;
- that the executive carries out monitoring, and
- that the executive reports its observations to the whole
community,
and asks for the same back from all/any community members. How the community project is to be monitored should be agreed
upon and understood by the executive and community, and carefully
spelled out in its planning documents.
3.7. Organizing for Action:
Many people do not realize the different kinds of organizing
done by a mobilizer, for different purposes.
The two most important kinds in this hand
book are:
- organizing for decision making; and
- organizing for action.
Of course these two are closely related. When you assisted the community to form the executive
committee, you were organizing for community decision making. Now, when
you work with the community to decide who does what (eg in the
project), you are organizing for action.See Organizing
by Training.
Although there will be overlap, action organizing should also
identify certain individuals to carry out specific tasks. This is
essential. If a task has been identified (eg transport roofing sheets
to the project site), it should not be left up to the group as a whole.
That way it may never get done as everyone thinks it is someone else's
responsibility.
A large number of tasks should not fall on one person, eg the
chairperson of the executive. It is important that as many tasks and
responsibilities be delegated to as many other community members
(especially those not on the executive) as possible.
Emphasize the value of as much and widespread participation
and contribution as possible. Make sure that when a task or
responsibility is delegated to an individual, that it is well known by
everyone, and if it is not completed on time, that individual can be
called to account by the community.
Community action should not be spontaneous and ad hoc. It
should be organized.
4. Into Action:
You, as mobilizer, have already been in action (ie preparing
the community). Now it is time for the community to go into action. The
whole community has participated in decision making, it has formed an
executive, created a community plan of action, designed a project, and
an organization for acting. Time for it to start moving.
As an example, let us say the action is building a latrine.
Plans are examined; resources collected, building begins. There are
several areas where you, as the mobilizer, have work to do. Do not
organize, supervise or work in constructing the latrine.
Your role is to facilitate needed technical training
(identified by the community and its executive during construction),
ensure that the work is monitored, that there is full and free
information about all aspects (especially financial disbursements) and
that community members never become complacent or slip into thinking
that it is not their own project.
This chapter tells you some of your tasks and roles while the
community is in action. You do not control their action; you encourage
and assist them to do it. You provide praise, positive advice, public
recognition. You assist in obtaining needed training, you promote
public knowledge, gender balance, transparency, and a high project
profile.
4.1. Implementing the Community Plan:
In the community preparation phase, at least two documents
should have been prepared (ie by the executive) and approved (ie by the
whole community). These are: (1) the CAP
(Community Action Plan) or Plan of Action, and (2) the Project Design
(which may or may not have been used also as a proposal).
Unless these are changed by the executive and the community as
a whole, they should be referred to often, especially if a dispute, or
question of what to do next, arises. The project design should be seen
as linked to, and part of, the community action plan.
Your job is not to implement the plan, but facilitate the
community to do so.
Ensure that the people designated to do specific tasks do so.
Ensure that monitoring is carried out. Ensure that there are frequent
meetings of the executive (where progress reports are discussed) and
meetings of the whole community. Ensure that accurate records are kept,
especially of all financial expenditures.
Assist the executive in recording the monetary value of their
management contributions (how many hours do they spend in meetings,
planning, supervising, implementing, and what is the monetary value of
their donated time and energy?). This means many meetings between you
and the executive, and a few public meetings with the whole community.
4.2. Monitoring:
Earlier (section 3.6) it was noted that
monitoring is important, and needs to be included in the project
design. Now that the project is underway, you need to ensure that it
takes place. See the companion to this handbook, "Monitoring."
Remember the analogy of riding a bicycle? If pressing the
pedals is the action, then watching where you are going (monitoring) is
as important, if you do not want to go off track and fall down. You say
that the people working on the project at the time can see what is
going on, but that is not enough.
The whole rider is riding the bicycle, not only the eyes. The
eyes must send reports to the brain which sends adjustment messages to
the rest of the body. Different people work on the project in different
ways and at different times, but the whole community (and donors) must
know what is going on overall.
Now that the project is underway, it is your job as mobilizer
to remind the executive that monitoring is part of the project design,
is important, and must be carried out.
4.3. Community or CIC Generated Needs:
While the project is underway, the community and its executive
will become more aware of needed skills.
Some of those skills may be artisan, craft or technical
skills, such as carpentry, masonry, electric wiring and others
necessary for construction. Others may be financial, planning or
management skills, such as keeping accounts, fund raising, report
writing, conflict resolution, communication skills, and supervising and
managing the activity.
Training ranges from informal to formal, on the job site
showing skills by experienced to inexperienced, paid training
(apprentice-style), through workshops you organize, to sending
participants to a commercial or Government training institute.
As much as possible, emphasize the informal skill training
from resources inside the community. Older and skilled artisans who
donate their labour to the community project should show younger
unskilled youth how to do the work.
Where artisans have to be hired, try to hire within the
community if feasible, and include training of unskilled community
members (male and female youth) as part of the hiring agreement
contracts. Ensure that the executive records and reports all informal
training.
Where informal training is not possible, you might propose
training workshops. You must have a budget, a source of funds, to cover
the training costs.
If such training needs are foreseen early by the executive it
should be encouraged to include a training proposal in its community
project design. See: Preparing a Workshop.
Depending upon your budget, and the policy of your agency or
programme, you may have resources for sending some people for more
formal, or institutional training.
Your task is to ensure that the training is approved by the
whole community, has an appropriate and needed subject matter for the
community project, and is not just a means for giving a perk to a
crony. Ensuring that the choice of participants and choice of topic is
approved by the whole community will help avoid suspicions of
favouritism by you or the executive.
Whatever the training, while the project is underway, ensure
that the choice of participants and topics or skills transferred, are
needed by the community, approved by the community as a whole,
monitored and recorded, and included in progress reports.
4.4. Needed Skills:
Although you do not dictate the needed training topics to the
community or its executive, you should be prepared to assist it if they
themselves identify training needs as they go along (See Preparing a Workshop about
the importance of justification).
Here is a short list of some possible training topics that may
arise.
- Accounting;
- Brick Making;
- Carpentry;
- CBR;
- Communication;
|
- Fund-raising;
- Group Dynamics;
- Management;
- Mobilizing;
- Monitoring;
|
- Planning;
- Primary Health;
- Project Design;
- Report Writing;
- Social Work.
|
You may not be skilled enough to train in some of these
topics, so you need to identify other specialists and resource people
who could do the training with you. You may find it necessary to show
specialists how to engage in participatory and facilitative training.
4.5. Communication Between Executive and Public:
Just as in your own work of mobilizing you need to be
transparent, facilitating, non dictatorial, and involving the community
in decision making, so you should also encourage the executive to be
the same towards its community. For maintaining good communications
between the community and its executive, if carried out frequently,
three useful methods are: meetings, reports, and inspections.
Public community meetings are the most important means of
ensuring a good flow of information between the executive and the
community as a whole. (Elaborate meetings may include celebrations
noted in the next section). At meetings you want to encourage and train
the executive to take a "facilitating" role as you have been doing as a
mobilizer.
They need to develop good public speaking skills, avoiding
speeches, lectures, sermons or pronouncements, learning to draw
responses out of the participants. That two-way flow of information
("dialogue" means "two-way"),
Reports are important, too. They should be well written in
very
simple language, and should be verbally announced at community
meetings. Seek community responses.
Inspections, where the community members walk around the
project
site with the executive, also encourage good communication and
transparency.
Posters and posted notices can assist in a good flow of
communicating, but should not be used alone. They can complement public
meetings but not substitute for them. They may be focussed on raising
awareness, or on reporting the results of project activities.
A statement of accounts, including income and expenditures,
posted
on the clinic or school while under construction, improves transparency.
The important thing for you, as mobilizer, to emphasize is to
encourage good governance, participatory management, integrity,
transparency, by good communication between the executive and the
community as a whole. The degree to which you have learned facilitation
methods of leadership contributes to the degree to which you can
encourage and train the executive and the community leaders to learn
and use them too.
4.6. Celebrations:
Organizing and implementing community celebrations are hard
work, and are important and vital parts of mobilization.
Once you might not have realized this; for pupils and most
workers,
a celebration is an exciting break from the monotony of work or study.
For you, the mobilizer, it is part of your job description.
As well as the obvious time for a celebration (ie the
completion of
a community project), you should encourage other celebrations through
the process: fund raising harambee, laying a foundation block, cheque
handing-over, finishing a key phase (walls, roof, painting) and other
key turning points.
Drumming, dancing, plays or skits, parades, talent shows, and
other
entertainment or semi-entertainment, should be included in every
celebration. Invite local amateur culture groups and school groups to
perform. Ensure some "big-shots" attend, to make speeches of public
praise (but not to politically hi-jack the celebration), and invite the
press and media.
Why?
The celebration adds public recognition, validation and
legitimacy to the whole developmental process, not just the project.
It is a good venue for raising awareness, improving
transparency, and making the community project a more high profile
activity.
With the executive, plan and organize well. Do not do
everything for the executive.
Encourage, praise and advise, –that they take charge.
Enjoy.
5. Sustaining the Intervention:
If you look again at the key words and basic concepts
mentioned in
Chapter One as important for you to know, you will find the word
"sustainability." (It is not found in most dictionaries). How can
something we put in place be made sustainable so that it stays in place?
For the community, whose goal was improved health, and
objective was
to construct a latrine, its concern with sustainability is in questions
like, "How do we ensure the latrine will be kept clean, repaired,
maintained and used?"
The answer is in ensuring community responsibility (by
community
participation in decision making and control) from the beginning of the
project.
For you, who has put in place a social process of social
change,
strengthening the community, your concern with sustainability is more
in questions like, "How will the community continue to take charge of
its improvements, making her assessments, choosing new priorities,
seeking new resources, undertaking new actions, increasing its self
reliance?"
The goals of you and of the community are different but
complementary. You want your intervention to be sustained. The question
of sustainability is answered in how you go about your mobilization.
Your goal is not a once-and-for-all latrine, school, clinic or
water supply. It is sustainable development.
This chapter looks at how you can make your work sustainable.
Part
of the answer lies in repeating the mobilization cycle itself; part of
it lies in identifying and training mobilizers from within the target
community.
5.1. The Development Mobilization Cycle:
Earlier, your work – your intervention – was described as
stimulating a social process. The series of activities, (assessment,
awareness raising, unity organizing, planning and implementing action,
and assessment again), stimulates community strengthening and increased
self reliance.
The word "cycle" may be a
bit
misleading here. Surely at the end you go back and start at the
beginning again, but it is a changed you and a changed community. An
old Buddhist proverb says that, "The same man can not cross the same
river twice," (both man and river become different; they are always
changing).
Nevertheless, you want to repeat the essential interventions
and
stimulate the essential social process. Like a bicycle wheel that goes
round and round, each part meets the path farther along each time round.
Meanwhile, you must keep your inevitable departure in mind,
right
from the beginning of your work. If the community can not develop
without you, then it has become dependent upon you. Your enemy is
dependency.
While you repeat the cycle, therefore, you aim for your own
pull-out, so that the cycle can continue without you. If you are
replaced, your notes in your journals, going back to those of Chapter
1, should be the basis for your hand-over briefing to your replacement.
If you are not replaced by your agency, you must find and develop
potential mobilizing resources from within the community.
5.2. Community Leadership and Internal Mobilization:
The
key to sustaining the intervention of stimulating the community towards
increased self reliance, is in the community. Your agency may be
willing and able to replace you, but your ultimate goal is to have the
community continue mobilizing on its own.
The way you do this is to identify persons living in the
community
who have the potentials to become mobilizers, and the appropriate
attitudes and values, and train them in your skills, train them to take
over from you.
You want to work yourself out of a job.
Community development is a process of social change. You do
not develop a community; the community develops itself.
The most you can be is a catalyst and stimulant to that social
process. Here a famous quotation from Mwalimu Julius Nyerere is
appropriate, "People can not be developed; they can only develop
themselves."
Remember also that the tools and skills you have can act as
very
powerful catalysts of social change. Like any tools, therefore, they
can be misused. When you identify community members to train to replace
you, it is vital that you examine their character to ensure that they
will use mobilization tools to benefit the community, not to benefit
themselves at the expense of the community.
Know that some people have political and career objectives.
With
good participatory and facilitating skills, a person can misuse
mobilization for personal benefit. See again Chapter One (sección 1.3)
and the "locksmith" analogy. When you identify potential mobilizers
from within the community, carefully observe them over time. Do not be
in a hurry to find your replacement; take enough time to do in right.
When you tell a group they should take time and do something
right,
you can tell this little story of two bulls from a cattle society in
West Africa.
Two bulls were coming over a hill and saw over a hundred cows
down
in the valley before them. "Oh, uncle," said the young bull, "Let us
run down there and do a few." "No," said the older bull, "Let us walk
down there, and do them all."
Take enough time to find and train your replacement.
When you identify one or a few persons who appear to have
potential
to become mobilizers, having qualities of honesty, leadership, genuine
concern for development of the people, you need to train them. If they
are interested, you can set them up as something like "apprentices,"
taking time to explain to them why you do what you do.
Cover all the topics in the first few chapters of this hand
book.
Helping them learn the principles is as important as their learning the
skills. Let them try to lead a facilitation session from time to time.
More often as their skills grow. After they have gone through two or
more mobilization cycles, they should be ready to carry on in your
absence.
You are well on the way to make your mobilizing sustainable.
5.3. Lessons Learned and Awareness of Possibilities:
We humans can learn from both success and failure, from
achievements
and mistakes. Remember that mistakes, failures and disasters are not
the same.
A mistake is not a failure; to err is human. A failure is not
a
disaster; failing to achieve something does not mean you are a failure.
A disaster does not mean the end of life or the end of time. When we
fall down we must pick ourselves up and carry on. A day at a time.
If you have been successful at guiding a community to build
its own
latrine, or complete some other objective, then you have gone one step
towards making it more self reliant. It will have not gone smoothly or
perfectly. If you think it did, then you are not being honest with
yourself.
Analyse the process and your role in it. Be courageously
honest in
admitting your mistakes. Write down your analysis of the mobilization
cycle. Be objective and neutral about mistakes and failures; do not use
them as an excuse to paralyse yourself with depression.
Use them as lessons to be learned; far more useful and
realistic
than what you can learn out of a text book or a hand book such as this
one. Use your journal, use your analysis, use your lessons learned, to
grow stronger and more skilled as a mobilizer.
Do the same with, and for, the community.
6. Appendices:
The appendices for this handbook have been converted to training modules.
Trainers' Notes: Preparing the Mobiliser,
Starting the Mobiliser, Creating the Organisers, Training Methods.
Following the path of least resistance makes all rivers and some men crooked
© Copyright 1967, 1987, 2007 Phil Bartle
Web Design by Lourdes Sada
––»«––Last update: 2010.12.12
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